Wondering how our days will look in 25 years’ time

WHEN I first entered a newsroom in the Westcountry is was up the stairs at the top of Bampton Street in Tiverton. Just round the corner from the Black Horse (it’s not called that any more) was the home of the Tiverton Gazette, the paper brave and foolhardy enough to give me my first ‘break’ in journalism. It wasn’t a big place and was permanently filled with a combination of pipe (editor), cigar (chief reporter) and cigarette (everybody else) smoke. It was simple too, there were five desks in the main newsroom, while the editor and deputy editor resided in the next room, which sometimes – depending on moods – had the door open. The essential items were basic. There were typewriters, telephones (ones you had to dial), spikes, and lots of newspapers. Every pile of paper or spare flat, or nearly flat, surface was home to an ashtray, which were always full, often overflowing, and never empty. Ashtrays could be put just about anywhere – only one place was declared sacrosanct: the diary! The newsroom diary was a big old paper diary with a full page for each day. Only senior staff wrote in it, and if you got senior enough you got to spend time with your ruler, drawing the lines down the side of the page to create the margin. Reporters’ names went into the margin next to the jobs they had been assigned to cover. They varied from annual activities like the mayor’s parade (bit dull) to the River Exe Struggle – a raft race that was a hoot to cover and very tough to take part in. As you gained more experience you got to cover local politics, and I became all too familiar with seeing my name next to jobs like ‘Crediton Town Council’, ‘Witheridge Parish Council’ or even, joy of joys, Chulmleigh Ploughing Match. Newbies weren’t so lucky and often had the delights of funeral duties, or golden weddings. These were the days when local reporters regularly attended the funerals of well known local figures. Names of attendees were taken, and printed. Woe betide any young reporter who recorded a Mrs and Mrs G. Smythe as a Mr and Mrs G. Smith. One of the very first jobs landed on newcomers was the ‘Years ago’ column. I say column but it was only about three paragraphs and I think designed to check whether new starters could read and write. You had to read newspapers from 25 years ago and write a summary. I was only on that beat for a few weeks but it taught me a lot – about the importance of the “instant history” of news reporting, and of the incredible breadth of activity and interests that existed in our communities. Sports clubs, special interest groups, women’s institutes, race nights, Buffaloes, Loyal Orders of Moose, Rotaries, Inner Wheels almost nothing went unrecorded.

This week I was considering how the ‘years ago’ reporters of tomorrow will look back on today. I was thinking about this because outside of the headlines – and no one wants to talk about them if they can even bear to read them – I reckon vast numbers of people are literally running out of things to talk about. Brexit just about did for reasonable discussion and now the virus has completely kicked it into touch. Three group ‘Zoom’ chats I have had in the last week have ended up with the failsafe ‘have you watched’ Boxsets conversation. At the current rate of progress we will all have ticked off the whole of Netflix before too long, and once that’s done we might have to stop talking completely. Or maybe we could start comparing jigsaws that we have done. Or how long it has been since we last wore shoes. Maybe I need to start watching Coronation Street again.