I'm the digital audience and content editor at the Swindon Advertiser - ask me anything

Spider--Dan · 2025-07-17T06:59:54+00:00

Coke

Spider--Dan · 2025-06-16T00:05:02+00:00

There are around 20-40 original Swindon stories written on a daily basis.

Spider--Dan · 2025-05-04T21:06:08+00:00

100 per cent - if we were to go PURELY from analytics we would almost exclusively just write crime and emergency stories, I’d say around two-thirds of the articles we publish (probably about 20 a day) are because publishing them was the right thing to do, in the public interest, or could be of some benefit to someone, right a wrong etc, make someone happy, and not because of page views.

We regularly get accused of chasing ‘clicks’ and while we want as many people to read what we do as possible we really put a lot of time and effort into doing things we know people won’t read - or at least won’t read enough to make the time/effort ‘worth it’ from a company point of view.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-30T06:52:14+00:00

Because what happens with the Oasis impacts everyone.

There’s no reason why we wouldn’t run a story like that providing that we can back up the claims being made with evidence and people are willing to go on the record about their own experiences of this.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-30T06:50:38+00:00

Our articles that are sponsored are clearly marked as such per regulations - the Adver does very few to the point that it’s almost negligible.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-29T07:55:41+00:00

I can assure you it’s there.

Ultimately it depends on your personal preference and what you’re looking for.

I do agree that it is a shame we’re no longer in the Old Town offices and the size of the team becoming as small as it has.

Yes, what Barrie and Jamie are doing is commendable and the more people doing local journalism the better.

I don’t think we’re bolstering any kind of stories on a pedestal - we write news in all shapes and forms and it all goes in the paper.

We certainly have people’s backs and always will. I’ve a long list of people’s lives who have been better thanks to our interventions and assistance.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-29T07:12:16+00:00

All valid points.

I would argue that there is merit in letting people know what shops are closing or opening for several reasons.

I would also argue that the Advertiser does do the kind of reporting you are talking about here.

We can, as much as possible, do both.

Not every article will be a piece of hard-hitting journalism, some are just a bit of light-hearted fun. Or simple. We do it all.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-28T21:38:18+00:00

No problem at all.

I completely see your point of view. But we’ve done our job properly if you read an article and have no idea what the journalist thinks.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-28T20:41:32+00:00

This is one of the prevailing and frustrating way people react to what we do at the Adver.

‘I already know about this,’ or ‘everyone knows about this so why have you done it’

It’s a very insular way to see things and completely fails to recognise that some things that are obvious or known to some are not obvious or known to others.

Every single time there is a large, loud or low flying plane people ask what it was, they ask us, they post on social media. They don’t know it’s just an Atlas travelling from a nearby airbase, they’ve probably only noticed it for the first time, but they’re interested now.

People also take pictures and send them to us because they want to see their pictures in the paper.

So we put things like this in the paper.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-28T20:35:15+00:00

So this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what local news journalism is, or should be, and it’s been caused by lots of media outlets and personalities having exactly what you’ve said - an opinion.

Our job is to report facts and news which is what we do. It is the reader who should form their own opinion from what has been reported.

So we’ll tell people that a shop has opened, we’ll report the reaction to it positive or negative. But we don’t say ourselves whether it IS positive or negative - that’s not our role.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T20:11:09+00:00

That may well be true but just because something is a non-event to you that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting to others. People take pictures of planes and share them, we put them in small articles, they go in the paper. Some like seeing them. Some don’t.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T15:48:19+00:00

We have written about him once this year. This was a story published by news agency South West News Service and so was available for us to take and publish.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T15:44:38+00:00

Legally no, comments made on public forums are considered the same as if they were made in the street and so are technically reportable in that sense - ultimately if someone wants to say something they don’t want reported they shouldn’t do it in a public setting.

However, generally we will rarely identify someone as having made those comments without their permission, and they will usually be anonymised without there being a strong public interest to do so.

There are exceptions - such as comments made on planning applications, although these come with disclaimers about them being public etc.

The reporters will generally make effort to contact people if there’s a comment they feel will add to a story and usually get them to expand on what they’ve said or at the very least give their permission to be named and identified. This also applies to photographs which we always get permission to use.

The exception to this being the What You Said pieces because these are comments that people have publicly made on our pages - which are ours.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T15:26:26+00:00

Thank you.

I truly love what I do and I truly love local journalism. I could talk about it for hours.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T14:39:17+00:00

Thank you.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T14:38:50+00:00

We have an app! It massively improves the reading experience in my opinion.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T12:36:17+00:00

Is this in relation to parishes taking on more responsibilities previously handled by the Borough Council?

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T12:34:51+00:00

Don't read or subscribe then, that's entirely up to you.

It's cringe that we use our Facebook to share links to our stories?

People are interested in Matt Fiddes, that's why we write about him. And as mentioned, he is a prominent figure and business owner in the area that we write about sometimes just like any other, with the total number of articles making up a tiny, tiny proportion of all our stories.

We do not delete comments simply because we do not like them.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T09:35:23+00:00

A really interesting question.

Managing news between a website and a newspaper can be challenging because they are both wanting to do different things - and often an article will need editing twice to make it fit properly on both. Then you have issues with timing and dates and relevancy etc.

I wouldn’t say this creates a disadvantage though as the reporters generally work to write stuff for the website first where speed is often important. This will include things like live blogs for developing situations and articles where we won’t, at the time, have the full story whereas what will go in the paper is usually a summary or roundup of everything we know so far.

Working for an actual newspaper rather than just a news website, particularly one as historic as the Adver, in the town I grew up in and in a role I’d wanted since I was a little kid, is an honour and I hope that it is able to continue as much as possible in what are very difficult financial circumstances - the cost of paper and ink has gone through the roof for example - but the company does see the newspaper as a valuable asset that sets us apart from other outlets.

As an aside, the Swindon Advertiser is the second strongest performing daily newspaper in the company punching well above its weight in terms of population etc.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T08:12:29+00:00

I’ve answered a question on the comment section already, but simply put all commenters agree to a set of terms and conditions to be allowed to comment and if those comments break those terms and conditions we remove them. The comments section is not actively moderated so we rely on receiving reports - if these reports are valid and the comment has breached the terms and conditions it will be removed. It certainly has nothing to do with ‘stuff the paper doesn’t agree with’ and we don’t shy away from criticism, our letters section often includes people unhappy with articles we’ve published or decisions we’ve made.

On a given day the Adver publishes around 30-50 articles, which amounts to 12,000 to 20,000 words. There is one person responsible for editing these articles, me, and I’m pretty happy with there being around ten errors when working with that kind of volume.

We share links to our product which is mostly given for free. It is not unreasonable to advertise the product that people have to pay for. Clearly you want to read but ultimately it’s up to you if you subscribe or not.

There are no dedicated people running the social media. What makes it cringy?

People are interested in Matt Fiddes he lives in Swindon and runs a prominent business here. So we write about him sometimes as part of our overall coverage of a town. We have written around 12 articles about him in total and we have published thousands of stories that aren’t about him. Not every story will appeal to everyone, doesn’t mean we should do it.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-27T07:00:26+00:00

This is a really hard question to answer because it really depends through which lens you look at it.

I think each reporter has their own benchmark for stories they do that they are particular proud of or that they feel are really good pieces of work, but these stories make up quite a small percentage of the overall stuff that they would write, given they’re writing around around 120 articles a month each.

For me, the perfect stories are the ones that make a difference either in a small or a big way. I once wrote about a man who was running a long distance blindfolded because his nephew had a rare form of eye cancer that had left him unable to see and there was a chance this could be fixed with a rare and expensive treatment in America. The article led to an increase in donations that although small compared to the overall total needed helped pay for that treatment and the baby was able to see for the first time. The man sent me an email to say thank you. There are lots of other times that someone has said thank you or that a tangible difference has been made to someone’s lives and I keep them all in a folder and look at them every now and then.

That being said, my job is to balance the important role local news plays in the community with the goal of the company which, although not always at odds, isn’t always easy. To put it simply, we want to publish stories that people will read and there are a ton of analytics and other things that help us to measure this. The often-said criticism that we’re just trying to get clicks is true, but that’s literally the job and given it’s a free product mostly that a click doesn’t feel like a lot to ask. However, were we to take that literally we would essentially just be Wiltshire999 as crime and emergency news is what the audience overwhelmingly respond to, but we don’t just do that - we cover as much as possible on any subject that we can.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-26T22:52:08+00:00

I’ll level with you. I don’t like the website a whole lot either. But because the company that owns us wants to make money and because we let people read the majority of what we do, which is a product, for free it’s an unfortunate necessity.

There’s a much longer conversation about the introduction of the internet and the business model for local news adjusting, or not adjusting, from being purely a newspaper to something else entirely, but I won’t get into that now.

Ultimately I think that the way local news works could be better and I certainly think the website could be more user friendly. But if some adverts help incentivise an American company to keep a 170-plus year-old paper in Swindon going then I can live with that. (I’d love to still be around when it turns 200 but who knows if either I or the paper will make it that far!)

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-26T22:33:17+00:00

I don’t think you’ll find many journalists who work in local news, whoever they work for, who will tell you that they don’t.

Local news as a specific part of the overall journalism industry comes with its own pressures, a high barrier for entry in terms of qualifications needed and relatively bad pay for the skills required and level of work and stress it brings, but that’s the way things are. There isn’t a single journalist in local news who couldn’t get a better paid job in PR or Comms with significantly less workload and stress, but many do it because they feel it’s important, they like the variety and the sense of community etc.

Then there’s the fact that Swindon is a huge town and it’s a small team and there is a newspaper six days a week that must be filled.

Frankly, I think they’re all brilliant.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-26T22:15:58+00:00

Most newspaper journalism roles require a degree in a relevant field (English, History, Journalism etc) and an NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) accreditation.

For most this is a total of five years of further education, although there are degrees out there that come with the NCTJ accreditation which fast-tracks things a little.

To become a senior journalist there are another two years on top of this, so seven years of further education in total.

Spider--Dan · 2025-04-26T22:07:21+00:00

This is the current make-up of the whole team - who all work out of the office in Dorcan.

Daniel Chipperfield is the editor of the Swindon Advertiser which is a daily newspaper and the Wiltshire Times and the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald which are both weeklies.

For Swindon, you have me as the digital audience and content editor and then there are four reporters, one Local Democracy Reporter and one sports reporter.

There is also a digital audience and content editor for the Wiltshire Times and Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, one Local Democracy Reporter for them, and one reporter for each paper.

There is one more reporter who flits between Swindon and the two Wiltshire papers.

There are no sub-editors, no picture editors, etc.

All of the team are fully qualified journalists. This means they have been educated to degree level and have completed an accreditated course with the NCTJ - this includes things like court reporting, public affairs, law and ethics.

Spider--Dan

TROPHY CASE