“It’s the Best Job on the Paper” – The Courts Beat During the Journalism Crisis

ABSTRACT

Local journalism in the UK has been described as being in “crisis”. Local newspapers have experienced years of declining circulations and staff cuts, leading to questions about how effectively those institutions can continue to perform normative functions of journalism. One of those is to report on the courts. Through analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews with local newspaper reporters who cover the courts beat, agency court reporters who supply the local press, as well as broadcast journalists involved in both local and national court coverage, this paper helps to establish how the daily newswork of court journalists has developed amid a turbulent period in journalism, especially local journalism. The research finds that court reporting has been less affected than other news beats but faces a series of challenges related to financial cuts and other pressures. While the local press has become even more essential to the provision of court reporting, a central part of the news media’s fourth estate role, those challenges affect the ability of court reporters to perform this function. This paper recommends that policymakers consider using a form of public funding to guarantee the future of court reporting at the local level.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism
• local journalism
• magistrates’ courts
• court reporting
• beat reporting
• newspapers
• local newspapers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Professor Stuart Allan and Professor Richard Sambrook of Cardiff University for their help and support during this research project, to Professor Cathy Johnson at the University of Huddersfield for her feedback on an earlier draft of this article, the journalists who gave up their time to take part, and to the reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).