Lessons from working in a local newspaper (and how they can work for you)

local paper mastheads Belfast Telegraph Irish News News Letter

A long time ago in a newspaper far, far away (well, Ballymena) I was kindly taught local newspaper writing by a fellow reporter and by our bosses. The lessons from those days have stayed with me so, for something a little more light-hearted at Christmas, it made me wonder how knowing the basics and banter of a local newsroom could help us to use the pages of a local paper today to promote our cause/ business/ party/ angry mob. Almost …

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What would BBC news look like if the rule book was thrown away?

BBC: We’ve come a long way from the days of finding our news from street vendors shouting ‘Sixth Tele’, leaving the Northern Ireland Teletext page running in the corner of the room or waiting for the next Radio Ulster bulletin to find out why a road was closed or a bang was heard echoing across Belfast.

Is Belfast’s big-name comedy habit finally ripe for change?

FUNNY TIMES: A young, professional comedian at the centre of a new-wave of confident and ambitious local comics has explained why the time is right for a local scene at its peak to take a bite from the market for big-name visiting comedians. With more local TV and radio coverage than anything seen in years, a spike in the standard of local comedy nights, a move away from Troubles humour and wider range of ages, gender and styles than ever, comedian Shane Todd has said local comics have never had a better time to step out of the shadows, fill larger venues with solo shows and tempt comedy fans away from big-name acts.

The flag protests – for example – were about social media, not column inches”: so what, then, will our Linen Hall Library look like in another 227 years?

ULSTERS ATTIC: The Director of Belfast’s Linen Hall Library, Julie Andrews, arrives for work each day to an institution with living, breathing roots to the past like no other. She then sets about the very modern questions of Northern Ireland today: how to bring the past to life while keeping the bills paid, how to record the present in a digital world and where to find the generation after Heaney who will keep the library alive for centuries to come.

Travel writers: please stop making this one mistake when you visit Belfast

Belfast City Airport frontage

You wouldn’t go to Venice and assume that everyone works as a gondolier any more than you would go to Amsterdam and assume that everyone works in a window. I often wonder why, then, travel writers in Belfast not only define the city by its past – a history which had less of a substantial effect on many people than you might think and is of no interest to a much bigger number now – but also make a basic, …

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“When the banks stopped lending we were there for everyone” – in support of the credit unions bringing old-fashioned banking back to our high street

They have cross-party support, a wave of new members, new premises opening in our town centres and financial strength unaffected by the credit crunch. With an aim to provide a listening ear, a caring service, community spirit and practical help, it is not just a return to the best parts of banking from the past but the entire service is provided by your neighbours for your neighbours. Which is why, in comparison, the change in banking as we know it …

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The three things a public allegation can tell us about local news

The impressively direct update from Translink yesterday to a recent allegation that a teenage boy had been turned away from one of their buses brought an apparent end to a story that was very much ‘of a type’: a single accusation made by a member of the public against a large organisation then left to respond to a sudden social media storm. This piece isn’t about the Translink/ Linfield jacket story as I have no idea what happened that day …

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Why I don’t Facebook in November: the dignity of the Poppy on social media

First things first, my granda – an unassuming but charming and jovial power station worker living in Derry – joined the ‘Ox and Bucks’ Light Infantry in the late 1930s. He finished his service with five years in a POW camp and went on to become one of the last Dunkirk survivors in Northern Ireland. My granda rarely spoke about the experience. Over the course of decades we found out in scraps that he had picked up some German, that …

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TV review: 20,000 cars sold per year..but was House of Cars a deal or a gamble for Hursts?

After the very first episode of House of Cars – a BBC NI documentary looking at life for the sales force at Charles Hurst Group Boucher Road – over on Twitter Newton Emerson quickly drew a comparison between one sales manager and the Fast Show’s comedy salesman Swiss Toni. And therein lies the problem: on the show the salespeople talk about sales and the managers demand even more sales (or else) while Twitter and Facebook users find reasons to mock …

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