It's pretty unfair to say local journalists didn't cover the Staffordshire County Council election. I personally know of four local reporters (representing The Sentinel and BBC) who were at the various counts. They wrote multiple stories (before and after polling day) and also provided running commentary throughout election night and the following day. Nationally, numerous news organisations also reported on the Staffordshire results.
The problem is less to do with news deserts and more to do with the apathy of voters who don't read news stories and arm themselves with the facts. A point well illustrated by your blog.
If this journalism does exist I don't believe it's reaching people. I think it's unfair to blame apathy of voters personally. The majority of people are not armed with the right information about why this stuff is very important. I believe it's on us to make journalism and news accessible and available to all. If people are disengaged and not seeking this stuff out then we should be working hard to get it in front of them in formats that engage them.
That's what I'm trying to do here and I don't appreciate you making digs at it. I'm not personally attacking you or your colleagues. I respect what the journalists out there are doing, I think they're doing it in a model that's fundamentally broken. I have respect for the craft and I'm trying to build a new model to make it better for everyone.
I do appreciate what you're trying to do with The Knot. I'm one of your subscribers and read it every day. You are offering something different and I welcome that. But that doesn't mean you should just attack other local journalists all the time. I'm sorry if I fell into the same trap with my comment about your blog.
I worked as a journalist for 28 years and saw all the industry's issues firsthand. The news model is broken. But there are still lots of hardworking journos around, including the four I referred to in my comment. They spent very long hours reporting on the local elections.
Yes, we do need to find new ways of engaging people so they read local news and arm themselves with facts about politics. Voter apathy is real. There are lots of challenges.
I really don’t feel like I am attacking local journalists all the time. However, I will go back and delete the line that says “no proper journalism” as, taking your feedback on, that’s not true.
I find ex and current Sentinel journalists to be so incredibly passionate and I love that, but I can’t reiterate enough that when I write about this stuff it’s not a personal attack I’m just sharing my own observations on the current state of regional news from my lens. My feeling is we all feel equally strongly about this and if you have had a long career in the industry I can imagine those feelings are even greater. I appreciate you commenting and I hope we can find a way to tackle these issues together as a community.
Yes, I'm a fan of The Mill and its sister publications in Brum, London, Glasgow, Sheffield and Liverpool. Read them all! Would love to see a Staffordshire version. Long reads are different to covering day-to-day news though. There's a place for both approaches.
The Mill seems to be able to fund stories like the Sasha Lord story that led to his resignation. There’s simply not the capacity to do any kind of investigative journalism related to holding those in public life accountable to citizens.
I’d say that it is fair to criticise journalists who work for The Sentinel and Reach media. When journalists work in PR and as journalist they have potential conflicts of interest.
I think you’d get lots more interested and engaged subscribers if you covered local politics in a way that was a fresh alternative to the Sentinel/BBC/commercial radio stuff. Let’s face it - we mean here “not just reactionary or right of centre”material which dominates the news cycle. I can think of a lot of friends who would pay money for that.
The concept of citizen journalism was hot in the early days of social media. Maybe it’s time to revisit this idea with increased attention paid to journalism skills.
Back in 2006/7 Manchester’s Digital Development Agency had a project with The Institute of Social Media (based in Manchester Business School)
I would like to say I belive in Truth in fact I try and seek it out in life in work and in family. I find that the news so often goes after sensational headings to get noticed rather than the truth. I am dyslexic so spelling is not my strong point but my passion for the writen word is high. Ref politics I find alot of them live in a wealthy, dear I say privilege life, and therefore would find it hard to understand the struggles of normal people. The use of language like illegal immigration or immigrants takes people's humanity away- they are mums and dads, granny and grampa, sons and daughters - hate is never the way. I do belive we must protect our boarders but their must be a better way - it just needs people to k ow the truth of why, how and education - I belive reform party has made great gains on the back of the negative news around this subject - I must say I do like Nigels way of head on approach when interviews but I would like to see compassion, understanding and truth around the whole subject of people entering the country illegally- as they say the Truth will set you free 😀
The big structural problem in journalism in Stoke-on-Trent is that there seems zero capacity to fund any kind of investigative journalism. There is no mechanism for scrutiny of governance. The result is a democracy deficit. This paves the way for the type of far right politics that appeals to poor people in places like Clacton, Yarmouth and Stoke-on-Trent
On X (Twitter) Richard Price formerly with The Sentinel but now with Radio Stoke (@journoontheedge) Tweeted every result (he was at the Newcastle count as they had two by-elections to the Borough Council as well) and got a brief interview with the leader of the Reform group. He covers most if not all Stoke/Newcastle elections so I imagine he’ll be doing Thursday’s Birches Head and Northwood Stoke City Council by-election count.
Richard is funded through some local democracy fund. He provides material that the BBC publish. He’s not locally funded, his brief / funding is related to local democracy. I could be wrong — please correct me if I’m wrong !
I’m not 100% sure, I think Richard is a full time BBC employee now but was funded through the Local Democracy Reporting Service (a joint Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport/BBC project) when he was at The Sentinel. He is occasionally deployed on non local democracy stories, for example he had his report on the collapse of the Beechwood Nursing Home arson trial featured on BBC North West Tonight yesterday.
It's pretty unfair to say local journalists didn't cover the Staffordshire County Council election. I personally know of four local reporters (representing The Sentinel and BBC) who were at the various counts. They wrote multiple stories (before and after polling day) and also provided running commentary throughout election night and the following day. Nationally, numerous news organisations also reported on the Staffordshire results.
The problem is less to do with news deserts and more to do with the apathy of voters who don't read news stories and arm themselves with the facts. A point well illustrated by your blog.
Genuinely where can I find this?
If this journalism does exist I don't believe it's reaching people. I think it's unfair to blame apathy of voters personally. The majority of people are not armed with the right information about why this stuff is very important. I believe it's on us to make journalism and news accessible and available to all. If people are disengaged and not seeking this stuff out then we should be working hard to get it in front of them in formats that engage them.
That's what I'm trying to do here and I don't appreciate you making digs at it. I'm not personally attacking you or your colleagues. I respect what the journalists out there are doing, I think they're doing it in a model that's fundamentally broken. I have respect for the craft and I'm trying to build a new model to make it better for everyone.
I do appreciate what you're trying to do with The Knot. I'm one of your subscribers and read it every day. You are offering something different and I welcome that. But that doesn't mean you should just attack other local journalists all the time. I'm sorry if I fell into the same trap with my comment about your blog.
I worked as a journalist for 28 years and saw all the industry's issues firsthand. The news model is broken. But there are still lots of hardworking journos around, including the four I referred to in my comment. They spent very long hours reporting on the local elections.
Yes, we do need to find new ways of engaging people so they read local news and arm themselves with facts about politics. Voter apathy is real. There are lots of challenges.
I really don’t feel like I am attacking local journalists all the time. However, I will go back and delete the line that says “no proper journalism” as, taking your feedback on, that’s not true.
I find ex and current Sentinel journalists to be so incredibly passionate and I love that, but I can’t reiterate enough that when I write about this stuff it’s not a personal attack I’m just sharing my own observations on the current state of regional news from my lens. My feeling is we all feel equally strongly about this and if you have had a long career in the industry I can imagine those feelings are even greater. I appreciate you commenting and I hope we can find a way to tackle these issues together as a community.
Have either of you seen The Mill in Manchester ?
Yes, I'm a fan of The Mill and its sister publications in Brum, London, Glasgow, Sheffield and Liverpool. Read them all! Would love to see a Staffordshire version. Long reads are different to covering day-to-day news though. There's a place for both approaches.
The Mill seems to be able to fund stories like the Sasha Lord story that led to his resignation. There’s simply not the capacity to do any kind of investigative journalism related to holding those in public life accountable to citizens.
I’d say that it is fair to criticise journalists who work for The Sentinel and Reach media. When journalists work in PR and as journalist they have potential conflicts of interest.
I think you’d get lots more interested and engaged subscribers if you covered local politics in a way that was a fresh alternative to the Sentinel/BBC/commercial radio stuff. Let’s face it - we mean here “not just reactionary or right of centre”material which dominates the news cycle. I can think of a lot of friends who would pay money for that.
The concept of citizen journalism was hot in the early days of social media. Maybe it’s time to revisit this idea with increased attention paid to journalism skills.
Back in 2006/7 Manchester’s Digital Development Agency had a project with The Institute of Social Media (based in Manchester Business School)
The project saw social media and local journalism as infrastructure required to deliver local democracy and better public services.
It didn’t take into account the way that Facebook and others could be used to directly target individuals based on massive amounts of data
I would like to say I belive in Truth in fact I try and seek it out in life in work and in family. I find that the news so often goes after sensational headings to get noticed rather than the truth. I am dyslexic so spelling is not my strong point but my passion for the writen word is high. Ref politics I find alot of them live in a wealthy, dear I say privilege life, and therefore would find it hard to understand the struggles of normal people. The use of language like illegal immigration or immigrants takes people's humanity away- they are mums and dads, granny and grampa, sons and daughters - hate is never the way. I do belive we must protect our boarders but their must be a better way - it just needs people to k ow the truth of why, how and education - I belive reform party has made great gains on the back of the negative news around this subject - I must say I do like Nigels way of head on approach when interviews but I would like to see compassion, understanding and truth around the whole subject of people entering the country illegally- as they say the Truth will set you free 😀
Absolutely James - whatever our frustrations, the only way to change the world is to engage in the world. And that has to include politics..
The big structural problem in journalism in Stoke-on-Trent is that there seems zero capacity to fund any kind of investigative journalism. There is no mechanism for scrutiny of governance. The result is a democracy deficit. This paves the way for the type of far right politics that appeals to poor people in places like Clacton, Yarmouth and Stoke-on-Trent
On X (Twitter) Richard Price formerly with The Sentinel but now with Radio Stoke (@journoontheedge) Tweeted every result (he was at the Newcastle count as they had two by-elections to the Borough Council as well) and got a brief interview with the leader of the Reform group. He covers most if not all Stoke/Newcastle elections so I imagine he’ll be doing Thursday’s Birches Head and Northwood Stoke City Council by-election count.
Richard is funded through some local democracy fund. He provides material that the BBC publish. He’s not locally funded, his brief / funding is related to local democracy. I could be wrong — please correct me if I’m wrong !
I’m not 100% sure, I think Richard is a full time BBC employee now but was funded through the Local Democracy Reporting Service (a joint Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport/BBC project) when he was at The Sentinel. He is occasionally deployed on non local democracy stories, for example he had his report on the collapse of the Beechwood Nursing Home arson trial featured on BBC North West Tonight yesterday.