Dan Slee

I noticed a tweet this week that reminded me yet again the world of newspapers I knew and loved had gone and it made me slightly sad.

A reporter at the paper I worked at excitedly posted her promotion to deputy chief reporter with four years experience.

Four years is what I had walking into the same newspaper for the first time as a bog-standard district office reporter where I was ranked 15th most experienced in a district office of 15.

I don’t know this promoted reporter but a mate has worked with her, vouches for her and like her I wish her nothing but good luck.

But it made me think back about the world of newspapers I walked into in the late 1990s and how she’s missed out on the good days that have gone now.

The rumble of the presses

My district office was a Seventies building built off a busy road with offices at the front and a huge print hall tucked away at the back. In there, three print towers could produce 20,000 copies in the time it took to make and drink a round of newsroom teas.

A crowd of red delivery vans would wait impatiently outside for the production line to roll them bundles of the fresh-printed newspapers. The drivers would grab them, jump into their vans and ferry them across the Black Country. You could see, hear and feel the rumble of the presses if you timed your visit right. The smell of newsprint, oil and polish. It was a feeling for a printer to toss you one of the first editions off the press as they trundled by and read the story in ink not yet dry the words you’d written 20 minutes earlier that your blood pressure still hadn’t recovered from writing.

I was as impressed by the roar of those print towers on my first day as I was on my last.

Everything about the place was saying: ‘Now. Now. Don’t be perfect. Be good enough and be accurate. We don’t have the time to mess around…’

Back then, news did not happen unless you read it in a newspaper with a cup of tea in your hand, on the bus or at home in your armchair.

That’s gone now.

And what I learned

I was lucky to have worked on newspapers at a time when you could still reach back and touch their golden age.

I learned what a story was, how to write it quick, how to get something on a screen and get it away. I learned the skill of writing expenses forms with the line ‘Wild Dogs on the Yew Tree estate on’. I covered more than 30 murders but can’t remember all but one or two. I wrote 3,000 stories in my time and many, many forgettable two par stories to get a page out of the door.

My newsroom was in offices perched at the front of the building. Glamorous it wasn’t. Underneath, was an old municipal tip, overhead were giant pylons and we were downwind from the Robinson Brothers chemical works. The windows were covered with grey film that reduced the view of a bright summer day to the murk of an October day in Grimsby. On the desks the sediment of old newspapers and council reports. A spike sat on each desk where old press releases were filed.

It was a tough place to work. At times it was vile.

And yet.

Always we used ‘reporter’ to describe ourselves. Never journalist. I don’t know why. It was one of the many unwritten rules handed down by long-dead journalists whose unspoken influence was still felt.

Us reporters were led by Ken and Dave. Ken was a slightly plump bearded cardigan-wearing Welshman who had first started in 1968. Dave was a rounder reporter from the Black Country who’d started as a young man in 1976 but whose sporting muscle had long turned to extra ballast.

I’d have run through brick walls for the pair of them. We all would.

Laughter

Looking back, it was the laughter of that newsroom I best remember and miss most. With the deadline gone, it was the jokes, stories and Marion’s incredulity at Dave’s fifth poker face re-telling of the story you’d first heard three years ago now embellished so much you’d forgotten what was actually true in the first place.

Together, Ken and Dave had more than 50 years experience between them leading an experienced newsroom.  They knew in a crisis what to do and what to tell newsdesk. The enemy was never really the rival daily paper. It was always newsdesk.

That’s gone now.

The district office closed down a few years back.

Dave died a few years ago his funeral packed tighter than a council agenda. Happily, Ken still works in a council press office.

Looking back, I miss working with the pair of them and those in the team. I’m freelance now. I work solo. That’s fine. Nothing has beaten the team I once worked in. So, why bother?

Technology has changed.

That’s gone, too.

Digital readers outweigh print by 40 to one on Reach plc regional titles.

New ways to tell stories

Yet, I’m still fascinated at how to tell stories in a way that people will read, watch and hear. Maybe the combined print experience of our team wouldn’t actually benefit the multi-media news gatherers of today. They need to write for print, write for the web, write Facebook, write for Twitter, create and edit video, Facebook Live and blog. The deadlines are real-time rather than 2pm for the Sandwell edition.

It’s still exciting.

Maybe like pit-prop makers journos who began in print belong to a different era. But maybe that’s a lot of experience to lose and I worry when those at the top have little life experience to fall back on when the going gets tough.

I know I sound like an old codger but I can’t escape the feeling these newer reporters are missing out a little. As much as I enjoy today, I don’t regret a single day I spent on old school newspapers.

Yet, I get veteran Sunday Times editor Harold Evans when he wrote: “I love print but I’m intoxicated by the power and possibility of the internet.”

Picture credit: istock. 

The early bird, it is said, gets the worm.

The early worm? It gets eaten.

Just a quick shout through the blog to let you know I’ve got early bird prices on two sets of workshops coming up that I think you’ll like.

I don’t normally post workshop details in the blog but you know what? What the heck.

There’s two sets of learning I’d like to tell you about. There’s an early bird rate until 9.8.19.

Vital Facebook Skills

Facebook remains the absolute behemoth. If you’re a communicator in 2019 and you don’t know how to get the most out of this platform give your head a wobble. We’ll look at the algorithm and how you can create content that ticks the right boxes.

We’ll look at Facebook groups and we’ll look at how to get the most value for money from Facebook ads. 

I’m delivering this with the excellent Sarah Lay.  The early bird rate is £145 + VAT compared to £195 + VAT. The early bird rate lasts until 9.8.19.

Birmingham 21.10.19

Bond Company, Fazeley Street, Birmingham.

To book more here.

Exeter 24.10.19

Sandy Park, Sandy Park Way, Exeter

To book more here.

Essential Video Skills for Comms

I’ve loved delivering this these past five years. It has been a joy and a delight. 

Video has proved to be a changing feature of the landscape and its important as a communicator to know when and where to use it. The days of chucking five grand at a video have long gone but when you can shoot video with your phone, why would you?

We’ll look at how to plan, shoot, edit and post video with cutaways, titles, sub-titles, filters and logos.

I’m delivering this with the excellent Steven Davies. The Manchester early bird rate is £145 + VAT and London £195 + VAT. The early bird rate lasts until 9.8.19.

Manchester 4.10.19

Edge Street, Manchester

To book more here.

London 11.10.19

NCVO, Kings Cross

To book more here.

If those days work for you that’s great.

If you’d like to know about an in-house workshop drop me a note dan@danslee.co.uk.

This week you may have come across the Twitter rant unleashed by the employee of an MP.

Gareth Arnold took the unusual step of handing his notice in by posting thread of tweets from the account of Jared O’Mara MP he had access to.

It was oddly polarising.

It was greeted as a glorious ‘f*** you’ to every bad employer.

Or it was a piece of revenge against a former friend with a history of mental health issues.

Or it was a glorious stunt.

Or it was a piece of poor communications.

The debate was extensive and I’m not going to add to line-by-line debate of the now-deleted Twitter thread. Since the thread was posted Jared O’Mara has publicly declared that he’s taking time out to resolve his mental health issues.

For me, on rflection this is a mental health issue. I’m not adding to the debate. On a human level the bloke needs time to restore himself. I get the need for the people of Sheffield Hallam need a fully-functioning MP.

If ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ is a thing it needs to apply to MPs too.

But on a very wide broad point the story does touch upon three universal truths.

Never let disaffected staff have the keys to your social media

The sign-off was swift and brutal and reminded me and several others of @HMVtweets from six years ago. Back then, a member of staff live tweeted a mass sacking as she still had access to the account.

The idea of letting a member of staff sole access is slightly alarming. Link the Twitter account to the email of a grown-up and look at two step authentication.

There is a point in every Twitter pile-on when its not funny anymore

A car crash online is inherently remarkable. It draws attention. You can’t stop looking. There goes the car smashing into the fruit barrow. Lols! There’s apples everywhere! There goes a phone box! Fantastic! But when it comes into contact with human beings it starts to be less funny.

Once there was a PR who tweeted that she was going to South Africa but that it was alright, she wouldn’t catch AIDS as she was white. It was really stupid thing to post. Anger led to an online mob forming. The mob was waiting for the plane to land.

At some point the punishment outweighs the crime and the joke isn’t funny anymore.

Mob rule is never pretty and I’m not sure there is ever a role for it.

Jon Ronson was right

In his seminal book ‘So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed‘ Ronson traces the lives of people who have been affected by being shamed online. There is a moment of clarity in the book when Max Mosley is interviewed. The former Formula 1 Big Cheese successfully sued the News of the World for claims he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy with five prostitutes. An orgy and five prostitutes? Yup. He fessed up. But he drew the line at ‘Nazi themed’ and won the case.

For anyone else it would have been career limiting. For Mosley, it wasn’t. Why? Because what he got up to in his own time was up to him, he argues. He doesn’t feel shame. And if there is no shame felt there is no internet shaming.

This explains Donald Trump and populists like him.

What would have ruined a career 20 years ago can be brushed off if you don’t feel the shame that really should go with it.

Picture credit: car crash / istock

My children have broken-up from school and I’m turning towards the holidays.

For me, end of term is marked by taking a day off to go and watch the cricket at the Cheltenham cricket festival. It is as close to personal bliss as it is possible to get.

Holiday reading can be tricky.

Sometimes you want escapism and sometimes you want something work related that’s consumable.

In this list I’ve gone for both.

I’ve rated them in usefulness for work and also how accessible, or beach friendly they are. Some are both. Some are one or the other. I’ve read all of them.

Five work-related titles

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

This is my train book. A book I pick-up on the way back from working somewhere.

I first told stories as a journalist 20 years ago and revised the skills over time. Reading this I’m struck by what we all instinctively know and where that comes from.

I’m also struck by how much I don’t know. Good advice beautifully told.

We respond much better to stories rather than piles of numbers. This book will help you tell those stories.

Useful for work rating 9/10 Beach-friendly rating 8/10

The Online Journalism Handbook by Paul Bradshaw

This isn’t cheap. It’s now about £35 paperback but its well worth the investment.

Paul Bradshaw is someone I’ve admired for years. Some journalists fled from the internet while he ran towards it to work out how it can be used.

The kinds of things Paul talks about is story telling for the 21st century and wise communicators can learn a lot from the content creating techniques mapped-out in the book.

Written in accessible bite-size style this can be picked up and put down as you experiment with the ideas yourself.

Useful for work rating 10/10 Beach friendly 7/10

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For A Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

The internet was first fun and then fearsome.

Social channels first broke the mold and then re-shaped the mold. You get to share your holiday pics but in return you give away your location, likes, dislikes, relationships, movements and opinions.

What happens to all that data is something we’re dimly aware of. Zuboff looks at how new platforms built to liberate information can serve to control both the data and you as well.

A challenging read.

Useful for work rating 8/10 Beach friendly rating 4/10.

Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity and How We’re Thriving in a New World by David Weinberger

The pace of change is constant and will never be as slow as it is today.

This is either chilling or challenging and sometimes is both. Weinberger’s book looks at where we are and where we are going.

For communicators, this is a useful look into the future we all need to understand and be able to navigate around.

It reminded me of the need to embrace chaos, to relax and to go with the flow of change.

Useful for work rating 8/10 Beach friendly rating 5/10.

McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists edited by Mike Dodd and Mark Hanna

Thoughout by career as a journalist McNae was the Bible.

The book had everything I needed to know about rights and restrictions and would settle office disputes instantly.

Twenty years after leaving NCTJ college I bought and updated version and marvelled not just at how much had changed but how much I still need to know.

There is so much here a communicator needs to know to best advise a jumpy chief executive who has just been defamed online or the person who wants to complain about an online story.

Useful for work rating 9/10 Beach friendly rating 6/10

And five non-work related titles

Here are books I’ve read on the beach or ones I’m looking forward to read on holiday. Their purpose isn’t to be work related but there may be lessons you can apply in life as well as work.

Hired by James Bloodworth

I grew up in Stafford on the edge of Cannock Chase. On the other side of the Chase was Rugeley. This was a small Staffordshire town built on coal and a power station.

James takes his first zero-hours job in an Amazon warehouse where he works gruelling hours trying to avoid the five marks against him which will see him dismissed.

As one ex-miner says “People say they only work at Amazon. We would never have said that. We were proud to be miners.”

Part-time work is replacing work that made us proud.

Useful for work rating 3/10 Beach friendly rating 9/10

The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

My late Dad was from the Lake District. The son on a headteacher life took away but he was always a Cumbrian.

He took us back for holidays and he gave me and my three brothers a love of the landscape and a respect for the people who live there.

This book bridges the gap between the people who visit and those who live in the Lakes. Across four seasons this is a life story and a story of the hard dedicated lives of upland shepherds.

Useful for work rating 4/10 Beach friendly rating 9/10

Pier Review: A Road Trip in Search of the Great British Seaside by Jon Bounds and Danny Smith

Ah, the peer review. The act of submitting your work for external validation.

Wouldn’t it be a fun idea to carry out a pier review by driving around all the piers in England and Wales armed with little cash and lots of enthusiasm?

The money and enthusiasm wanes and a road trip develops that is best read in a deckchair with a knotted hanky.

Jon Bounds was one of the Brum Bloggers group that did a pile of brilliant things with the internet around a decade ago.

Useful for work rating 3/10 Beach friendly rating 10/10. 

‘Dispatches’ by Michael Herr

My son is studying Vietnam as part of his 20th century history GCSE.

A few years ago, prompted by re-watching ‘Apocalypse Now’ I went through a phase of ploughing through books of the era to try and understand the period better.

Journalist Michael Herr is a masterpiece of writing. His journey to try and understand is noble. But I’m reminded of Yeats’ line ‘things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.’  As his understanding develops, he understands less.

An eminently readable disturbing warning from history.

Usefulness for work rating 5/10 Beach friendly rating 8/10 

Substance: Inside New Order by Peter Hook

A father’s day present this book is the mother of all rock biographies.

Peter Hook knows where all the bodies are buried and since falling out with his now ex-band mates he doesn’t mind telling you exactly where they are buried.

I’ve read ‘Hammer of the Gods’ the account of Led Zeppelin’s rise and trust me, that’s nothing compared to the five musicians who made New Order what they were.

Great if you are a musician. Also useful if you are in a dysfunctional working relationship that can only be resolved through the courts.

Usefulness for work rating 6/10 Beach friendly rating 9/10.

Image credit: istock.

It’s long been a hunch the public sector would collapse if it wasn’t for good will and free overtime.

None more so than in comms teams.

That extra comms plan? Take it home, stay a little longer, work through lunch, just do a bit on Sunday night to make the week easier. It’s all been done.

But how much of it takes place?

The NHS recently hit the headlines when consultants were working to rule rather than take on paid overtime that landed them with eye-watering tax bills.

It made me think about unpaid time public sector communicators put in. In an unscientific survey, I asked the members of the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group and more than 250 responded.

Extra hours are almost universal

The results were not surprising.

Working over or out-of-hours is nearly universal.

Far from being an occasional thing out-of-hours or extra working has become so mainstream its not hard to see teams failing to deliver without it.

• 99 per cent of public sector communicators surveyed work over their allotted hours.
• Almost half work ad hoc extra hours
• A third work up to five hours extra a week
• 13 per cent work more than 10 hours extra every week.

Of course, the extra odd hour here and there isn’t a problem. It can take team through peaks and troughs.

But is it the odd hour?

Or have we reached a point where public sector comms wouldn’t operate without that extra freely given time?

One in ten work more than 10 extra hours

This for me is one of the eye-catching numbers. If the standard working week is just less than 40 hours, 10 extra hours a week is a big chunk of time. It’s 25 per cent extra. It’s two hours extra every working day.  That’s 12 extra full working weeks a year just to stand still.

That doesn’t feel healthy.

The situation isn’t healthy

A cursory glance at the health risks of long hours at work shows a higher risk of strokes with a third greater risk.

The Japanese have a work for death by overwork. Karoshi is a problem that affects salarymen whose long hours and poor diets.

The reality is that some comms people in that number are quite literally working themselves into the ground. Ironically, one area where working out-of-hours or extra time seems bad is the NHS itself.

The on-call rota

One place where it has a serious impact is emergency planning. It’s funny how things very often kick-off outside office hours. Grenfell was in the small hours and the MEN Arena explosion was late at night.

Without proper cover the organisation is ill-placed to respond but anecdotally, proper cover is often rare. ‘It’s a risk they think is worth taking,’ one group member complained.

What’s the way round it? Spanish practices

One communicator, who wanted to remain anonymous, has travel in her remit but can’t claim the hours spent in cars and trains back as flexi-time. Her boss turns a blind eye at her informally claiming some time back. But HR would have had kittens if they knew, she was privately warned.

This leads on to the wider point of decent management. I’ve had decent managers and I’ve had absolute eye-watering shockers. I’m sure we all have. I worked in one team where we would have gone over the top into enemy fire for each other because we knew we all had each others back. Looking back I see how rare that was. One key ingredient was the Spanish practice of extra time off here and there.

Flexi time

One thing the straw poll didn’t ask in any detail was how easy it was to recover lost hours through flexi-time. Anecdotally, this is often a grey area. Over a certain amount and it can get lost. Sometimes its easy to take. Sometimes its not.

So what happens next?

Before you head back to your to-do list spare a moment.

This idea of overwork ironically needs more work. This quick poll I think doesn’t give definitive view but has exposed a serious issue.

Nobody’s agenda other than yours will dominated if you die early or go off with stress.

It’s not clock-watching, its ensuring you are healthy enough to do a good job and see your children grow up.

It may be one for an organisation that looks after the interests of public sector communicators but its also absolutely something for you to think about as an individual and for your manager to reflect on.

 Picture credit: istock

A couple of times in the last few weeks the issue of abuse and trolls has come up and its made me think. 

The role of the public sector communicator online has never been easy but its made me think about pulling together in one place some of the ideas and strategies I’ve used.

Have a social media acceptable behaviour code in place

If you want people to behave online you need to set out what’s okay and what’s not. This is where your acceptable behaviour code comes into place.

This one from New York City Council is a bit wordy but you get the idea.

If you’re starting from scratch see what customer services have as a list of what’s okay and what’s not. People who work in the contact centre are pros at being sworn at. They’ve got things in place.

Post your code on your website where you can point people to it.

Or if its a Facebook group that you’ve set up you can set-out the rules.

It’s okay for people not to agree with you

It’s fine to explain the organisation’s position as a communicator but it’s also okay to listen, too. Listening shouldn’t be one way.

If people don’t like the planning application or the policy decision it’s fine for them to disagree and say so. Sometimes your organisation will do something that people don’t like. It’s your job to listen and reflect that to decision makers.

Sometimes public sector communicators can forget this.

Firstly, its often not personal

And this is important. If someone is shouting it is often because they’re fed-up, angry or have had a poor service. They want to influence the decision-making process they can find impersonal.

In other words, its not you its the organisation.

U OK, hun?

But it’s fine not to be okay.

During a four day stretch in snowy weather I was the council on Twitter for 18-hours a day for 72 hours. People were getting really angry that they couldn’t get their cars out and thought the council should have done more. Towards the end of the stretch I felt the red mist descend. Had I stayed online 10-minutes more I would have been my own case study. A walk around the block and a vent to a colleague did the trick. They took over for a couple of hours and I felt much better.

Be factual and polite

During workshops I often use real-life examples of people’s comments online and ask what people’s reactions would be. What’s striking is that there is very little black and white online but an awful lot of grey.

The approach that’s often best is to reply being polite and factual. It’s something I’ve blogged about before and its approach I hugely admire when delivered well. Never ever start arguing back. You end up on the same level.

Know what the platform acceptable use policy is

If people are racist or abusive on Facebook, Twitter or other channels there is a process to report them. If they go over that line its fine to report them and take action. This is Facebook’s terms of service and you can report something here. All social platforms have them.

Report serious abuse to the police

I’m a huge admirer of David Banks the media law expert. As a former editor of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists he really knows his stuff. He points out that police are becoming increasingly adept at using anti-stalking powers to report persistent trolls who may be targeting people in your organisation. An elected member, for example. Take legal advice by all means but look to report things.

Defamation still exists

Online defamation is far trickier. In the olden days you could send a solicitors letter to a newspaper if the polite chat with the reporter didn’t work. Online, this is far trickier.

Defamation governs comments made online as the McAlpine v Bercow case proved a few years ago.  But ideally, you don’t really want to go to court to right the wrong. It’s expensive and is likely to lead to attention to the very issue you’re not happy with.

Anecdotally, back channel communications to bloggers or Facebook group admins have proved successful but there is no guarantee of this leading to rapid accord and satisfaction . Expect the text of your communication to be cut, pasted and made public. This may not happen, but it is best to think through how those words may come over.

Picture: istock