Election 2024: The Tribune manifesto

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

Swing-o-meters are being dusted down, the gaffes have been flying thick and fast, and leaflets bearing multi-coloured bar charts are dropping through letterboxes. Unless you’ve just emerged from a three-week foray into the Peak District’s extensive cave network, you’ll know there’s an election on. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing the most in-depth guide available anywhere to Sheffield’s general election — focusing on the knife-edge constituencies and key players. As ever, this will include a mix of free-to-read and paywalled content: we can only keep going because local people support us. 

But before we launch into that, we wanted to use this Monday briefing (our most widely read slot of the week) to say a bit more about what policies we would like to see, following discussions with other independent media outlets. It is manifesto week after all. We promise we’ll get down from our soapbox afterwards…

As well as that we have, the start of DocFest and a Sheffield man who has ascended to Youtube superstardom. 

Catch up and coming up

For our weekend read, Daniel Dylan Wray asked the question on everyone’s lips: are we on the brink of a Hinesnaissance? That is, of course, a new swell of appreciation for the work of Barry Hines, the writer behind both Threads and A Kestrel for a Knave. According to Wray, “there are few writers who have managed to capture the tongue, spirit and essence of post-war South Yorkshire” quite like him. You can read that piece here.

Last week, we also sent out two great newsletters to our 2,170 paying members. The first was about Sheffield’s only independent councillor Qais Al-Ahdal, a man elected in a landslide on a single-issue pro-Palestine platform, who nonetheless seems to be too shy to speak to the media. And in the second, Dan spoke to Sheffield’s most famous funeral director Michael Fogg and those who say he isn't all he’s cracked up to be. An extract from that second piece is below.

The Tribune has heard claims that Michael Fogg has been insensitive towards bereaved families, including by talking in graphic detail about their condition in death, and that he uses people’s loved ones’ ashes as a bartering chip to make sure he gets paid. We have also been told that he has “pursues vendettas” and bad-mouths other Sheffield funeral homes on social media, and that he was even banned from one Sheffield crematorium because of his unpleasant behaviour. The Tribune contacted Michael Fogg Funeral Directors on Monday. The person who answered the phone said Fogg was “busy with a family” but took my number and said they would pass it on. “It’s up to him if he wants to get back to me,” they added. The following day, he called us and said that if we went ahead and published this story, he would take legal action.

This week we’ll send out two more, including one by Dan about how an “up and coming” part of the city is rapidly changing, and another by Victoria about how Sheffield's two universities are coping with the tight squeeze being put on foreign students. To help fund a new way of doing journalism funded by paying members rather than clickbait, please consider subscribing if you haven’t already. It costs just £1.34 a week or 23p a day if you pay for 12 months up front (£70).

Editor’s note: If you like reading the kind of journalism The Tribune produces, perhaps you’d love producing some yourself. In that case, you’re in luck: our parent company Mill Media Co is planning to double in size by the end of 2024. We’ll be hiring new writers in some of our existing cities (Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester) and expanding to two new cities: Glasgow and London. Find out more about the roles available here.

The big picture: Fighting fit 🥊

Team GB’s boxing team for the Paris 2024 Olympics was announced last week. The team, which consists of (from left to right) Charley Davison, Lewis Richardson, Rosie Eccles, Delicious Orie, Chantelle Reid and Pat Brown, all train at the English Institute of Sport at the Olympic Legacy Park in Attercliffe.

This week’s weather ☂️

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say this week will remain cool and unsettled with further rain or showers in between brighter periods.

Monday 🌦 A cool day with overnight rain clear to the east. Brisk northerly winds and bright spells increasingly punctuated by showers. Highs of just 14°C.

Tuesday 🌦 A mix of cloud, bright spells and further scattered showers, though these are expected to be lighter, along with the northwest breeze. Highs of 15°C.

Wednesday 🌥 Showers still possible, but with a brief ridge in play, more of us are likely to stay dry and largely fine. Light westerly breezes, with highs of 15°C.

Thursday ☁️ Cloud increases as a low buffets in from the west. A risk of rain by late afternoon, perhaps more focused overnight. Light SW winds with 15°C the high.

Friday 🌦 The front exits east with rain clearing to sunshine and a scattering of heavy showers. Breezy southerly winds, but a little warmer with highs of 16°C.

Outlook: Low pressure sticks around with further showers expected for the weekend ☂️ Temperatures still rather cool for mid-June.

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.

The big story: What The Tribune wants from the next government

Top line: The Tribune can reveal today that over the last year (June 2023 to May 2024), Sheffield City Council handed £158,949.30 of taxpayers’ money to National World — the huge company that owns the Sheffield Star, Sheffield Telegraph and Yorkshire Post. This sum, sourced from the council’s published transparency data, might sound highly alarming to those unfamiliar with the industry, but there’s a simple reason why.

Going public: Essentially, the council has a legal requirement to hand over this cash, in exchange for newspapers advertising public notices. These notices might be information about planning applications, licensing applications, and upcoming highways works (the sorts of things you see laminated copies of tied to lampposts). They need to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible, so just publishing on the council’s website wouldn’t be enough.

On the national scale, councils up and down the country spent around £46m advertising public notices in 2022. This spending is almost entirely going to the big three local news groups: Newsquest, Reach, and National World, who between them own almost all of the UK’s local papers. These are the same groups which have been firing their own journalists in droves and allowing their content to become less and less locally relevant over many years.

The snag: The idea of public notices is a good one — it’s democratically important for people to be informed about what’s going on in their area. But the problem is the requirement for how they’re published, which is based on a legal definition dating back to 1881. This specifies that notices must be published in a printed newspaper. In Sheffield, as in many places, that doesn’t leave the council with many options (in fact, some London boroughs have “phantom newspapers” publishing every few weeks, just to collect the public notice money).

One of the many things to have changed since 1881 is the way that people consume news. Whereas a physical newspaper used to be the surest way to reach local people, circulations have tanked in the digital era. At the last count, fewer than 5,000 people were getting The Star — less than 1% of Sheffield’s population. 

We don’t say that to gloat — it’s very challenging for a paper to adapt to today’s circumstances, and long-time readers will know that we often highlight The Star’s coverage when they write good stuff. But the way the law is framed prevents new media, almost always based online for cost reasons, from accessing any of this funding. We’re a small operation run on ultra-tight budgets — just a fraction of that spending could allow us to grow our team by 50% (i.e. taking on one more journalist).

Crucially, it would help the Public Notices actually achieve their goal: of notifying the public. While The Tribune still has a way to go to reach the whole city, our mailing list now has over 25,000 Sheffielders on it — around 5% of Sheffield’s population. A level playing field with the big media groups would give us extra funds to keep growing and reaching more people.

So we’re calling on whoever forms the next government to reform public notice legislation and get rid of the 19th century anachronism. Public notices should be placed wherever they can have the greatest reach and impact — regardless of whether that’s a physical newspaper or e-mail newsletter.

That’s not all: There are two other big things the government could do that would really help independent media. The first is reallocating some government advertising spend, such as public health advertising. Again, a lot of this is farmed out to the big media groups, with none going to the independents.

A SLAPP in the face: The second is to push on with anti-SLAPP legislation, which has been gradually making its way through parliament. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation — legal threats and action to stop media publishing things that would be damaging to powerful individuals. We’ve experienced this before, as have our sister titles in other UK cities. 

• The problem with SLAPPs is, even if the case is totally baseless, just going through the process of defending something in court can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. For a small publisher, that’s ruinous — forcing a choice between doing our job (holding the powerful to account) and still being here to do our job in a year’s time. The decline in local media has already made it much easier for the rich and powerful to get away with things — SLAPPs make this so much worse.

Here ends The Tribune political broadcast: We wanted to do things slightly differently this week because we’re at a critical point in setting the political agenda for the next five years. We know that we’re read by lots of the people having these policy conversations, and we’d be delighted to talk to anyone who might be able to help our cause: just get in touch at editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk 

Finally, we really can’t stress enough how important it is to our sustainability that people support us financially. In this election month, if you can, please subscribe — and you’ll get all our bonus election coverage, plus lovely features.

Our media picks

Secret South Yorkshire 🔥 A lovely piece from BBC Radio Sheffield looks at the cementation furnace on Doncaster Street in the city centre. The Grade II-listed structure dates back to the 1850s and was still in use in the early 1950s. The furnace used to make blister steel which was used to make knives and tools and is the last remaining furnace of its kind in Britain. The site is about to be redeveloped but this will take place around the furnace due to its protected status.

‘I’m blessed. I’m still here’ 👴 Former Sheffield Attercliffe MP Patrick Duffy has just published the second volume of his memoirs at the age of 103, which could make him the world’s oldest ever male published author. Now living in Doncaster, he is certainly the oldest surviving former MP and in relatively good nick, although still suffering the effects of a plane crash during WWII. He is, as the Guardian points out, “one of a vanishingly small number of people with first-hand memories of some of the most dramatic events of the 20th century”.

How the YouTube millionaires made Big Brother Mk 2 🖥️ The Sunday Times published a fascinating piece on Inside, a Big Brother-style show created by a “stratospherically popular YouTube group” called the Sidemen. The group has seven members and one, 28-year-old Vikram Barn a.k.a. Vikkstar123, grew up in Sheffield and has an estimated net worth of £8 million. You may not have heard of the Sidemen, but try asking the young people in your life. The first episode of Inside, launched last Sunday on YouTube, has already surpassed 10 million views, which is more than double the 4.8 million who watched Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer’s prime time spar two nights later.

Home of the week 🏡

This four-bedroom Art Deco detached home in Norton is in need of quite a bit of modernisation, but on the plus side has a beautiful garden and a massive roof terrace. It is on the market for £400,000.

Things to do

Film 📽️ Tuesday sees the return of Sheffield DocFest, the 31st edition of the UK’s leading documentary festival. Over six days (12-17 June), 109 films will be shown, including Tilda Swinton’s directorial debut The Hexagonal Hive. Alongside the films is the free Alternate Realities exhibition at Site Gallery, plus talks with special guests including Simon Reeve and Idris Elba. For a full list of DocFest picks, see the brilliant Our Favourite Places website.

Theatre 🎭 Tuesday is also opening night of Sheila's Island, a comedy-drama about four people stranded on an island in the Lake District during their company’s annual team-building exercise. Staged by community theatre group Tudor Players, the play is at the Library Theatre until Saturday. Tickets are £12-13 and you can grab yours here. 

Heritage 🏭 On Thursday, join Kelham Island Museum to learn all about the historic Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet. You’ll hear about where Benjamin Huntsman’s crucible steel was made, and how the large tilt hammers and grindstones were powered by waterwheels for the grinding of scythes. Steeped in history, the Hamlet is still home to makers today, with tenants including independent blacksmiths still working on site. The free talk begins at 1pm and lasts 45 minutes.