10,000 stories on a city
Reflections on notching up five-figures in reporting on Preston, Lancashire with Blog Preston
Good afternoon,
A change for the What I've Been Reading Digest this week - although I will pop a few useful links down the end - as I reflect more on What I've Been Writing.
In the back end of 2008 when having considerably more hair, and time, I set up a new news website for the city of Preston. It was known as The Preston Blog and was on Wordpress. I didn't really know full well what I was doing and was surprised when it started to get some traction - from just me doing what I thought was fairly straightforward reporting on local news and information in the city.
Fast forward more than 15 years and what is now known as Blog Preston is still on Wordpress, still going, and on track to have one of its strongest years for audience, engagement and revenue (which goes back into more community reporting on the city) than at any time in those past 15 years.
A little bit of Wordpress caught my eye as I saw on our dashboard it keeps a tally of how many stories have your byline, in the past few weeks I've gone through the 10,000 mark (it’s now at 10,110!). Thankfully, there's tens of thousands of more stories on the site with other bylines from talented journalists past and present who have helped make the site what it is today - a place people in the city turn to for understanding what's happening.
I thought I'd share a few thoughts about writing (what one follower on LinkedIn said is more words than Shakespeare if you assume an average length of 300 words per story!) about Preston and covering a patch for such a long period of time (with a gap of four years of more in the middle of that due to working elsewhere and family commitments). I am sure I'm an office junior compared to plenty of other established and independent journalists who have covered their towns and cities for longer than I have, but here we go...
Keep a list. It's dull. But I have a 'working on list' and I'll jot down things I see, tid-bits I spot, things people have sent me and even if it's just a heading then it's what I come back to when I need to actually then write a story and develop something. Sometimes the list is long, sometimes it's short. It's on our content schedule, in a tab, so it's visible as a reminder to get on with those stories. I’ll WhatsApp stuff to myself to help with ensuring if I’m out and about I don’t forget something I’ve seen.Some stories stay on that list for months, and then they come off, some are on it for minutes(!).
Don't overlook the small stuff. Adding even just a paragraph of extra context sometimes can make the difference. We've been using a tool called SmartOcto for the past few months and whenever I add in some additional context, comment or whatever extra detail it might be I can see those stories perform stronger for their engagement than if I don't.
Not always a story. Sometimes I'll write comment/opinion pieces, sometimes it might be a map, other times it's a big sit-down interview, other times it's some analysis. Being able to deploy a range of writing styles, alongside the smash-bang breaking news is crucial.
Networked. All the best stories come from other people, contacts, organisations, you name it. Or from getting out there and being a part of the community. On reflection, I've found this easier as we've had children and as a family you go to a whole different set of events, venues and organisations in the city compared to previously. It’s also easy to keep asking the same people, I need to push myself to contact different people and a range of people and organisations - and keep doing so. It’s easy to fall into a comfort zone when getting in touch with contacts.
Generalist/specialist. I never thought my specialist subject would be Preston. You often hear people say 'find your niche', I guess I've found mine! There's still plenty I don't know though, so never forget to ask what may feel like obvious questions even if it's somewhere or something you've covered for years. Whatever you’re focusing on, then writing about it consistently is really important to build authority (in your audience’s eyes, and search/social platforms eyes).
Being patient. This doesn't come naturally, but sometimes it's worth waiting that extra day for a contact to ring you back rather than rushing something out which turns out to be half-baked. You learn this over the years and it's a cruel lesson a lot of the time.
Be useful. Sometimes information is as important as news or 'gotcha' type journalism. Journalists have a super power, they can get information from people and organisations which others perhaps can't. Or they just know where to look for it. Making sure there's accurate and timely information in public domain and circulation is crucial, for many reasons.
There’s plenty more words I could write, but I think there’s a skill in knowing when that’s enough. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to speak to me for a story or tip me off about something, it makes a huge difference.
And a couple of useful links I promised…
How The Telegraph turns community into content - Esther Kezia Thorpe, Journalism.co.uk - there’s some really smart work going on, much behind a paywall, that’s really driving subscriber-value from a lot of the community work taking place in comments, web chats and much more.
AI Unlocked - in local journalism - WAN-IFRA - for anyone who is a member of the WAN-IFRA community then Valérie Arnould and Tom Trewinnard kindly invited me to give some thoughts on how AI is being used in the local journalism space in the UK. They’ll be making the webinar available in due course.
Next week’s edition then I’ll be sharing some of the fantastic work on creating new media brands the journalism students at the University of Central Lancashire have been up to in recent weeks in the Creating A Brand module we’ve been teaching them.
All the best and keep going.
Ed