I was angry, because I worked hard and I was an award-winning journalist. I stood outside the office, chain-smoking and cycling through an emotional roulette wheel. Local papers had kidnapped me from what most people would consider a normal life, yet I adored them for it. I loved local journalism unconditionally, even when it treated me badly, with low pay, long hours and often unreasonable requests: five ‘“ death knocks” (the journo term for contacting relatives of the deceased) in one day? Walking around Preston in a Dorothy Perkins skirt? I had developed a form of Stockholm syndrome. In my 20s, journalism was my work, my social life and my found family, all wrapped up together.
Over the next 26 years, I worked constantly in local newspapers in the north of England, including the Wigan Evening Post. In May 1989, at 19, I started my first job, as a trainee reporter at the Chorley Guardian. I eschewed university and, at 18, started a nine-month course by the National Council for the Training of Journalists at Lancashire Polytechnic in Preston (now UCLan). This was a glamorous prospect after being educated in a working-class comprehensive school where the teachers did their best, but the major career paths were still the pit, the army and jail. I loved journalism, even when it treated me badly: five death knocks in one day? Walking around Preston in a skirt? The height of my ambition was to work not for the Washington Post, but for my home town paper, the Wigan Evening Post. But being a Barnett in the local press was enough for me. I would never be a Woodward or a Bernstein. The world of newspapers had seduced me when I was 14 and – don’t laugh – saw All The President’s Men on the TV. Until the deputy editor said: “Don’t go to the newsroom, come to HR.” I imagined there was some huge breaking news story that required all hands on deck, something perhaps even of 9/11 proportions. When I finally answered my phone, I was told to get back to the office immediately. I had ignored the sage advice of an editor from aeons earlier – “Never take a job title with brackets in it” – and slid into a role involving admin, meetings, competitions, and lots and lots of dealings with the commercial side of newspapers, rather than editorial.įor that reason, I thought I was fireproof.
I can’t even remember my job title – it was assistant editor (something something). I was a journalist for the city’s Telegraph & Argus, and was judging a children’s book review competition I had organised. At noon on 29 April 2015, I was under the cathedral-like ceiling of the magnificent Waterstones building in Bradford, my phone ringing again and again.
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