“I browsed through the intended content for the first edition of East Anglia Bylines. It’s very arty middle class – there’s even a poem – and almost no spikey news pieces. All quite predictable, but we can overcome that.”
So wrote your correspondent in his own diary on the eve of East Anglia Bylines’ publication launch, back in July 2021. But then, the editorial team were – and still are for the most part – arty and middle class. A trainer, a retired local government officer, librarian, teacher, publisher, translator, someone from the prison service, a couple of PR men. Nobody from journalism. We made it up as we went along.
The editor had been persuaded Bylines Network founder Louise Houghton to take on the role temporarily, to get it off the ground. She is still here and is now a director of the entire Bylines Network, with ten publications which cover the country.
A response to the phone hacking scandal
The Byline idea began a few years earlier, in response to the phone hacking scandal. It sought to set up an independent news model outside the control of the major conglomerates. That led to Byline Times, and the network of online regional newspapers followed. (The two are related but separate entities legally, financially and editorially.) No party-political ties, but with the EU and proportional representation as part of our DNA.
So how could any of this work when others were failing? Easy. Don’t pay the staff: expect them to do it for nothing. And we do, and we love it. Citizen journalism, it’s called.
Our first scoop: government cover-up of £10bn of useless PPE
But back to that first edition. It was slightly alarming and also humbling to discover the faith which readers placed in us from the outset. There was the dizzying realisation that readers assumed we actually knew what we were doing.
But then, it was immediately after that first edition that your correspondent received a tip-off about some suspicious piles of containers at Ipswich docks: “You might like to ask around and discover who owns them”.
We did. The government owned them, and when we sniffed around, we found all the other stacks of containers on old airfields and warehouse yards parked around Suffolk, after Felixstowe had run out of space. This was mid-Covid and they were full of the £10bn worth of PPE, scandalously mis-ordered to make fortunes for friends of the government. The story became international: our first scoop.
We talked about the EU when nobody else would
Why did the tip-off come to us? Feedback quickly showed the deep distrust which readers had in much of the mainstream media, which is best illustrated by JJ Jackson’s ongoing (over two years and more) and exclusive scoop of incompetence, cover-up and perhaps worse in the tale of how – notwithstanding Thurrock Council’s losing £500 million behind the sofa – they set up their own quasi-police force, perhaps illegally. The Times gave it a brief sniff, but otherwise you won’t have read that anywhere else.
We turned our attention to the EU, since nobody else was. We found contacts within the EU who were only too pleased to give their views on Brexit, sometimes extremely influential contacts, in both the EU and United Nations. (One was so sensitive that his identity was only known by two of us, and since we didn’t want to mention the name in the minutes he was referred to, in an excitingly Le Carré-like way, only as ‘Pilgrim’).
Making a story out of Brussels sprouts
We found our rhythm: editing had become slick and professional, and our favourite topics began to assert themselves, mostly through our readers’ feedback. The environment and climate change, Europe and Brexit of course, and lots and lots of politics.
When we set out, we couldn’t see how we could reasonably draw together six counties and, in some way, make them one. But as it happens, politics provided a way. There are many political issues which have a broad East Anglian slant, though in truth we still find it a challenge to feature Bedfordshire. My colleague Mr Pecksniff once in exasperation asked around for any news coming out of that county. He had one report back: “It looks as though the sprouts will be rather small this year”.
Swashbuckling while trying to eat sandwiches
There are constantly stories we want to investigate and issues to explore, like the intrusion into our politics by foreign actors, on which we have good contacts in high places. Yet we are limited: the editorial team remains small – just eight. In spite of this – and to our astonishment – we had over a million hits on our website last year.
This should not imply a swashbuckling air to our editorial meetings. On our weekly lunchtime Zoom, the Editor-in-Chief does not resemble the high priestess of some esoteric cult, presiding over a group of Ryder Haggard-like characters or drawn from a bar in one of the more louche districts of Paris. We are usually eating our sandwiches at the time.
Your correspondent only writes, being a technophobe, and can only watch in astonishment and admiration the plate-spinning dexterity as the editors co-ordinate schedules and swot away the not infrequent IT problems.
Come and join our team
But our full team is much larger. Beyond the core, we have several more editors and a couple of hundred writers, plus Mr Pecksniff’s spies. Yet we need many more. If you’re retired, you might fancy a new (and unpaid) career. Young people might be looking for a further career in journalism and could join East Anglia Bylines as a stepping stone; but it also provides a new discipline and looks excellent on your C.V. Or the politically inclined might just like the idea of, in some small way, finding ways of making the lives of their political tormentors slightly more of a burden to them.
No experience is necessary, as they say, other than basic literacy. We have experienced and kindly editors to guide you. Come and join us. There are many bad guys out there still to be exposed, and you could just be the one to do it.
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