Daniella Theis is a freelance journalist and columnist for Scottish newspaper, The Herald, often focusing on social issues and current affairs. Previously, she was a community reporter for the Greenock Telegraph, covering the Inverclyde area in Scotland and completing her NCTJ through the Meta-funded scheme. She was named Community Reporter of the Year at this year’s NCTJ Awards for Excellence, and won ‘Student of the Year’ at the Scottish Press Awards in 2021 and 2022 for her work as a student journalist while studying at the University of Strathclyde. Daniella is committed to increasing diversity in the media and has been helping to grow PressPad’s online presence and engagement with entry-level journalists.
Here, we chat with her about her role as a community reporter for the Greenock Telegraph, as part of Meta’s (aka Facebook) UK Community News Project.
How did you get the role?
So I officially finished my undergraduate journalism degree in May 2022, but around January or February I was starting to look at job listings, just to get an idea of what was out there. I’d seen the Meta Community News Project pop up a few times because it’s taking place across the country. But then I saw this job in Greenock, which is about half an hour from Glasgow where I live.
When I first saw the job description, I really liked the idea of being a local journalist, going out and speaking with people, being part of the community, and finding local stories. And so I just went for it – it was the first job I applied for!
Sometimes, the programme asks for journalists already from the local community, so I wondered whether I was the right fit. But at my interview they said that I seemed really passionate about the job and that I could still become part of the community quite easily. And I definitely found that to be true. When I started, I just tried really hard to make myself known to people and got to know them fairly quickly,
What kind of training is involved?
The NCTJ [the industry-standard journalism qualification] course was part of my employment contract. The programme funds this, as well as the NQJ [the higher level qualification] if you want to move on to that. I was given a half-day off on Fridays to attend the class, and then I did shorthand training two evenings a week. If you haven’t done journalism before and you’re to get a journalism qualification, it’s a really good way to do it.
We also had a digital masterclass hosted by Meta. Apart from the funding, they’re not too involved with the scheme – so you’re not obliged to find or post all your stories on Facebook or anything!
What was a typical day like?
At the start of every day, we had to send in a news list, which was essentially a list of stories you were working on or ideas you had. I had a bookmarks bar of all the websites I would check daily for ideas, for example TweetDeck [an app that lets you search and save keywords on Twitter], and the Scottish Parliament website. I could get quite a few localised stories from there because MSPs would be debating issues that in some way related to my reporting patch.
Mondays did often end up being an admin day and I would try to set up my week ahead, by organising in-person interviews and photos that I needed for stories. During the rest of the week, most mornings involved many of social media and phone calls, but then I’d do a mix of going out and meeting people and writing in the afternoons. Technically we were asked to do about five stories a day, but that included a few very short stories and then a couple of longer ones. After I’d built up contacts, a lot of sources came to me with stories so there was less work finding them.
What were your most memorable stories?
I’d previously done work with an Alzheimer’s initiative, and one day, I got a phone call from someone whose wife attended the Alzheimer Scotland Centre in Greenock. He told me that they had received a letter from the Health and Social Care Partnership that they were stopping the daycare service that his wife was attending. And this was not common knowledge at all, but the centre was due to close in a few weeks. They were very worried about what it would mean and knew the service might be transferred to a private provider that wasn’t dedicated to Alzheimer’s.
I did a story with them about it and we printed the letter the families had received. Ultimately, that resulted in the Health and Social Care Partnership, putting a halt to closing down the daycare service and starting conversations with the family. And then a few months later they announced that the partnership with Alzheimer Scotland would be extended by another year.
I’m still in touch with the family and occasionally we check in. That’s what I liked about local journalism, that you build a bit of a bond with people. It’s really satisfying being able to see that your stories have made a difference.
There was another one I wrote about a family of Ukrainian refugees who were being housed by the council in a hotel three hours away from the home that was due to host them in Inverclyde. They were struggling because they couldn’t make connections with the local community and were living by a motorway with no shops nearby. The story was in the Saturday paper and on Monday I got a call from the Ukrainian mother telling me that the council were moving them to Inverclyde.
Why did you choose to leave?
I was struggling to feel the excitement I had for journalism when I was starting out, and that was having an impact on me like my work and my stories. I don’t know why – there’s probably lots of intertwined reasons. My boss didn’t have a hand over my shoulder getting me to reach targets but I knew that the wider company had them, so I would put a lot of pressure on myself to meet them.
But in the end, something just had to go. It was really hard to make that choice to leave my first job, because I went into it with the idea of doing it for a while and seeing it through. It felt a bit like a breakup, to be honest. I still sometimes miss it. I think it’s something that we need to talk about more – it’s okay if things don’t actually work out by the book, and even as someone starting out, if you’re not happy, there will be another way.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to go into local journalism?
Don’t get put off and feel that something doesn’t seem like an important story, because it actually is quite a big deal to the people and the communities you serve. And you actually never know, it might be picked up by a bigger news organisation – the BBC has done that with some of my stories before. Local news can be super exciting. It is such a great way to meet new people, and you actually never know what will come from it.
Definitely take time to build your source network and foster it. In local news, having sources who will call you is so important. I’d be having a coffee with a source and they’d just drop something into conversation that was really interesting. Yes, some stories I got from social media, but I’d say about 50 to 60% were people bringing the story to me.
I built my contacts by finding out what existed locally. I spoke to charities and found local groups on Facebook. I started attending things and introducing myself to people, setting up follow up phone calls or coffees. Then they’d keep me in the loop with any events they were running or any issues they were seeing in their networks. It ends up creating a social chain as you meet more and more people. Definitely dedicate some days to find out what exists and who to connect with.
Finally, bring your passion with you, because that shows!
