I started my career in the media delivering the Hull Daily Mail, as 13-year-old ‘Soo’ saving for my first holiday abroad. A couple of decades later (after spells in community media) I was a journalist at the same newspaper.
Starting in commercial features, moving across to editorial and taking on developing the embryonic digital news operation. I ran the editorial web operations for the HDM and its sister newspapers in Grimsby and Lincoln, and then became regional editor across Northcliffe’s online newspapers in the north of England and eastern Scotland.
When Northcliffe – like other newspaper groups at the time – realised that the web was costing rather making money and regrouped into a centralised digital operation, I chose to stay at the Mail and with traditional journalism, moving onto the newsdesk. It was a tough job at one of the best regional dailies in the UK, and I loved it.
I moved from assistant news editor at the Hull Daily Mail, to deputy news editor at the Sentinel (in Stoke-on-Trent), then news editor at the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford. I was on track for Assistant Editor at another daily, but had started to lose faith with local journalism. I was bothered by the stories we weren’t covering in 2005.
So I left newspapers to start a user-generated news site, one that would enable people to tell their own story (tagline “Your news, not theirs”). Sweeblenews launched in 2006, but failed to get traction. This was pre-social media ubiquity and people were uncomfortable writing their own story – they wanted the validation of a journalist’s interest.
I started teaching journalism part-time at Staffordshire University and worked on a new start-up idea. This one, Sweeble, was also about helping people tell their own news but the focus was on self-publishing. A web-to-print system aimed at community groups, schools, small businesses etc. I wanted to build WordPress for print.
When Sweeble launched in 2009 it was pretty radical, no-one else was doing web-to-print self-publishing. Turned out that’s because in 2009 the technology hadn’t caught up. Despite getting customers and investors, the bespoke software underpinning Sweeble was failing, it couldn’t keep up with browser changes.
“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it.” – Johnny Cash
After Sweeble came the cocktail party business (lovecocktails.co.uk) and two more creations – the cocktail scrobelizer to work out quantities of ingredients x cocktails x people, and cocktailkitty so groups could chip in to fund their party. Nice ideas but our day jobs were getting busier, so we closed lovecocktails and had a big party with the stock ; )
Finally, I began Lasting Lives. A return to that drive to help people tell their own stories. Journalists volunteering to work with people at their end of their lives to help them tell and publish the story of that life. It faded as we all moved on to other jobs, but was for a time a beautiful, humbling reminder of the power in listening.
And alongside all of that, my journalism teaching (since 2007) and academic research (since 2012), plus Wreck of the Week (since 2011) the blog (now Substack) I write for fun, that over seven million people (and bots) have read.
Always building from my experience in journalism and my drive to try new things, chase ideas, research, and experiment. Always building on my belief that journalism matters and that journalists matter.
If we define journalists by who employs them, rather than by what they produce, we undermine journalism’s importance. Content is not journalism. By defining what a journalist must do, we define journalism and its place in society. By coming up with a definition the public can see value in, and hold us to, we reclaim our relevance in their lives. (Greenwood, 2018: 160)
Sue Greenwood 