Last week, I went to a school in Bolton to talk to a few dozen students interested in careers in media. We spoke about local news, The Mill, and most of all, misinformation. I dressed as teacherly as possible and, enlisting the help of my sister – an actual teacher – I managed to cobble together something that held the attention of a room full of 13-year-olds for an hour.
As part of the presentation, I talked about clickbait. I included a bunch of clickbait headlines: “Martin Lewis’ urgent warning to anyone with a student loan” and “Gary Neville can’t believe what he’s saying about Man United in a new prediction”. All the students found these headlines ridiculous. But the one they found the funniest – and the one that most typified the state of local news – was the following:
“Married couple claim they share their bed with a ghost — and watch telly with it.”
This was the story of a couple who believed they were haunted by the ghost of a dog. The students found it very funny. I also found it funny, if a little embarrassing, because I wrote it.
Well, technically, I rewrote it. You see, in July of 2021, when this magnum opus first went to press, I’d just left university and had started taking freelance shifts at the MEN. I was under no illusions about what working for the MEN would be like, because A) I did work experience there while studying and B) I had read it.
The ghost dog story was the first to come across my desk. It had already been written by another reporter from a different title owned by Reach PLC — the giant company that owns the MEN and various other newspapers. All I had to do was rewrite the first few paragraphs, rendering it just different enough to be republished by the MEN. This included changing the relatively sane “they think it is the ghost of a dog” into “they also believe the spectral presence to be a dog.”
I had just completed a three-year course studying journalism. I remain in steep debt for the privilege. I, of course, did not want to be re-writing pieces about phantom canines. However this was the reality, and remains the reality for many of my fellow graduates.
I was lucky at the time to also be freelancing occasionally for what was then a very small local media company in Manchester — the one you’re currently reading. I later joined The Mill as staff, and within a year I’d written longform investigations into Michelin-star kitchens, deep dives into Manchester’s battle to reduce cancer numbers and profiles of Ukrainian refugees fleeing war.
My work has been nominated for a Paul Foot Award and led to high-profile resignations. It’s also given people in Greater Manchester a better understanding of the bit of the world they live in. All of this is to say that the journalists writing the clickbait we all hate are capable and intelligent. They want to, and can, do more.
But local journalism in the UK keeps getting gutted. This month, Reach PLC announced that they’re axing roughly 220 editorial roles, and closing their titles in Kent, Aberdeen and Galway. On Friday it was revealed that they sold their old printing hall for the Liverpool Echo — it’s being turned into Padel courts.
But The Mill, despite it all, is on the up. Just this year we hired three new journalists from the city. We have over 60,000 free subscribers, and we hit 4,500 paying members earlier this month. Now our goal is to hit 5,000 within two weeks. We’re one week in, and we’ve got 350 subscribers left to go.
So over the next seven days we’re asking you to help us reach our next milestone. As of this morning there are over 4,600 Millers, with whose support we can continue to scrutinise and celebrate the city region we love. One way to help us reach our goal is by sharing this article with your friends and family; or by sending them an article that you think they’d love from The Mill.
But you can also send them a gift subscription using this button below.
We’ve said it already, but if just one in ten Millers managed to sign up a friend or family member, we’d overshoot our goal today.
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