An award-winning journalist has hit out at London-based media outlets for being slow to pick up on regional stories, saying Northern dailies can become “national papers” for their communities.
Jen Williams, politics and investigations editor for the Manchester Evening News, has criticised the “short-sighted” view of local and regional news she has encountered in the capital – claiming “London’s bubble is overheating”.
In a piece for The New Statesman, Jen noted London-based outlets has been “slow” to pick up on the recent Northern Rail chaos and moorland fires on the outskirts of Greater Manchester.
However, she praised some national outlets which have actively taken steps to move their journalists out of the capital – saying the BBC had been “notably less focused on London” since much of its news operation was moved to Salford.
Jen, pictured, wrote: “Aside from the movement of national outlets north there are, also, benefits to the digital age for regional news organisations like the Manchester Evening News or the Yorkshire Post.
“In an era when anyone anywhere can read our journalism, there is no real reason why we can’t effectively be the national papers for the communities we know so well.
“And contrary to the narrative – often espoused by national journalists whose own organisations are in fact struggling more – local news is not dead. Its business models have gone through the same convulsions as anywhere else in the industry, yes. It has been a tough decade.
“But the sniffy attitude I often encounter in the capital towards local and regional news is short-sighted. Not only are we more trusted, but we’re often the only people covering fascinating stories of national significance, often innovating faster, handling the stories better and on occasion reaching larger online audiences than some Fleet Street titles. So from where I’m sitting, there are a great many reasons to be cheerful as a northern journalist.”
She added: “London’s bubble is overheating. Young graduates are increasingly choosing to stay in other cities rather than head to an extortionately expensive capital. Brexit has proved the need for national media to get out into the 85 per cent or so of the country that doesn’t live in London. Devolution has given us more of our own political platform. And, aside from all of that, it’s great here.
“All of which is why, when national journalists ask me ‘why haven’t you moved to London yet?’, there’s really only one response. Why haven’t they moved to Manchester?”
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Would that not require Reach et al to stop ripping the absolute guts out their regional newsrooms in pursuit of their badly executed digital strategies and penny-pinching cuts?
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> Why haven’t you moved to London yet?
Because it’s literally the worst place in the world and no one on a journalist’s salary can reasonably afford to live there, that’s why.
Earlier this year I bought a three bedroom semi-detached house for £125,000. You wouldn’t get a garage for that in London.
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So Jen Williams believes regional newspapers like her own Manchester Evening News should become nationals for their own communities. The paper has some fantastic and talented young journalists I am sure, beavering away on the outskirts of Oldham. But come on Jen you must be
kidding. The paper today is a shadow of its former self and content generally is of little or no interest filled as it is with death, disaster and low life. Where are the happy stories to make the readers smile or of any relevance even to the mass of Greater Manchester where news coverage is apparently contained? Old-time staffers still recall the heady days when a big story anywhere in the UK would have a reporter from the MEN filing copy from the
scene. I took a quick look at the website this morning (the printed version no longer covers my area) only to find no mention of the alleged baby killer named and pictured in most papers only 30-odd miles down the road in Chester. Perhaps it will soon catch up with the nationals!
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The difference between the M.E.N today and that of ten years ago is so great it could be a different paper and not in a good way!
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in my experience there are many “local” journalists who are the equal in skills to those on nationals. They just don’t want to be there.
It is rather a pity though that talented young journalists in the regions are working for papers that are nowhere near the quality they were even ten years ago, let alone at their peak. That’s not the fault of the staff, there are just not enough of them to do the job properly. Sadly neither the nationals nor the regionals have much to shout about in terms of quality, it is just a fact of life in the trade now.
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Wilson, labelling London ‘literally the worst place in the world’ is quite tasteless if you think about it. I’m from The Black Country and no apologist for the south but in the three years I’ve lived here I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how cheap it is. Of course there’s no chance of buying a place but, in my experience, all the whines about sky-high rents are because people demand things like Tube stops on their doorstep and won’t walk ten minutes to the overground, or cycle for half an hour to get to work. Have you ever lived in London?
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