Village Tidings prints news that wont make other papers
Village Tidings prints news that wont make other papers
Val Rowell, up against a deadline is frantically tapping away at a keyboard in her dining room-cum-office while water, already a foot deep, laps and rises round her wellingtons.
She interrupts the word flow to splish-splosh to the back door to photograph the flooded river and her submerged bankside cottage to fill a hole in her front page.
Intrepid reporting? Eat your heart out Fleet Street!
Five years ago Val founded Village Tidings, a free, countryside community newspaper serving 70 square miles of isolated farms, scattered hamlets and picturesque villages in middle Wharfedale on the Duke of Devonshires Estate, Bolton Abbey, near Skipton.
Underneath her unassuming manner beats a shrewd journalistic heart. Val had no practical experience of newspapers but she didnt need ink in her veins to recognise that, at the grass roots, there was a gap in media coverage. The two titles serving the area were missing the gossipy minutiae of life which is meat and drink to a news-hungry rural community.
Val failed to become a reporter on leaving school but remembered the words of an interviewing editor. "Journalism," he said "is about people."
Early retirement from health education gave her the opportunity to put her ideas of what a local country newspaper should be covering into practice. Market research and a dummy edition evoked sufficient enthusiasm to launch the paper.
The first issue went to bed via a battered typewriter and an old Amstrad computer so she could vary the print.
Village Tidings which appears four times a year, recently celebrated its 21st issue. Communities clamouring to be included in the distribution have seen it expand to some 20 villages and districts and its 29 voluntary correspondents are scattered throughout the Dale.
* Typical stories
Between its 16 pages you wont find politics, speculation or sensationalism. Typical VT stories are the overflowing litter bins in Appletree-wick, paving stone thefts from a farm at Storiths and the restoration of a plough and tractor at Beamsley. Even when nothing is happening it makes the page. The Deerstones correspondent reports: "Since the time of last writing, very little of note has happened in the hamlet…!"
Births, marriages, deaths, engagements, academic success and farming, show and sports news that wouldnt get a mention in bigger papers are the life blood of VT. More grist to reporters pens is the arrival of the cuckoo and when the free range hens are laying at Blackhill Farm.
Newcomers to the district are welcomed in the paper and presented with a copy.
A scoop was when the Prince of Wales judged a school show and had the daunting task of choosing between the finer points of a stick insect and a goat, not to mention the vegetables and ferrets.
Qualities Val looks for in correspondents include trustworthiness, detailed local knowledge, sensible news sense and a kindly perspective. "A golden rule is that whoever is being written about must see and approve the copy before it is published," she said.
Its a policy that ensures the rhythm of a gentle rural community isnt upset.
Val is the antithesis of the publish-and-be-damned school.
The importance of the guests on the estate can be gauged from a lovely book* about past farm and village life she edited for her friend, Donald Wood, a noted dalesman whose family ran a farm and the smithy.
* More discreet
"We keep quiet about famous guests because they come here for the peace and we dont want to be intrusive. We might mention something when they have gone," said Val, who denies shes only interested in good news.
An exclusive was details of the new river bridge, of great concern locally. She also likes funny and traditional stories.
The little newspaper, with its masthead of two pheasants chatting, has had big name contributors. Fred Trueman has written on cricket.
It is properly registered and officially its circulation is 600, all distributed by the correspondents. Val reckons each avidly read photocopy is passed on six times, giving it a readership of thousands all over the world. Now its on the Internet.
Getting the paper out means three months voluntary work a year for Val. Farmers wife Ann Crabtree collects the correspondents copy which Val then puts on a state-of-the-art computer bought with £1400 raised by a raffle.
The paper has a foreign correspondent in Australia (a local teacher who emigrated) and a cartoonist and has become a focal point for social gatherings. Val, who hand paints the initial letters of the title on every copy of the Christmas issue in scarlet, doesnt want it to grow any bigger in case she loses touch with its pulse, the readers. She wont even take any more advertising, six modest inclusions per issue cover the £200 it costs a year to produce.
"I believe a newspaper should enhance village life by responding to the needs of the community," said Val. "Where VT goes in future is in the hands of the readers."
Tom Montgomery
*Bolton Abbey – The Time of my Life by Donald Wood, is available from the author at Ferryhouse, Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire BD23 5HB, (£5.99 inc p&p).
A newspaper should enhance village life, says Val Rowell, editor and publisher of Village Tidings, a quarterly paper with a strong following.