Abstract
If local newspapers still had reporters investigating councils, disasters such as Grenfell Tower could be prevented
The memory, almost three decades on, is still crystal clear. Bounding into the newsroom for a fresh start on Wednesday morning, after the paper had been put to bed, we'd find a huge pile of that week's correspondence from the local Kensington and Chelsea council. With the naive eagerness of journalists stumbling through their first jobs, our team of four on the borough's local newspaper would scour the assorted agendas and press releases as we sought to fill 12 pages of local news for the next week's edition.
During my two years on the Kensington News (along with the Chelsea sister edition) four inevitably became two and 12 was squeezed into eight. Cutbacks never dulled the enthusiasm though, nor the impassioned sense that we were, in some small way, playing a vital role. Representing an entire community, we were their link to the decision-makers, police, hospitals, schools and religious organisations. We weren't yet Woodward and Bernstein but we were on our way.
I subsequently spent 26 years on national newspapers – reporting, subbing, running departments, being poached and fired – but never did I feel as connected to readers as I did during those first months of my career. I rarely felt the importance of journalism more than during that period.
I'm writing because of Grenfell Tower, a tragedy I believe could have been avoided if the local newspaper I once worked on still employed roving reporters. Not just there – errors of judgement have led to the use of flammable materials to clad tower blocks all over Britain.
First as a junior on the Kensington News and then as editor, I used to make the short trek from the office to that area at least once a week, speaking to community leaders, local police and councillors, assorted busybodies, residents and ne'er do wells. To find stories. Not from PRs, social media feeds or rivals’ columns but actually walking around and knocking on doors. Often, these were stories that hadn't actually happened yet. Rather than reporting events, we were trying to stitch insights together and transpose residents’ concerns into meaningful journalism – not always convincingly.
The burnt-out hulk of blackened concrete that scars the London skyline reminds me of just such a story. Standing in the entrance hall to Grenfell Tower, we knew it was an accident waiting to happen. Electric wiring open to the elements, fire extinguishers that were either broken or stolen, insecure fire doors, lifts that were forever out of order, a lack of lighting that made crime in and around the building more likely. Angry, exasperated and bewildered residents pleaded with me – me! – to help them do something about it because they knew that things were on a knife-edge, that the building could even go up in flames if more funds weren't spent on health and safety.
It's eerily close to the revelations of Grenfell residents that emerged only after the fire a few weeks ago. My story, however, was in 1991, my first week on the paper, when the then leader of the borough's Labour group, Rima Horton – inspirational, quick-witted and not a little scary – walked me round the area: “You can make a real difference here. A story in the local paper, getting their picture in somewhere, won't just lift them, it will give them fuel to fight for what's right.”
Local newspapers once had that power. Most today are both toothless and bland, published against the odds with no money and few staff.
Knowing what we do now about Grenfell residents’ openly aired complaints to their local council, it's obvious to me that my Kensington paper – any local paper – would have wielded that power incessantly to make those voices heard and put pressure on officials to justify their decisions. Not just because of the seriousness of the story but because, driven by egotistical ambition, eager young journalists would have seen the opportunity to get wider media attention and make a name.
The row would have been front-page news for weeks. Who knows, even our rival local newspaper – London's Evening Standard – might have picked up on it and made it even more of a story, nudging BBC London in the process. Local journalists have – or rather had – that power.
But back to those crucial Wednesday mornings. My colleague Ed and I would fight – genuinely fight – over the most turgid documents. Council agendas. As thick as they were dull, these door-stoppers nonetheless provided news fodder for weeks and a chance to sink our teeth into something potentially fruitful.
Education agendas, business strategy, arts and recreation, environment and planning. We loved those planning agendas – hidden among all the boring stuff lurked stories of celebrities or business figures who were about to annoy entire streets of residents with hideous extensions. Not only would they make great Page 3s with desperately needed glam pictures, but the Standard would pay a hundred quid for the story tip and quotes. Not only were we real journalists but we were real journalists who sold stuff. I often wonder whether Duran Duran's flamboyant Nick Rhodes has forgiven me.
The story was in what might happen
And then there would have been the housing agendas, informing anyone foolish enough to consume these boring but vital documents of what plans the council had to look after its housing stock. Who the third party contractors were, their backgrounds, materials they planned to use, the tendering processes. If something looked interesting, we'd spend our evenings in the back of the council meeting rooms and listen, take notes, find out what the objections were and where the story might be. Not what had happened but what might happen.
And there was always a story. The borough's Labour opposition loved our attendance, the ruling Conservatives – many of whose names I recognise from the Grenfell fallout – were less accommodating. The unwelcome glare of publicity meant we could influence in a way that council officers couldn't because we were a conduit to communities and outside interests that were largely kept in the dark.
Somewhere in the bowels of a newspaper library, my byline will hover above all manner of stories about Kensington and Notting Hill. I suspect there will have been one or two about the dangers posed to residents of Grenfell Tower. Amid the howls of rage, these stories – not necessarily about Grenfell – will have included bland statements from the council, the then housing chief Nicholas Pagett-Brown and, I think, his memorable colleague Merrick Cockell.
Cockell became leader of Kensington and Chelsea council and vigorously pursued efficiency policies that ensured local residents paid the country's lowest council tax. It was an extraordinary boast for those of us who could see how much help deprived parts of the borough required and how much tax would need to be raised to improve housing, education and security for all those who weren't among the property-owning middle classes. But Cockell and his colleagues were engaged in a ludicrous competition with Shirley Porter's neighbouring Westminster council for who could offer the cheapest community charge, as it was then called.
Cockell was recently knighted for services to local government and has been a close adviser to the London mayors, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Pagett-Brown, his hapless successor as council leader, was forced to resign for leading an appalling response to the Grenfell disaster.
I used to interview Merrick et al on a daily basis, shadowed them in council meetings, analysed their proposals and put concerns of residents directly to them. I wasn't just a reporter. I was a campaigner by proxy, an accidental member of a fractious, neglected and welcoming community that I knew nothing about until I landed that cub reporter job. The intensity of the relationship between local reporter and subject is unequalled in journalism.
My memories of being a local journalist aren't restricted to the concerns of local politicians and their constituents. I recall just as vividly stories of small community fetes, newly launched fitness sessions at the local church hall, the first generation immigrant whose four As at A-level propelled them into a top university, the cake-baking children who were trying to raise funds the following Saturday to buy new outfits for that year's Notting Hill Carnival. Stories that mattered infinitely more to local readers than their apparent triviality suggests.
We talk about community and religious leaders as being the lifeblood of neighbourhoods but we forget that local newspapers are too. They are an essential ingredient in the fabric of society, a cornerstone of democracy. Or were. Recent research suggest that up to 80 per cent of UK local newspaper journalism jobs have gone since 2006, and almost 200 titles have closed in the past decade. According to research last year from media analysts at Enders, circulations of local titles have halved since 2007 from 50.5million a week to 26.6million. At the same time, print advertising has fallen from £2.7billion to £977million.
The BBC has tried recently to redress this decline by employing more local reporters and sharing resources with local news groups because it knows that all news is local, or at least it starts off that way. Inquests, crimes, court stories, tales of derring-do and extraordinary sacrifice, business and political scandals, campaigns to improve lives. And recently the publisher of the Daily Mirror – which owns 120 regional titles – announced plans to publish more local news online after successfully trialling a series of websites, InYourArea. Hyperlocal may indeed have a future.
Frequently derided for cat-stuck-up-tree stories, local papers have always held people in power to account while understanding on an intimate level the pulse of a community. Meeting people daily, listening to their tales of woe (some admittedly far-fetched) and forever trying to look at not just the “what” of a story but the why, how and who.
And most importantly of all, we local newspaper journalists were driven by a selfish impulse that we never really shared with those we spoke with. Not just for a great story to keep them and the editor happy but a great story that would lift us out of this supposedly humdrum existence and into the gleaming offices of a national newspaper – and especially, in London, of the Evening Standard.
Stories had to be water-tight
Because 20-odd years ago, local newspapers mattered. They had access to people, information and events that made genuinely important stories. Stories that rarely made it into the public consciousness unless an enthusiastic local reporter, seeking the thrill of bylined fame and propelled by the hopeful expectations of a local community desperate for their voices to be heard, took it upon him or herself to get it out there. And because their future journalistic career rested on it, the story would have to be water-tight.
At the time, our outlet was the Standard, edited back then by Paul Dacre. It carried acres of local news and was focused on standing up for Londoners before things happened rather than after the event. Thus, we wielded the sort of power local councillors feared – their names exposed beyond the confines of the crummy little publications and poorly-dressed irritant reporters they were forced to engage with.
I don't know for sure whether a vibrant local newspaper – staffed by idealistic young journalists – would have prevented the catastrophe all of London has been indelibly scarred by. But it could have. The warning signs were there as were the pleas of Grenfell residents’ groups.
We are rightly in awe of our digitised media because of its awesome speed and power – to expose wrongdoings, hold people to account and mobilise people to take action. But these things nearly always occur after the event and their immense impact is often momentary, rather than significant. Plus, the veracity of much that we see, especially on social media channels, is highly debatable and thus counter-effective.
I know the days of powerful local newspapers are over but the stories they typically once covered are more plentiful than ever, especially in localities where decisions – not scrutinised – are being taken every day that affect the lives of residents. Regional newspapers and their websites are still making valiant efforts to report community stories but staffing levels mean that there's little time for patient, revelatory journalism. In fact, many “local” journalists don't even work in the districts they write about – and I doubt they would devour those essential council agendas the way we used to.
We hold national politicians to account in ways that far exceed our predecessors and yet their regional cousins have become the least regulated public figures we have. It's rather sad that the best place to find dodgy local councillor stuff is in Private Eye. Otherwise, they are being left to get away with it.
Perhaps the new editor of the Evening Standard could withhold his bloodlust for national political revenge and re-energise a new, localised movement in which the decisions and plans of local governments are once again in the daily journalistic spotlight. Why not? After all, I sense he shares the same wild-eyed enthusiasm for his first proper job in journalism as I once had. Be bold, George, this is the best of times.
The people who were in some way involved in bad practice will undoubtedly be punished for the deaths of Grenfell Tower residents. I wonder though whether they are convenient scapegoats and if the people behind those people – who made the decisions and for what reason – will ever have to answer for their actions. They certainly avoided having to justify themselves to journalists.
