Sam Acourt is a freelance journalist who started her own local online news journal in the south west of England. 

Transcript

Karla: Let's start with an introduction. Can you share a little bit about your background before you started the journal?

Sam: I did my degree in something completely unrelated. I've got a Degree in Conservation Biology, but my grandfather was a journalist. He worked for the Evening News in London for many years, and then became an author. I've always found writing quite easy, so I just started. I applied for a job at our local newspaper just on a whim. I started there as a trainee reporter, and by the time I left, five years later, I was their Chief Reporter. And then from there, I then had my son and started South Hams Journal.

Karla: Tell us the story of South Hams Journal?

Sam: After I finished my maternity leave, I realised that I wasn't going to be able to afford to go back to work. The cost of childcare was just not going to work. So I decided I would try and do something from home that would work around him, but would still get me involved in the community. 

I enjoyed sort of being involved with what was happening locally. People were still dropping me messages and texts. Have you heard about this? So I was missing being involved. I wanted to be able to do that, and then hopefully be able to support myself at the same time as doing that as well. So that's where it all came from. You know, being able to do it from the kitchen table.

Karla: So how did you go about that with a baby in arms?

Sam: Well, yes, it's tricky. It happens a lot while he's asleep, after he's gone to bed, occasional naps. It's finding 5, 10 minutes here and there to be able to answer emails or do anything like that, and after he's gone to sleep. My poor husband doesn't see me very often, but that's basically what happens trying to work around a toddler. Hit and miss at the best of times.

Karla: What do you think needs to happen to shake up the childcare situation? Because I've now spoken to you and Anna, who said they started their businesses because of a lack of childcare. So what could help?

Sam: That’s a tricky one, because I think people don't think that staying at home looking after children is work to start with, and I think that it's very tricky to do anything else at the same time, as we both know. It got to the point where the amount of money I was earning would have been able to pay the childcare, but I wouldn't have even been able to pay my phone bill on top of that. I would have been working to pay for somebody else to look after him, which seems madness. 

You get free child care after three but what are you supposed to do for those first three years, I have no clue? Whether it's free childcare, whether it's higher wages, or whether it's something along the lines of a universal income, there needs to be something. If you go to work, then you're abandoning your child, and if you don't go to work, you're lazy, so you can't win one way or the other.

Karla: No, you can't. Why did you choose the journal format online? I guess because print is kind of maybe becoming obsolete?

Sam: Print is in trouble, and I think it's a shame, because I think it's really important. I think local newspapers are really important. I think local journalism is really important. They're the people that hold your politicians to account. But we're not talking the people in Parliament. I'm talking about your councillors, your town councillors, your district councillors, your county councillors. 

These are the people that talk about how your council tax is spent, how your rubbish is collected, planning applications, all of that. It's important in people's day to day lives, sometimes even more than national politics is. I think the problem with print is that it's expensive. You've got to print the newspapers. You've got to distribute them. Whereas what I managed to do is set up a domain name and an email address, and you can go from there. There's very little overhead.  It doesn't cost me very much money to keep it running. 

I do think print’s got a bit of trouble. You've got some newspapers that have put everything behind a paywall so you get a certain bit of the article and if you need to read more than that, than you need to pay for it, or subscription services or its adverts. I think people have got used to having their news for free online as well. So once you give somebody something for free, it's very tricky to take it back from them. I think that's what the newspapers and the media companies are realising as well.

Karla: That's really difficult. How have you fared with the Journal?

Sam: Content wise, we've been doing really well. People are getting in touch with us for stories. People who've been turned down or dismissed by other media companies are turning around to ask if I can do something about this. I think we've filling the content quite nicely, and we're getting good interaction on social media. I just hit 100,000 page views the other day. I think we've got like 1,700 followers on social media. But as with the pandemic, nobody's got any money, so that side of it is not doing quite as well. I'm hoping after COVID everything starts getting back up and running again. Then we'll be fine. But it's always tricky to ask people for money at these times. Nobody's got it, so it's just one of those things. But we'll be fine. It'll sort itself out

Karla: I was actually going to ask you about the pandemic in that you've had a toddler during that time. What's that been like? Has it affected the journal or how you work? 

Sam: I haven't been able to go out and talk to people like face to face because of the pandemic, but then that has made it a little bit easier with my son being at home, because I can call people on the phone and just say, by the way, if you hear some weird noises in the background, there's a toddler. I think a lot of people are in that situation. A lot of people are working from home, so I think people are more understanding of that kind of situation. 

Friends of mine have a partner working out of the house. They were still having to do their 40 hours a week from home plus homeschool their children, plus everything else. I don't know how they had enough hours in the day. I don't get it. 

Karla: I think there's a lot of mental health issues going on, especially for women. I think there's been a lot of burden on women for this. Lightening the mood, what's been your favourite story you've worked on lately?  

Sam: It was quite a recent one, actually, that I did this week. I was speaking to a woman, Dr Emily Grossman, who's moved from London to Totnes. She's a science communicator. I think being able to communicate science ideas is so important and especially at this time when there's so much misinformation, fake news and spin out there about vaccines, about health, about the COVID. She was fascinating to talk to, and to be able to put some of her ideas out there and put her out there as someone to follow if you want the truth, listen to this woman. 

I also thought I was going to get some kickback from that, from some sort of strange and slightly creative people on the internet, but I haven't had any. It's all been quite positive. 

Karla: I read that. It was really rounded, actually. That's probably why you haven't had much kickback.

Sam: I think, if you're looking for the people who've got the right background, who really know their stuff, and if those are the people you're listening to, I don't think you can go too far wrong without saying that whatever they say is 100% correct all the time. You know, humans make mistakes, but I think if you're aiming at those kinds of people, I think you probably can't go too far wrong.

Karla: No, I don't think you can. I also read the article you wrote about Lucy from Bridgerton.

Sam: I was watching that and in the opening scene, I thought I recognised somebody in the background. I used to do the reviews for Kingsbridge Amateur Theatrical Society and the Kingsbury Community College drama as well, and I thought I'd spotted somebody that I knew from there in the background. Later on, she appeared and I knew that was her. I spoke to her, and she's basically come straight out of Kingsbury Community College, joined up with loads of agencies. She used to do acting anywhere. So she just got a part as an extra on Bridgerton, and then ended up being a named person. She didn't speak, but she ended up as a named character, and she's doing incredibly well.

Karla: If someone's listening now, and they were thinking of setting up their own news site. What advice would you give them, especially women, what advice would you give them? 

Sam: I think you have to build up trust with people, and I think people have to understand where you're coming from. I think balance. Balance is tricky when it comes to news. I think some people have fallen down trying to be too balanced.I think say - as an example - climate science, I think if you've got somebody who says, you know, as a climate scientist, who tells you this is what's happening, and then you've got crazy Bob down the road who thinks that it's all rubbish and the lizard people are all in the world. That's not balance. That's just finding a crazy person like you'd have to have 99 climate scientists talking and one crazy person to make that balance. But I think as long as you're straight down the line and you are talking from a factual basis, I think you'll probably be okay, but it's all trust, and as soon as people trust that what you're putting out is true and fair, I think you'll probably be all right.

Karla: How did you find setting up for yourself? Did organisations treat you the same as when you were with the paper?

Sam: More than I expected them to, actually. I thought I was going to have to fight for it, but most people, luckily, I'm working with the same people, you know, the same organisations that I was with when I was with the paper. So although I didn't have that back up, they knew my name, they knew who I was, and they knew that I was always fair. 

A lot of organisations I work with, the councils, are emergency services. They know that I'm not going to lie about them, and I'm always going to be as fair as possible. So I think as soon as I said I'm doing this for myself, they were fine.

Karla: Where do you see the journal going? What's on the horizon for you? 

Sam: I want to be able to support myself and my family. I don't want it to go national. I just want to be able to tell local people’s stories, help local people with any issues that they've got. It would be nice to make enough money to not have to stress every day. There's no grand scheme of things. I want to be somebody that people can trust and come to when they need something like that, and if I manage to pay my bills at the same time, that's just a plus.

Karla: Sam, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story about South Hams journal, and I wish you all the very best.

Sam: Thank you for having me on Karla. It's been lovely to talk to you, and I wish you all the luck in the world with the podcast.