Northern frights


Gritty, distant and full of people who wouldn’t watch Newsnight. Helen Nugent looks at some blinkered views of the north


I


t’s been 10 years since a Sunday Times writer declared they were ‘more nervous about going to Leeds than a war zone’ despite their desire to ‘wear a flat cap,


eat chips with gravy and race a whippet’. Four years ago, a Times journalist opined that ‘to northern cuisine such as bread and dripping and chips and curry sauce can now be added raw venison in coal oil and seaweed custard’. Oh, and only this summer, Te Independent declared that ‘we are all performative northerners now’. Te national press school of ‘it’s grim up north’


journalism is alive and well, galvanized by the appointment of a new prime minister who, if you believe Te Independent, has ridden a wave of northern clichés all the way to the top job and is responsible for ‘performative northernness’ entering the mainstream, whatever that means. Surely it’s the London-based journalists who


are riding the cliché crest by looking to score a cheap laugh? Whatever your opinion, there’s a serious side to this nonsense, not least acute cultural and economic consequences, and its roots date back decades.


News retreats south “When I was a boy, several national newspapers had substantial reporting, subbing and printing operations in the north,” says Richard Dixon, former chief revise editor at Te Times, now semi-retired. “One of my uncles was a sub on the Daily Express in Manchester. Tat physical presence shapes and encourages a journalistic, political and cultural landscape. And its absence diminishes it. “Te advent of Andy Burnham as prime


minister and his stated intention to relocate some national governance and decision-making to his Manchester base has, I think, frightened the political and media horses in London. It is somewhat ironic that Te Guardian – formerly


14 | theJournalist


Te Manchester Guardian – felt obliged to carry a story in early August from points north headlined ‘Labour minister denies Burnham too blokey’.” According to Dixon, the UK’s national media


has been retreating south for some considerable time, an assertion backed up by numerous other personal accounts and analysis. For example, when Up North Runway, an organisation that provides opportunities for budding northern designers, scrutinised its newly acquired Roxhill Media database (touted as the most comprehensive list of UK journalists and outlets), it found the results ‘startling’. It said that, while there were thousands of entries, the newsroom power map was overwhelmingly London-centric, saying that ‘the database does not lie; it reflects a structural truth about the industry’s geography’. Dixon says: “I think the increasing


concentration of editors, their commissioning lieutenants and production journalists in the capital has reduced the credibility of the national press, and affected what happens politically. I have no doubt that Te Sun’s vile editorial line on the Hillsborough disaster and the consequent plummeting of its circulation and revenues, particularly in Merseyside, would not have happened had the red top kept a serious regional presence. And I am convinced that the bonkers decision to prioritise HS2 rather than west-east rail links from Liverpool to Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, York and Newcastle was made not least because of the absence of credible press scrutiny north of Birmingham.” Meanwhile, Lynne Bateson is fed up with the


northern jokes surrounding Burnham’s role. As someone who began her career on northern local papers and ended up as a senior executive on nationals, she recalls being new to London. “I raised my hand to ask a question in a large


press conference. Te speaker, who had briefly met me before, said, ‘I’ll take a question from the lady who says oop’.”


Today, Bateson says, the national press’s


coverage of the north of England is ‘backwards and blinkered’. She believes that the situation was better when journalists reached London via regional papers’. “Tere used to be well-trodden routes for


working-class journalists to get on to nationals from the regions. Tese days, journalism has become more of an upper middle-class job, especially since you increasingly need well-off parents to support you while doing unpaid internships in cash-strapped legacy media. And there are so many more youngsters who get a start because their families know someone. I remember chatting with a working-class colleague on the Sunday Express about this. We looked around the busy newsroom and couldn’t identify anyone else who was either northern or working class.”


Distortion and stereotypes Dawn-Maria France is editor-in-chief of Yorkshire Women’s Life magazine. She says: “Te narratives about the north are often distorted, seen mainly through a London- centric lens. Tis can lead to both underrepresentation and stereotypes that don’t truly reflect the vibrant diversity of northern culture. Having reported from both areas, I’ve felt the impact of this first hand. “Recently, labelling figures like Andy


Burnham as a ‘performative northerner’ has highlighted a bigger issue around the authenticity of representation. Tere’s a real frustration among many of us when northern identities are superficially engaged with, especially by major media outlets that often favour southern stories.” A freelance journalist and copywriter in


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