Behind Local News Weekly: The newsroom which did the election differently
Good morning,
Welcome to your weekly Behind Local News roundup. No surprises for guessing what today’s main topic is all about — the General Election of course.
It’s now a week since the all-nighters were pulled, and we’ve been covering some of the more interesting aspects of local news coverage throughout the week.
Our long read this week comes from Ed Walker, the Editor (North) of The Lead, a fascinating emerging team of journalistic talent trying to do local journalism differently in the North of England — and making it a priority to work with newsrooms already working in the areas they are focusing on.
Read on to find out how a sudden General Election gave them the chance to do some very different things, despite the very short deadlines in some cases.
We’ll be looking at the impact of the General Election on the media in next week’s newsletter, and also have a superb long read about how journalists can handle misinformation in the wake of a General Election which was dogged by such issues throughout.
For now though, thanks for reading,
Behind Local News
New this week:
UK General Election 2024 — as told through 40+ local newspaper front pages
Newsletter ‘lifts the curtain’ on covering General Election count
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How ‘listening to locals’ helped shape the BBC’s General Election coverage
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Making voices heard: Inside the election project listening to 5,000 voters
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Saturday special from Bristol captures election night drama
The Bristol Post made a one-week-only return to newsagents on a Saturday to mark the General Election.
Weekly returns to the presses for special election issue after night of drama
An independent weekly newspaper published a special election edition just hours after covering two of the biggest Election stories of count night.
General Election you say? Time to launch newspapers covering 30 Northern constituencies…
While most newsrooms have tried and trusted General Election plans built on decades of experience, for one team of journalists the sudden decision to send Britain to the polls provided a chance to do something very different. Ed Walker, editor of The Lead in the North of England, explains why…
What does a general election look like for publications which are just weeks and months old in many cases?
For The Lead North team the challenge was to launch new local newspapers and newsletters covering around 30 Parliamentary constituencies ahead of the general election (which came sooner than most thought!) — and focused on places which are outside the metropolises of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle which have very established and emerging media too.
We’re talking towns here, or places within those larger city-districts which have their own character, identity and as it turns out a thirst for new coverage — The Lead has been launching hyperlocal editions since January this year when it launched in Blackpool and has built a highly engaged readership of more than 1,000 weekly subscribers to its newsletter and in-depth journalism.
The Lead pulled together a band of talented freelance writers across the North of England, overseen by senior editor Luke Beardsworth, to dig into topics beyond the daily cut-n-thrust of coverage already happening by talented editors and newsrooms in and around those patches. With a particular focus on housing, inequality, regeneration, health and education. and other themes which while touched upon sometimes didn’t get the exploration needed.
The week before polling day saw The Lead — which like the Liverpool Echo endorsed Labour ahead of the general election — package up the storytelling we’d done digitally through our newsletters, along with a showcase of our national writing led by Dimi Reider and team, to produce 200,000 new local newspapers across Blackpool, Lancashire, Bury, Rossendale, Hyndburn, Warrington, Teesside, Altrincham & Sale, Bolton and Stoke-on-Trent with a mix of door-to-door and supermarket distribution.
Taking politics (and politicians) to the people
Part of the The Lead’s election coverage was to work collaboratively with other media to run a series of hustings across Lancashire — partnering with National World’s Lancashire Post and Blackpool Gazette, the BBC Local Democracy Reporting Service (operated by the Post and Gazette), and independent community news title Blog Preston for Preston-focused hustings.
A total of four hustings took place in an intense ten-day period across Blackpool North & Fleetwood, Fylde, Preston and South Ribble — with more than 700 people registering their interest in attending, more than 500 people turning up across all the hustings, dozens of questions asked of more than 25 candidates spread across each event along with live video streams of the hustings and extensive coverage across all titles involved.
Local Democracy Reporters Paul Faulkner and Sheilagh Parkinson did a superb job chairing and keeping order amongst the (sometimes fiery) candidates and debates that took place — and ensuring questions on local issues were asked in amongst some often heated exchanges on national issues.
Vanessa Sims, editor of the Lancashire Post and the Blackpool Gazette said: “The hustings events we hosted in collaboration with The Lancashire Lead were a real joy to be part of. The debates were lively and informative and gave real insight into the individual candidates.
“All the hustings were really well attended and even attracted huge numbers when they clashed with the England Euros fixtures.
“Members of the public asked some great questions and on every occasion the event could have continued for hours more if we had not been bound by time constraints.
“Our link up The Lancashire Lead has been entirely positive. We have worked collaboratively on investigations and events as well as having the added bonus of being able to share their content.”
Election night itself
The Lead was active North and South on election night — with coverage direct from the Blackpool North and Preston counts, results and insights from across the 30 Northern constituencies covered, special result editions of newsletters for each town and city covered, as well as seeing two new Lancashire MPs (of blue and red colour) write exclusively for The Lancashire Lead on the Sunday in the aftermath of the general election.
Down in London and The Lead’s contributors gathered for an exclusive election event — with videos and interviews throughout the night feeding into the live blog and across The Lead’s social feeds (achieving a combined reach of more than 160,000 views) including conversations with former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and Westminster editor Zoë Grünewald setting the scene
For an emerging publication, The Lead achieved an awful lot to tell the story of the election and dig deep on issues in places it has written about — and is now plotting its course for what that looks like in a post-election landscape with a new government at the helm.
