A regional publisher says a centralised investigations unit it founded two months ago has been responsible for more than 20 front page stories since its inception.
Archant set up the unit with the aim of producing investigative content for use across as many of its titles as possible, but also to offer support to newsrooms in need of help with localised investigations.
It has been headed up by David Powles, pictured left, assistant editor at the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News, who works with two other full-time members on secondment from Archant’s newspapers and three reporters working one day a week.
The other full-time members are Emma Youle, based in London, and Andrew Hirst, based in Suffolk.
Said David: “Just as there is a place within our papers and websites for the important, but often more easily produced, ‘community news’, so too do we need our titles to continue to set an agenda, delve into issues, fight for those unable to have their voices heard and break exclusives.
“How else can we ensure we remain relevant to people’s lives and that what we do matters to our customers?
“While, of course, we still want to encourage our regular journalists, specialists and patch reporters to produce such content, our feeling is that a dedicated team, freed up from the day-to-day pressures of the newsrooms, could make a real difference to the strength of our titles.”
The team has so far conducted investigations into school truancy fines, hospital infection rates, changing crime trends, benefits failures, the impact of an ageing society and pregnant smokers.
Five-day special reports on a blood contamination scandal from the 1970s and 1980s have featured in Archant dailies the Eastern Daily Press, East Anglian Daily Times, Ipswich Star and Norwich Evening News.
Stories on the subject have also appeared in the publisher’s weekly newspapers in London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Devon and Somerset.
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Excuse me for asking, but isn’t this what reporters have always done?
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Invest in good journalism and you get better newspapers which people may want to read….shame it’s so unusual as to merit mention.
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Superb to see a newspaper – albeit a group – investing in proper investigations. It’s a dying art – mainly due to the time it takes and the willingness of editors to give their reporters over to so much time for no guaranteed reward.
And, no, markmac, it’s not what reporters have always done. In fact it is what few reporters have done – many reporters couldn’t sniff out a story if it smelled of rotting rodent and too many have doubled for secretaries taking down notes of what is said in front of them at meeting and conferences and then putting an intro on it….thinking that is being a reporter.
It takes a special skill to dig out what people do not want exposed and, more importantly, to be able to prove the allegations.
It may be a small start from Archant – let’s hope it grows within the group and other newspapers
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Something tells me ‘our regular journalists’ will soon become rather peeved at this semi-detached group constantly nicking the splash while they have to do the drearier, grunt work.
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Thank you for the lecture, Hacked Off.
Nice to know that you view people like me with 30 years experience of reporting everything from crime to local government as glorified secretaries.
It’s a great way to destroy what enthusiasm remains for the job.
By the way, if I need a story, I go to my old, brown contacts book. Not a meeting.
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Sorry to be pedantic but is this 20 splashes on 20 different issues, or the same splash with the geography tweaked 20 times?
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Archant should be commended for this. Even with the perhaps obvious (admitted by Mr Powles) caveat that these are meat and drink stories for local papers 20 years ago and (not admitted by Mr Powles) calling them ‘investigations’ is pushing the envelope to the ultimate, it is certainly a whole lot better than churnalism.
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My guess is they simply submit a load of FOI requests and make a story out of either the top figure or the bottom one. Hardly cutting edge journalism!
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Am happy to reassure Observer 50 that while FOI has formed a part of the work we’ve done – only a very small part. If he looked at the work produced so far he would find most of it has come from taking time to delve into issues, follow up case studies and trawl through reports. Nice, however, to at least see a couple of positive comments on here for a change!
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Can we have a break down of these 20 splashes? Because, from what I’ve seen, many are the same story rehashed slightly for different audiences. Off the top of my head I can think of about five different issues covered by the unit and some of those have been embarrassing (e.g. old people are getting older).
Also, many of the stories have been stretched out over days and given space that the content simply doesn’t warrant. For example the current food hygiene stories offer little more information than would have made a bog-standard page lead in the past but are somehow being made into a three-day special. Over-written, overly simplistic, irrelevant space filling at its worst.
The “two-day investigation” into the Spa Pavilion Theatre was nothing of the sort. A perfectly good story but something readers would expect the paper to be covering routinely and which shouldn’t require a dedicated unit.
I’m sure I’ll be dismissed as being overly negative or as a dinosaur but it’s hard to stomach these glowing stories about the investigations unit when the reality is it simply glosses over the unreasonable demands being placed on the foot soldier reporters. This is a pet vanity project which has added little value to the paper whilst at the same time devaluing the journalists who would love a bit of time to get their teeth properly into a story.
If Mr Powles is really interested in quality journalism perhaps he’d like to give the majority of hardworking journalists more support to do their job rather than churning out a few superficial “investigations”. But then that wouldn’t help with the next promotion.
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Just a pity about some of the negative comments some have chosen to make about “regular” reporters.
Surely, if young reporters aren’t allowed to work on meatier stories, their development is only going to be stunted? There is no substitute for experience and variety.
It all sounds a bit “CID and woodentops” to me.
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If I remember correctly the first ‘investigation ‘came to the conclusion that North Norfolk had an ageing population,and following ones have been equally as eye opening and earth shattering
So if that’s the extent and quality of the delving and trawling investigations then I took its time to shut up shop,get these reporters back on patch and covering the type of hyper local bread and butter stories that people used to pay money to read about,and if Mr powles feels this will turn the tide and stem the flow of thousands of people who have voted with their feet and given up buying the EDP and NEN then I think the investigations unit itself ought to be investigated.
“How else can we ensure we remain relevant to people’s lives and that what we do matters to our customers? looking at the dire ABC figures consustently showing huge sales losses it’s clear its a bit too late for that.
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Well said, Hacked Off!
There must be thousands of reporters who have been treated down the year as secretaries, typing up page after pages of results from agricultural shows, flower festivals, carnivals, particularly working for groups such as Tindle and Cumberland Newspapers.
It all stemmed from Victorian days when many of these papers were started by small town printers who couldn’t think of anything to put in the spaces between the adverts. The practice was continued by gutless editors too frightened to rock the boat by chucking the bloody rubbish out of the window.
The irony is that many of the names in these reports belonged to people from miles away, well outside the circulation area, and therefore of interest to no-one but show secretaries who wanted a printed list for their scrapbooks.
Thank goodness such parochialism is dying the death along with columns in regional dialect.
Yes, tell ’em like it is, Hacked Off!
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What a lot of complete and utter b*****ks. ‘Investigations Unit’? You mean ‘journalists’? That’s what we were all trained to do. Everyone in the damn weekly newspaper office was an ‘Investigations Unit Special Agent’. It was called ‘J-O-U-R-N-A-L-I-S-M’. (This crew would need to put in an FOI request to discover if that capped-up acronym was some kind of coded reference to MI5). Anyone remember what we did before FOI. Do people swallow this horse-stuff? My weekly has half-a-dozen ‘Investigations Unit exclusives’ a week based on this tripe. And here’s the drop intro – the ‘local’ JP/TM dailies run scared of following them up. Shocking. Truly shocking.
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Three full-time and three part-time reporters (let’s call that 3.5 full-timers to be charitable) working for two months have produced 20 splashes?
So that’s 0.7 splashes per week per person? Hardly prolific, even before you take into account many of these splashes are basically duplicated.
As usual from Mr Powles this is just spin and bluster designed to convince management their big idea is working and paying little regard to reality.
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Also, I’d be interested to know whether some of the more enthusiastic proponents of this approach have actually read the stories produced? I doubt it because, if you had, you wouldn’t be making these comments. More than a week to copy some statistics off the ONS website and ask for a case study off Twitter. Hardly the kind of Woodward and Bernstein journalism you imagine – at least the reporters attending meetings, who you so readily dismiss, are getting out in the community.
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How many of these 20 splashes were chosen because they deserved to be top of the agenda on merit with proper news values applied?
Were they just given the splash position so the investigations unit can continue to justify its existence?
Just wondering.
By the way I think the investigations unit is a good concept. It’s just a pity that the rest of the reporting team don’t have the luxury of being able to invest the time in doing a thorough job. Instead it’s a fast food style operation, with a steady stream of lightweight stories being flung out one after another. Carry on yew a troshin!
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Disappointing to read negative comments here — at least Archant are getting a handful of journalists performing a traditional role, well away from regurgitating releases from professional and amateur publicity officers. I saw the website for a once well-regarded JP weekly in Oxfordshire in which the top story was a new secretary for an agricultural show based more than 20 miles away.. Other so-called news included open gardens “enjoyed by many”; “Sun shone on steam rally” ; Police called to argument between drivers — “no arrests”; funeral of local man; seal pup born at Whipsnade (50 miles away); plus handouts from the police, printed word for word —- no hint of investigative journalism anywhere.
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Surely the negative thing here is that the majority of willing Archant journalists are having to make do on crumbs while the chosen few are dining at the top table.
How can think be viewed as in anyway positive? In my experience – and I have a bit – the best newspapers are produced by involving the whole team.
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Poor non-‘investigative’ hacks back in newsrooms no doubt delighted with the description of their contribution… “there is a place within our papers and websites for the important, but often more easily produced, ‘community news’”
Never put “investigative” or “investigations” in front of any hack.
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Well said mtf – still it’s nice of Archant to acknowledge there is still “a place” for reporters.
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The next investigation ought to be investigating the investigations unit to see what they actually contribute and how innovative the stories are to justify a ‘ special unit’ as opposed to honest to goodness local reporters doing this day to day as a matter of course.
I believe this unit was initially set up on a nine month trial basis which takes it to Christmas traditionally the time when the axe is wielded so perhaps the shouting about the ‘splashes’ is aimed solely at the men in suits to justify keeping the unit open?
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So are they primed for a full scale investigation into a bearded man in a red suit, who is known to sneak into children’s bedrooms after dark during late December? The guy is a habitual offender, who has been at it for years.
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Or maybe it’s a smoke screen to see just how few reporters they can do with ?
Plenty of press releases and copy sent in voluntarily so maybe the thinking is use that for the bulk of the content,set up an IU to pick up the ones that need a bit of work and bingo! Staff numbers can be cut, costs can be saved and no one will notice any difference.
Ps
How’s that innovative abd ‘exciting’ scheme to give free cinema tickets for reader supplies copy getting on?
All gone a bit quiet on that front
Maybe it was on mustard TV and no one saw it
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Having read all the comments – and been on both sides of banal FOI requests – my humble advice to Archant is….keep a low profile rather than claiming you gave reinvented journalism!
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As someone who works on one of the titles which has used an ‘investigation unit’ splash, I’ll say that David isn’t a bad guy. The problem comes further up the food chain. Why do we need an ‘investigations unit’ which is centralised? Sadly it is because the old boys club at the top, living off the fat of the land, has made such brutal cuts to newsdesks there are no longer enough reporters to come up with quality local content. That means, like our subs which were given the boot, more and more actual journalism is getting centralised as well. It’s not the unit’s fault, and they, like many frontline archant journos are just doing the best they can with poor resources. If you want to point the finger of blame, it lies squarely with those making the decisions at the top.
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Sadly Archant monkey the editors or those at the top and higher up the food chain never appear on any HTFP stories unless it’s a more positive piece leaving underlings/assistants/deputies ( delete as necc.) to comment or toe the party line on here when many of them agree with the points being made but are afraid to be seen to step out of line. The old ‘Archant yes man’ culture continues to be the way and whilst it is nothing will change.
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Internally its seen as a complete joke, those on it think they are simething special , those not see it as a complete waste of time and money, like Mustard TV, the awful evening news, the EDP thats losing more readers by the week, majority of people inside the house are asking how much longer can these money pits be allowed to continue draining the depleted coffers by being propped up,whilst expectations and targets rise to offset these white elephants.
In any other business under performing parts of the business would be shut down and the people responsible would be removed , but not here where underperformance is accepted as the norm and no ones bold enough to take the necessary action to pull the plug on these failing products and the old thinking behind them.
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