I have a confession: my initial sole objective in picking up The Argus from Brighton last month had been to find out how it coped with a bitter pay strike by staff.
But try as I might to concentrate on papers from the 7 and 8 of January – the two days affected by the action – I just couldn’t resist reviewing one from earlier in the week, Wednesday 5 January.
‘WHY DID NO ONE HELP MY DYING GIRL?’ screamed the splash headline, one that I felt would have really grabbed readers’ attention like it did mine.
‘Mother’s heartbreak after suicidal note on Facebook was ignored by friends’ read the two-deck overline, expertly telling the full story in eleven words, but only in a way that made you want to read more.
The page one copy was a neat, five-par write-off with the full 30-par story laid out with a picture of suicide victim Simone Back on page five.
This had a chilling talkie headline using a direct quote from her last Facebook message: ‘Took all my pills be dead soon bye bye everyone’.
The fully detailed story even carried the grim chain of messages by Facebook ‘friends’ who’d ignored the suicide note, stating their disbelief that she had really done anything and some even mocking her in the hours after her comment was posted.
Argus reporter Naomi Loomes appeared to have done her job well, with full quotes from the grieving mother and friends, along with advice from mental health charities and support phone numbers for The Samaritans and Mind.
Because I thought it was so well written, headlined and laid out, I was itching to know how The Argus landed this one, and whether they were first to it (being a tragedy, there was no ‘exclusive’ label on the story).
So I called The Argus to check the background and spoke to Naomi herself.
She explained: “It was one of those stories that came from having good contacts, old fashioned door-stepping and researching on Facebook, and without each of those three elements I wouldn’t have got it.
“I’d heard rumours from locals about the suicide, but with no details, and so went to the area and did the door-knocking, finding out her name.
“Checking this on the web I found she had a Facebook page, and that this was open to viewing by the general public.
“It was then that I found the Facebook comments and realised what a big story this was.”
You’re right, Naomi… as was shown by it being copied and sold on in its entirety by the local news agency, appearing in the following day’s Daily Mail and The Sun, among others.
The Argus of 5 January was no one-hit wonder, with several other tales catching my eye, including:
My only criticism was the amount of news, with just 64 stories on 14 news pages, plus a page of letters, another of listings and a puzzles page.
When pagination is in short supply – the entire book was 40 pages – I feel designers really need to make a determined effort to up the story-count.
Sport did a little better, with 69 reads on 14 pages, including an eight-page ‘Youth in Action’ section, containing 26 upbeat picture stories of local youngsters’ sporting achievements.
Two other positives: what joy to see the front page ad restricted to a 1.5 cms strap, giving the splash sub a chance to create impact; and I like seeing BMDs before the fold in the midst of news, page 14 in this case, providing an extra interest for readers.
So what about the result of the strike action that took me to Brighton in the first place?
My contact in Hove, an ex-Argus employee, told me that “most reporters, features staff and snappers and some sports staff were on strike” on the Thursday and Friday, so how did the papers on the affected days fare?
There were one or two tell-tale signs that something was amiss: a diminutive cut-out picture in the page one boost on Friday 7 January looked silly, and someone cocked up the captions on pages three and 15 on Saturday 8 January.
But to be fair, that was all, and the content in both days’ papers felt strong enough, experienced editor Michael Beard and his executives obviously putting in the hours to produce as normal a paper as possible.
Since then, there has been a two per cent pay offer which, at the time of writing, was still being considered by the NUJ chapels alongside other outstanding issues they have with publishers Newsquest.
The Argus, which proudly boasts former Mirror editor and Guardian media pundit Roy Greenslade as one of its community bloggers has an average daily sale of 26,364 according to the Latest ABCs.
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Would this be the same newspaper which steals quotes from other local newspapers from inquests they didn’t bother sending anyone along to?
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Steve, Thank you for this review of The Argus, which recognises the ability of reporters like Naomi Loomes and the outstanding layout skills and news sense of chief sub Julia Mans, who is the chief architect of the headlines and layouts you admire. Although I was on strike and therefore cannot comment on what went on during the days the papers were put together while there was industrial action, all the staff worked hard before walking out to ensure that there would be a decent paper on the days we were on strike. This may seem perverse but I am sure you understand the conflicted emotions journalists experience when taking action that affects the publication they usually strive to make as good as they possibly can. However, as FoC of The Argus chapel I have to make a single point in the strongest possible terms: this was not fundamentally a dispute about pay. There is absolutely no way the chapel would have voted to walk out over pay three times, and the pay dispute was not the trigger for the industrial action we took. Pay became an issue because, as the chapel considered its response to the company’s proposal to move the paper’s entire news subbing operation to Southampton with the loss of seven jobs in Brighton, it emerged that Newsquest’s chief executive had given himself a 20% pay rise the previous year. Therefore this issue got added to the ballot and persisted as a “live” issue after the company went ahead and cut the subs’ jobs. Pay was the sole issue for our colleagues in Southampton and other centres but it is a misrepresentation of the facts to simply say that we were on strike about pay in Brighton. If you were to look at our campaign blog at brightonargus.blogspot.com, you would see that we campaigned under the slogan “Keep The Argus local” – – evidenced by the many local people we photographed holding our “Keep The Argus local” flyer we printed thousands of, the “Keep The Argus local” petition we had hundred of signatures to, the “Keep The Argus local” posters we got into shop windows, the video footage of us chanting “Keep The Argus local” to people passing the picket line, the interview footage of us talking about the importance of keeping local subs to BBC local radio and journalism.co.uk, the interviews we conducted with local people asking them why they thought the paper should be edited in Sussex, and the support we got from local MPs, councillors and other figures for our campaign to keep local journalists working on the local paper in the local area.
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Thanks, Tim, for providing a fuller rationale; apols for not reflecting the wider issues in the blog.
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Thanks Steve, too, for giving Newsquest the idea that it could get rid of all the strikers, and most readers wouldn’t notice. Much appreciated.
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Well, Argonaut, it’s a review as seen. I guess Tim above has already explained that one of the reasons for the perception of continued quality was staff working harder before action to stock up for strike days.
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Well, Argonaut, it’s a review as seen. I guess Tim above has already explained that one of the reasons for the perception of continued quality was staff working harder before action to stock up for strike days.
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steve, are you a mate of Michael Beard? Last time I saw so much puff was on a steam railway. Knocking on doors, contacts? Hardly ground-breaking stuff is it? As for Facebook? Too often easy quotes for lazy hacks. But congrats to the reporter for a good story and the Argus for surviving despite all attempts by Newsquest to finish it off.
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i think Steve sees part of his role as a champion of the local press, and it is certainly an industry that could do with celebrating its successes, since it’s taken such a lot of knocks recently. I have to say though, that he’s clearly got the Argus on a rare good day. It pains me to say it but usually it’s a shadow of its former, widely-admired self – riddled with inaccuracies, packed with stories that miss the point (as readers to its online edition regualry point out in comments on the bottom of stories) and agonisingly cliched. You get the feeling that you’re never more than a page or so away from another story about “bungling” officials, or “red-faced council chiefs”. In a town like Brighton, more than most parts of the country, such an approach makes you a laughing stock – that’s if anyone even notices you are still around.
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Small point, but why no photo of the deceased on the front?
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The pic was a poor quality collect and I reckon could have spoilt the impact of the splash. It was used inside, but only small.
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As someone who read the Argus every day in its “glory days”, and reads it occasionally now, I think Davy Gravy is wrong. Of course it’s not perfect but there is still plenty to admire about the paper – it still does the big breaking news stories very well, has some great snappers, and it covers the football (particularly Seagulls and Crawley)pretty comprehensively. If you read the online gripes they are always from the same people and it’s always the same old, same old from people who have no idea what it takes to put a newspaper on the streets.
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This reminds me of the days of the NUJ strike during the winter of 1978-79, when many unions of all professions went on strike during a LABOUR administration, and achieved nothing – apart from showing management that it was possible to still produce papers without its members. The damage, 32 years of history have shown, proved to be irreparable. Yes, the IOJ did not go on strike and its members remained at work, but surely choice of whatever union to join is a bastion of democracy. Strikes nowadays achieve nothing apart from very short-term concessions in a few cases. I have maintained for some years now that the NUJ would better spend its time on warning would-be entrants to the profession of the disgracefully low wages when compared to the burden of responsibility, and provide advice on how existing journalists can retrain for other jobs. There have long been far too many journalists seeking jobs – it is a case of supply and demand – and only when the supply is curtailed will we see sensible wage offers.
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