Citizen Journalism in the 1984/5 British Miners' Strike

Cardiff.
The final speaker in this session at Future of Journalism 2009 is Tony Harcup, who shifts our focus back to the 1984/5 UK miners' strike and suggests that the reporting of this strike by alternative media may well provide a much better example of citizen journalism than what is described that way today.

The strike was about the destruction of an industry and of the communities which depended on it, and was reported in detail by alternative newspapers like the monthly Sheffield City Issues. Coverage here was less frontline reporting from the scenes of conflict than reports on solidarity efforts in the city (fundraising events, police watchdog efforts, etc.), and the newspaper sided quite clearly with the miners; it provided an alternative public sphere and acted as a community noticeboard for the strikers and their supporters.

Another example was Leeds' Other Paper, staffed by volunteers and a handful of (lowly) paid staff. This paper was weekly and had been established for longer than the one in Sheffield, and did engage in more direct frontline reporting, even though the area it served was not at the centre of the strike - again, there was open sympathy with the strikers. Only 10% of the articles published here contained background analysis or comment; the rest was first-hand reporting. Similarly, the vast majority of sources identified in the articles were rank and file miners, members of their support groups, family members, and other local residents and ordinary people - not politicians and trade union leaders (union leader Arthur Scargill was used as a source only three times in 265 articles, for example).

The paper's main driver, Gordon Wilson, chose this direction specifically as the mainstream media focus on Scargill was seen to substantially distort public perception of the strike; instead, paper contributors went out to speak directly to the community (many of whom may never have heard of the paper before, and wouldn't have bought it anyway) - this required real journalistic skills, and a decription as citizen journalism is very apt here, as this form of reporting is clearly both an act of journalism and an act of active citizenship.

There are a few other, similar papers around in the UK still (or again); this is quite different to the majority of what is commonly described as citizen journalism, but is mainly concerned with opinion and discussion rather than the coverage of events in the world. While such debate is also clearly important, it really has little to do with citizen journalism in the literal meaning of the term; citizen journalism in the examples of alternative newspapers that Tony has cited is acting to give voice to the voiceless, rather than providing a space for the usual suspects who would voice their political opinions in one form or another anyway. This also continues to require the practicing of established journalistic skills.

Anyone hoping to produce forms of citizen journalism today can learn a lot from the journalistic techniques evident in the alternative news outlets covering the miners' strike. The strike is particularly productive for this, in fact, as it went on for long enough (one year) to allow the fully-fledged emergence of alternative news approaches and the development of contacts between practitioners and their subjects. Whether professionals or amateurs are involved in this, a great deal can be achieved by unpaid, underresourced, and untrained participants in such projects who are committed to old-fashioned reporting. There is no need for pessimism here.

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