After a sabbatical in Australia my partner and I moved to Ayrshire in Scotland, in 1988, so that he could take up the role of Troon Lifeboat Second Coxswain. In terms of ultra-local reporting this is the period in my career which has most informed my interpretation of internet era independent hyperlocal publishing. I became a senior reporter/sub editor for the Ayr Advertiser Series with responsibility for the Troon Times (TT). We lived in Troon and were very much embedded in the community, with Bill on the lifeboat crew
83
and myself a member of the Troon Ladies Lifeboat Guild committee. The six years I spent on the TT, between September 1988 and October 1994, I attribute to igniting my passion for community reporting which motivated my research. This close connection with the community resulted in the subcultural perspective and the choice of reciprocal journalism as part of the theoretical framework, that I have chosen for this research (Lewis et al, 2014; Lewis 2015; Harte et al, 2016a).
The Advertiser Series was part of a family owned independent group Guthrie
Newspapers Ltd, with the printing hub at Ardrossan 25 miles away. The office was in the centre of Ayr and the staff comprised an editor, deputy editor, chief reporter, four
reporters, sports reporter and photographer. On the advertising side there was an advertising manager, assistant ad manager, three ad reps and a receptionist. In 1988 reporters were still using typewriters with carbon paper; computerisation took place at the beginning of the 90s. With them came a ‘new-tech’ agreement negotiated by the NUJ which meant that myself and other sub-editors took sole responsibility for copy which was ‘keyed-in’ once; the company therefore saved money on both typesetters and proof readers (Küng, 2008: 134-140). Computerisation had arrived and, although it was a pre-internet era, the company benefitted from the ‘incremental innovation’ (Ibid: 134) of being able to transmit copy through the telephone lines; a ‘communications gateway’
computer, connected a dedicated phoneline transmitted stories once an hour to the printers. It was a costly solution but meant that copy could be transmitted direct to the printers which reduced the courier runs: although photographs and page plans still had to be physically transported to the printers.
As previously stated, it is the community reporting aspect of this era which I remember with affection. I lived in the circulation area and due to my involvement with the lifeboat had a ‘grounded connection’ with as well as ‘prolonged and continual presence in that place’ (Hess and Waller, 2016: 197). My personal involvement with the lifeboat also probably conferred a degree of ‘social capital’ and the ‘symbolic value’ of trust that accompanies an institution which is at the heart of a community (Molm et al, 2007: 200).
I personally covered town council and parish council meetings, usually in the evening and would visit the town Police station once a week, sitting down over tea and biscuits (and sometimes cake) with the sergeant to go through the crime reports. I also phoned him twice on ‘deadline day’ to check whether there was any late news; these are both examples of offline direct reciprocal exchange. He was a keen fund raiser for a local children’s hospice and as part of our ongoing, sustained, reciprocal exchange, I would
84
arrange coverage of cheque presentations and other events at the voluntary funded hospice. These examples introduce an aspect of indirect reciprocity, since there was arguably a benefit to the community; the hospice was voluntarily funded so this received a boost and the town’s people were alerted to petty crime in the town and thus could be vigilant - stealing car stereos was the petty crime ‘of the day’ and there were various hotspots in the town where vehicles were particularly vulnerable. Similarly, I would speak with the two district councillors each week and they would alert me if anything Troon-related was to be discussed at district council meetings or give me quotes for stories I was writing – not always favourable to the council. Reciprocal exchange with public officials is less straightforward than with members of the public because there is an element of bilateral or negotiated exchange. As Harte et al indicate there is a: ‘sense that information gathered would be used’ (2016: 8/167) and although no actual contract existed we were clearly ‘using each other’; they needed the publicity in order to be seen to be doing their jobs, as elected public representatives, and I needed to produce copy which was relevant to my audience. It also represents a grey area between offline direct and indirect reciprocity, since there was arguably a degree of community benefit from the information they provided. There was also ‘symbolic value’ in the exchanges
because they would tell me things ‘off the record’ (on the understanding that I would not publish) indicating that there was a degree of trust in the relationship, which went beyond the negotiated exchange.
Far more straightforward were the ‘tip-offs’ from members of the public, ‘contacts’, who would tell me either face-to-face or telephone me about newsworthy stories. These are examples of, unilateral/informal direct exchange because my ‘contacts’ were not ‘getting anything back’ from the act, in what is an acknowledged opportunity to demonstrate trust and social bonding in reciprocal exchange (Lewis et al. 2014: 233; Harte et al, 2016:
167). Harte et al found ‘extensive evidence of direct unilateral exchange in newsgathering practices of hyperlocals’ (ibid). I would contend that I achieved a sustained reciprocity situation with the community, in Troon, because my reciprocal exchanges with both public officials and members of the public were maintained over the five-year period that I was covering the town. I was embedded in the sense of being part of the ‘conscience collective’ of mechanical solidarity (Durkheim, 1893/1984;
Durkheim/Giddens, 1972; Aron ,1967: 21-33; Giddens, 1978: 25; Hughes et al 2003;
Jenks, 2005: 28). Although it would be difficult to compartmentalise many of the offline exchanges into the Lewis et al’s categories (2014) because real life is ‘messy’, it is
85
sometimes difficult to know where direct reciprocity ends and indirect reciprocity starts. I would suggest that it is easier to categorise online reciprocity since exchanges are dictated by the platform, likes, hashtags etc., while there are many more layers to the offline relationship, particularly when the journalist is embedded.
In his doctoral thesis, one of Dave Harte’s findings was that ‘the embedded hyperlocal practitioner’s lack of objectivity can result in greater civic value’ (2017: 196), he suggests that ‘even the professional journalist feels the weight of the civic discourse and can end up in a less critical place’ (ibid). In response to this, I would state that as a journalist who was embedded, there was more of an emphasis on providing balanced coverage of the town, including what has been termed ‘positive’ (Dickens’ 2015) and even ‘banal’
(Turner, 2015) stories rather than focussing on those which would have formed the traditional criteria of news values (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017). I didn’t shy away from difficult or unpleasant stories on ‘my patch’, but they were balanced by ‘ultra-local’
coverage that could be of no value to anyone outside the town. As a journalist I would never say that I was less than objective (although as indicated I would keep confidences on ethical grounds) it being one of what Deuze and Witschge call the: ‘five ideal-typical values [that] give legitimacy and credibility to what journalists do: public service,
objectivity, autonomy, immediacy and ethics’ (2017: 121). But from a methodological stance, this is a subjective view so is therefore unreliable. The fragility of the reciprocal journalism relationship was evident after I ceased to be the Troon Times reporter, for the last year of my employment, when I was more desk-bound as a sub-editor. A young ambitious reporter, who did not live in the town, and was motivated by what he could sell to the nationals took over as ‘patch reporter’. The sustained reciprocal exchange that I had built up was not automatically transferred. Far from it, I discovered that contacts would still telephone me rather than trust him, while the police sergeant and both parish and district councillors were openly critical of his sensationalised coverage of the town.
Others who worked directly on the TT alongside me were a freelance photographer who lived in the town, he supplied pictures for the paper and was another good source of
‘tip-offs’. The TT ad rep was equally embedded, she was a committee member for the Ladies Rotary Club, a notable local singer who performed at Burns Suppers and the wife of a bank manager in the town. The TT also benefitted from weekly village
correspondent’s copy. Village correspondents were very much at the bottom of the
‘content’ food chain and I have seen little reference to them in academic literature. They were contributors to local newspapers and produced the most parochial of local ‘news’
86
content on a lineage basis, being paid per published word. The content is both granular and often banal, a feature often cited as a feature of internet-era hyperlocal coverage (Baines, 2010; Turner, 2015; Harte et al, 2019: 3). Both the KM Group and the
Advertiser Series employed village correspondents, but it would require further research, which is outside the remit of this thesis, to establish the extent of their historic use in the local news sector
I have included the underlying activity of trade unions, because as previously
suggested, there was an on-going dialogue throughout my career between unions and employers about the speed of introduction of new technology. It is also relevant because Rachel Howells and Paul Breeden talked about the trade union involvement in interview.
Throughout my career I was aware that the print publishers I worked for benefited from what Küng (2008: 124 to 143) calls incremental innovations. As explained in Chapter 1, these create advantages for legacy operators (incumbents); Fax machines, which I first encountered at Horse Weekly, replaced couriers who shuttled copy between district offices and the printers. Later the ‘comms gateway’ at the Ayr office achieved the same function more efficiently, transmitting numerous stories in a single key stroke. Photo-composition and web-offset presses allowed newspaper owners to reduce the number of printers, early DTP software meant journalists could direct key copy replacing more jobs.
The eventual transition to full direct-input, so that journalists controlled the manipulation of copy from first-key until camera-ready stage occurred immediately after I took
redundancy in 1994.
Until the new millennium legacy operators largely benefitted from technological change allowing them to cut costs, consolidate their position and mask the decline in a mature industry. Küng said: ‘Mature markets have been in decline for decades and strategies such as changes to format, redesigns and promotional offers have served to slow rather than reverse this’ (2008: 35). This might help explain why local newspaper organisations were unprepared for the discontinuous and disruptive change created by the arrival of the internet, which will be discussed in the next section.