I started today with a bit of a trip down memory lane.
For just over half an hour, I was part of the Gloucestershire Live morning meeting.
In my previous role as an editorial trainer, I used to say I ‘collected’ conferences: I never missed a chance to sit in on the various get-togethers where newsrooms discuss stories and plan their days.
Today’s wasn’t just fascinating for me: I was watching and listening to the meeting alongside three of our second years.
Every week, a group of our students work in a mini-newsroom on campus as part of a placement with our friends at Gloucestershire Live.
They get a great insight into the latest thinking on analytics, social and search, they get extra feedback on their writing over and above the huge amount of guidance we provide, they get valuable CV material, and they get the chance of regular bylines.
I worry sometimes that the traffic in terms of effort might be a bit one-way.
Getting our students’ work onto one of Reach’s websites can be time-consuming, as can be answering their questions and giving that feedback.
But almost without exception, it seems to be worth it.
The crucial thing is that every week, our students are joined by a Gloucestershire Live journalist.
And every week, that journalist – whoever they are – seems to be glad to be here.
They get some things that can be quite rare for many journalists: company, a place to go – and hopefully a bit of laughter.
Plus – we hope – the occasional warm glow that they’ve helped to develop other people’s skills and confidence.
We’re hoping we can make the scheme a permanent fixture – and not just because it’s good for us.
This week provides more evidence that journalists are social beings who need others around them.
Research by Middlesex University has confirmed that the huge shift to working from home driven by covid has had a damaging impact on journalists’ mental health.
I’m really lucky in that I can occasionally choose whether to work from home or campus.
I can be incredibly efficient at home, cracking through marking or preparation with few interruptions and no tempting refectory a few hundred yards away.
But it’s not where I have the best conversations, or the best interactions with my lovely colleagues and my equally lovely students.
Last summer, I spent a week keeping my hand in at the Swindon Advertiser. It was great to be in a real newsroom, surrounded by real journalists to entertain and be entertained by, and to educate and be educated by.
We didn’t have to cope with any huge breaking news that week.
But I can see now – particularly thanks to a fantastic session with our first years and Edd Moore from Plymouth Live talking about covering the shootings in my home city last summer – how complicated dealing with a big developing story can be when everyone is working from home.
Newsroom leaders have come up with some amazing ideas to keep their staff feeling good about their jobs while working from kitchens, bedrooms and dining rooms.
But it’s so difficult to replicate the spontaneity and serendipity of a lively newsroom.
It’s clear that newsrooms aren’t going to return in the way that we’ve been used to them.
But we need a flavour of them on a regular basis.
Journalism is about people. It’s a team sport – it always has been, and it always will be.
So finding ways of bringing journalists together to breathe the same air again has to be a priority.
Money is never going to be the main motivation for journalists to stay in a job.
But camaraderie, a sense of shared purpose and a feeling that you’re part of a bigger whole?
That just might.
And those things can’t be achieved quite as effectively in kitchens, bedrooms and dining rooms.
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