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Flooded journalists rally round to produce daily’s storm special

Flooded journalists worked throughout the weekend to produced a special edition of a regional daily.

The News & Star, Carlisle, ran the 25-page special yesterday, featuring a front page wrap showing the rescue effort, pictured below, after Storm Desmond struck Cumbria at the weekend.

More than 2,500 homes in Cumbria were left without power, while a number of fatalities related to the floods have been confirmed.

A team of reporters, sub-editors and photographers led by editor David Helliwell worked round the clock to keep pace with the constantly changing situation as flood defences were breached in Appleby, Keswick, Cockermouth and Carlisle and thousands of people were evacuated from their homes across the county.

Carlisle floods

Several journalists continued to work even as their own homes were flooded.

Ironically, staff had been preparing for a Christmas party on the Saturday night which had to be cancelled as it became apparent that it was too dangerous to ask people to travel.

The News & Star’s head office was hit by a power cut on Sunday but work continued as the company’s generators took over. However, the company’s Dalston Road press could not be operated with generator power so the paper was printed off site.

The News & Star’s website also received 750,000 hits on its website over the course of the weekend as readers sought updates on the flooding.

Said David: “For many of our staff this was deja vu as it was the third major flood in Cumbria in the last decade. Their response was everything you would want from a team; professional and their only thought being how they could cover this fast unfolding story.

“For some of them to do that on virtually no sleep, while knowing their own homes were under threat showed great resilience.”

4 comments

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  • December 8, 2015 at 11:48 am
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    Excellent reporting from these journalists to cover a tragic event.

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  • December 8, 2015 at 3:27 pm
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    First class effort by all concerned. Local journalism at its very best.

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  • December 9, 2015 at 6:03 am
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    Great coverage and well done to Offsite printer who produced the titles whilst working under threat of plant closure at send of year.

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  • December 9, 2015 at 3:35 pm
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    The News and Star has always been an impressive beast due to the fact it seems to be run like a proper newspaper. We went up against them at an awards do a few years back (and lost obviously) but there was much amusement and admiration in our newsroom looking through their staff list. The had about 30 staff including a features team, editors, deputy editors etc – we (a Trinity Mirror weekly) had a news editor and two reporters. When a newspaper is well funded and staffed, good journalism happens – who’d have thought it? If only anyone at the big firms cared.

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