Behind Local News Weekly: The end of a difficult era for Bristol journalists
Hello,
Welcome to the Behind Local News Weekly newsletter, sent out on Monday mornings to kickstart the week in local journalism.
On Saturday, we published Jeremy Clifford’s article on the takeaways from the Society of Editors Conference held in London last week. There was a lot of love for journalism from Rishi Sunak and other leading political figures — but will there be any policy substance to follow it up? You can read Jeremy’s round-up here.
Our main Monday read is a late change to our plans (we have an amazing feature about a local newspaper campaign which we will run next week instead). Today, we’re marking the end of the directly elected mayor role in Bristol. Why? For eight years, journalists in Bristol have had to contend with a feisty approach to local media relations from the city council and mayor Marvin Rees. Now, however, the people of Bristol have voted for the role to be scrapped and later this week, it will be. We look back on what happened, and what should happen next. The issues in Bristol will be familiar to many covering councils around the UK.
Around the UK, the caffeine highs of election counts should finally be wearing off. If you missed our Thursday Extra last week, do take a look, celebrating the importance of local election hustings.
But first, our round-up of what’s going on in local news, plus the latest local journalism jobs posted this week.
Thanks for reading,
Behind Local News
New this week:
Government minister accused of bullying and intimidating journalist after FOI revelations
An editor has called on Rishi Sunak to take action after a minister launched a scathing attack on a regional journalist.
Search launched for UK’s top 30 journalists aged under 30
A new awards scheme has been announced to celebrate the best young journalists currently working in the national and regional press.
New podcast series reveals anguish of Nottingham Forest fans at Hillsborough disaster
A new podcast series by local journalists in the East Midlands has told, for the first time, stories of the Hillsborough disaster through the eyes of Nottingham Forest fans.
Keane Duncan was subject of a weird article in the Guardian which tried to link clickbait to big campaign promises — we took at closer look (Spoiler: Keane didn’t win)
Good news this week:
- Publisher Reach has announced a paid internship scheme in 10 of its newsrooms this summer, aimed specifically at people who don’t feel represented in journalism at the moment. You can read more about that here.
- On a similar note, the NCTJ’s Journalism Diversity Fund has its second deadline for applications fast approaching. Details here.
- Good luck to Narinder Purba, who has launched the The Ilkley Journal newsletter, promising a slow journalism service for people of the West Yorkshire town.
- Congratulations to Marc Reeves, who has announced he is now working National World digital publisher Martin Wright to help newsrooms diversify revenues.
- And congratulations also to journalism student and Blog Preston community intern Sophie Swain, named the University of Central Lancashire volunteer of the year for her work with a homelessness charity.
New jobs this week:
Each week, we’ll share some of the latest jobs in local news which have been sent to us. If you have one to promote, please contact us here
- Reporter — DerbyshireLive
- Journalism interns (around the UK, at Reach Newsrooms)
- Local Democracy Reporter — Hertfordshire
- Audience and Content Editor — Colchester
- Reporter — Haddington
- Reporters — Basildon
- Reporters — Watford and Stevenage
- Trainee Journalist — Blackpool
- Editor — Mid Wales Journal and South Shropshire Journal
- Trainee Journalist — Edinburgh
- Defence Journalist — Portsmouth
- Editor — LondonWorld
- Multimedia Reporter — Tindle Newspapers Wales
Farewell to the Mayor who united a city’s journalists against him
The Local Democracy Reporters Scheme was widely welcomed in Town and City Halls across the country when it was first launched. Not so in Bristol, where the directly-elected mayor had issues with the service, often spilling over into public rebukes and a ban which united the city’s journalists to stand up for journalism. Bristolians voted to remove the role of Mayor, and that happens this week. Today, Behind Local News looks back at what we can learn from events in the local news oasis of Bristol…
There was one story about directly-elected mayors which garnered little attention last week, understandably lost amid the headlines about battles in major cities like Birmingham and Manchester; squeezed out by reports on first-time elections in places like North Yorkshire and the East Midlands.
But the story of the demise of the post of Bristol’s directly-elected mayor, to be formally abolished this week after the city went back to a more traditional form of local governance — committees of councillors — is one worth digging into, as it marks the end of arguably one of the most tumultuous relationships between an elected official and local journalists for some years.
Bristol is what commentators describe as a local news ‘oasis’ — as opposed to the deserts said to exist in parts of the UK as local publishers of all sizes battle to find sustainable funding models — with established publishers competing with newer titles for stories.
It takes quite a remarkable intervention for those rivalries to be set aside — but that’s exactly what happened when Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol from 2016 until this week, decided to single out a local democracy reporter for very rough treatment.
To be fair to former journalist Mayor Rees, it was his head of PR, Saskia Konyenburg, who led the charge in banning Alex Seabrook from future mayoral briefings after he asked questions which the mayor clearly didn’t like.
However, Mayor Rees did endorse what was going on when he told councillors: “Nobody’s been banned. I didn’t invite you to my birthday party, but I didn’t ban you from it. It’s up to me.
“It’s not statutory, I’m not required to do it, we do it to give journalists easy access to me to ask whatever they want, and we can invite whoever we want.”
Alex, employed by the BristolLive and Bristol Post newsroom to provide local council stories as part of the BBC-run Local Democracy Reporter Scheme, was asking about about Mayor Rees’ decision to fly 4,900 miles to Vancouver to deliver a 14-minute TED talk on the subject of climate change.
The result was a ban from future mayoral briefings — the mayor’s office arguing they weren’t public meetings enshrined by local government legislation. Mr Koyenburg’s claim that asking the directly-elected mayor about travelling across the Atlantic to spend 15 minutes delivering a talk on climate change was out of scope of the LDR scheme was dismissed by the BBC, as publishers big and small rallied in behind Alex.
Of course, such spats do occur from time to time. But it wasn’t the first time the Mayor’s office had been selective about local media access to the Mayor. The Bristol Cable reported it too had been denied access to the briefings durng the Covid pandemic.
“The Cable requested to attend these fortnightly press conferences during the early days of pandemic, when it was crucial for the mayor to share updates on the virus and the council’s response,” The Cable wrote after Alex, and the city’s other LDR, were told they were no longer welcome at the briefings.
“The council refused on the grounds that it ‘can’t accommodate everyone’, even after we got the local branch of the NUJ involved.
“It was wrong to shut out our reporters then, but it’s worse to shut out LDR reporters now. It’s their job to cover the mayor as leader of Bristol City Council day in day out — a vital service that holds politicians to account in an increasingly challenging landscape for local journalism.”
Clips of the briefing in which Alex was prevented from asking about the climate change plane trip across the Atlantic made it on to social media, and were watched over 250,000 times in the week.
Martin Booth, the editor of Bristol website Bristol 247 described it as an example of the Streisand effect in full force. The Streisand effect is a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information, often via the Internet. It wasn’t to be the last time Mayor Rees and team had their say on local journalism in Bristol.
The BBC-funded LDR scheme seemed to irritate Mayor Rees. While many local authorities welcomed the new coverage they received — or said they did — Mayor Rees had issues, telling councillors when justifying the ban/non-invitation: “The local democracy reporters are publicly funded. A private corporation doesn’t employ enough people, and so subsidises its staff with publicly-funded journalists, which is why the National Union of Journalists was opposed to it in the first instance.
“We don’t think that’s appropriate. Every news organisation in the city should properly staff itself at its own cost, not out of the public purse. There are other questions about impartiality and competence, but that’s for another occasion.”
Publisher Reach, which owns BristolLive, has pointed out that it costs the company money to run the LDR contracts it has — and that claims it is a subsidy are inaccurate. Copy produced by LDRs is shared amongst publishers who meet BBC rules for journalism. But maybe Mayor Rees’s views explain why he has been such a public critic of individual LDRs.
Another LDR in the city, Adam Postans, also found himself on the wrong side of the Mayor simply while trying to report on the city’s affairs.
He was subject to ridicule led by the mayor in front of the council, shortly before a meeting started. His crime? Calling a new ‘recycling centre’ a ‘city dump’ in a story about the cost of the facility doubling.
During the meeting, Adam tweeted (as such activity on X was called back then): “Mayor Marvin Rees begins with a big smile and a bit of banter aimed at me. ‘I wish we had a journalist here.’ Nicely done :-).”
During the livestreamed meeting, Mayor Rees could be heard saying he was “glad” the recycling centre’s full name had been used in the meeting, adding: “I saw some really poor writing that described this as a tip, a city dump.
“It’s not a dump and I’m sure you’d agree that is an appalling way of describing a critical intervention in the way the city relates to, manages and processes its waste.”
The Bristol Post made sure readers were aware of the Mayor’s conduct towards Adam, splashing the next day’s paper with the headline ‘No Laughing Matter.’
Mike Norton, who was editor of the Post at the time, said: “The local democracy service is about applying extra scrutiny to the cut-and-thrust of council business, and this is a council which objects to that scrutiny.
“We’ve got a video on our website, the highlights if you like of all the moments… it’s just the most extraordinary choreographed, childish, reprehensible behaviour.”
Ironically, after Mayor Rees got upset at the use of the word ‘tip’ to describe a ‘recycling centre,’ BristolLive reported on the fact the council’s own website uses the word tip for that exact purpose.
The city council’s press office later issued a statement, doubling down on the Mayor’s attack, saying: “Just like journalists do, it is important that councils and public bodies challenge reporters when we feel the public have been misinformed or confused.
“This year we worked with dozens of journalists and media outlets from around the world and welcome the service and scrutiny their reporting provides.
“But, when a journalist becomes an activist and enters the field of play, they should not complain when they get tackled.”
For the record, the BBC has strict rules around impartiality which contract holders — such as Reach in Bristol, which runs the LDR scheme there — must adhere to, and has never had any concerns about the output of LDRs in the region.
Yet for an authority which supposedly welcomes scrutiny, it’s not just local media that have often been left feeling that its actions don’t match its words.
The communications department at the city council was also strongly criticised for keeping the removal of the Edward Colston statue from a Bristol dock secret after it had been pushed into the water be protesters during Black Lives Matter protests.
The council had tried to claim that allowing even the Press Association to document a historic city moment would risk alerting troublemakers, a claim which was later removed from social media.
But there is another view to consider here — that it’s a good thing that a senior elected official cares so much about how he is covered in the media. Regularly, local journalists report being bypassed by local authorities which believe they can speak directly to voters via social media, without the need for legitimate scrutiny — although Mayor Rees has also used his criticism of journalists to justify that, too.
The public of Bristol seem unimpressed by the office of city mayor. In May 2022, Bristol voted to shift from a mayoral to committee system on a turnout of just 28.7%, with 56,113 in favour and 38,439 against. The switch, which takes place this week, follows the unanimous passage of the new constitution at a full council meeting on 9 January, with only outgoing mayor, Marvin Rees, abstaining.
The Cable reported that the process began in December 2021 when a council motion for a referendum on Bristol’s mayoral model, tabled by the Liberal Democrat won support from the Greens and Conservatives. Notably, Labour opposed it.
The creation of city mayors — thanks to a 2011 act in parliament — was supposed to herald a new era of accountability. Few cities have taken them up, however. Sheffield did, but a grassroots petition in 2021 led to a referendum where the Steel City opted to return to the old committee system. A difficult relationship between the media and the leadership of council could be seen there too, as titles such as the Sheffield Star and Yorkshire Post reported on the now notorious felling of 20,000 street trees.
In 2023, the city council leader wrote to residents and the media to apologise for the council’s misleading statements about the tree-felling.
Liverpool, too, experimented with a city mayor, but ditched the role in 2023, again in favour of a more conventional system.
The advent of regionwide mayors — first in ‘city regions’ like Merseyside and Greater Manchester — have also complicated things and confused residents. As well as an elected mayor for Bristol (until this week), there is also a Mayor who sits at the top of the West of England Combined Authority, who is also directly-elected. The same can be said in Teesside, where there is a mayor for the Teesside region, and also one for Middlesbrough itself.
Back in Bristol, you can find examples of where the local media went out of its way to respect the role of directly elected Mayor.
In 2019, the Bristol Post revealed a detailed investigation into institutional racism at the city council, using whistleblowers and leaked emails to claim that the council’s HR department had regularly failed staff.
But at the time of publishing the article, then editor Mike Norton said: “The victims of the discrimination at Bristol City Council came to us. A significant number of them. And I feel a weight of responsibility to give voice to their stories and — perhaps more importantly — to expose how they have been failed by the very council processes which should protect them.
“I want to make one thing absolutely clear. This is not a new issue. There has been nothing in our investigation which makes me believe that either Bristol mayor Marvin Rees or deputy mayor Asher Craig were complicit in this treatment of BME staff.
“Quite the opposite, both Mr Rees and Ms Craig have been outspoken in highlighting the council’s lack of diversity and have been forthright in their ambition to protect and promote BME staff in City Hall.”
Indeed, in 2018, when the Bristol Post apologised for its infamous ‘faces of evil’ front page from 21 years previously, in which a row of mugshots of Black men and prompted a generational mistrust of the Post in parts of the City, Mike Norton referenced efforts by Mayor Rees to improve the lives of minority groups in the city.
Mike told readers: “Why apologise now? Because I sense a significant shift, a rising empathy in Bristol towards its BAME communities (who represent one in five Bristolians) and their disconnection from the rest of the city and its opportunities. Our elected mayor Marvin Rees is diverting funds to previously neglected areas and trying to ensure that BAME voices are heard in Bristol’s decision-making. The Colston Hall is facing up to the realisation that its name is offensive.
“There is a rising tide of change coming and I want the Post — which was part of the problem — to be at the forefront of the solution.”
A different front page, a year later, saw sympathy for Mayor Rees, when a close-up photo was used for the Post’s splash, leading to criticism it made the mayor look like a criminal.
The Post cleared space to debate the issue, and Mike Norton told readers: “Of course, there was absolutely no deliberate attempt to undermine Marvin Rees in the way in which his portrayal has been perceived. But perception is key here and, frankly, this organisation reaps what it has sown in that respect.
“In short, we got it wrong again with this page and I apologise for that.”
Criticism of the local press continued after Bristol voted to scrap the role of directly-elected mayor.
In June last year, Bristol 247 reported that Mayor Rees had devoted time at the city’s cabinet meeting to criticism the LDR reporting of Bristol again.
A report about seven bridges needing repair had irked Mayor Rees.
“It’s just a classic example of a city making responsible decisions and someone trying to generate clicks to sell advertising on their platform,” said Rees, who was once a journalist at the BBC.
He added: “It’s an embarrassment to the profession.
“That’s why we have to use our own communications channels cos it’s the only way of getting accuracy out into the public realm and making sure that people understand what it actually is that we are working with an older constrained city with a growing population facing a climate and ecological emergency.
“But, you know, we can but wish we get some quality in the minute-taking.”
Last year, Bristol City Council was ordered by the Information Commissioner’s Office to get better at responding to Freedom of Information requests.
In barbed exchanges with residents at a public cabinet meeting, Mayor Rees blamed financial pressures for the council’s poor performance.
Challenging Sid Ryan, who previously worked at the Bristol Cable, he said: “My invitation to you, in a political debate, is which frontline [service] should we take money from to put into these backroom issues?”
Papers at the same meeting did however say there was a ‘culture of deprioritisation’ of FOIs at parts of the city council.
Reporter Alex Turner, who covered the FOI rebuke for the Bristol Cable, wrote: “It’s easy to see FOI requests as a niche concern, of interest to journalists and campaigners rather than most residents. The mayor makes a fair point when he asks where to prioritise service cuts after years of austerity and with inflation soaring.
“Many of these important requests do not come from people sending them as part of their job. Instead they are from residents concerned about the place they live in.”
It’s impossible to say whether Mayor Rees’s forthright approach to the media, or the media’s openness in reporting his fallings out with the press, had anything to do with the decision of voters to axe the elected mayor role.
In a piece reflecting on Mayor Rees’ eight years in office, LDR Alex Seabrook wrote: “Mr Rees denied the referendum results were about him, as he was always planning to stand down this year. But many critics said his brash manner played a key factor.”
Mayor Rees declined to be interviewed for the LDR article, but in a leaving speech, included the trip to Vancouver which he didn’t appreciate questions about, as one of his successes: “From giving a Ted Talk at the global conference in Vancouver, to launching 3Ci [a climate investment committee], and speaking on behalf of the global Mayors Migration Council at several UN conferences on migration and refugees, we are shaping national and international agendas.”
He did, however, find time on polling day for one last pop at the local press.
For local journalists, the hope will be that a new era of local democracy in Bristol will mean they no longer end up being the headline. If the last eight years in Bristol have taught local journalism anything, it’s surely the need for journalists ready to hold elected officials to account is more important than ever, especially with new roles such as elected mayors, police and crime commissioners and heads of ‘combined authorities’ defining relationships with the media, and access to information, as they go.
As Mayor Rees said when saying he’d not banned LDRs, only not invited them: “In the world of public commentary, words matter and create images and meaning.” Yes, they do.
