A family’s ancestry can take many different turns through time. My “turning” came when, as a determined 16-year-old, I arrived at the crossroads and changed direction without hesitation. I had two feet on the ladder in journalism, and our family history was mapped out. I was on the road to a career I had dreamt about for a long time…I wanted, above all else, to be a newspaper reporter.

By Terry Walker

AS 0230012024

14 minute read

I had landed a summer holidays office junior job at the pioneering Oldham Press Agency based at the heart of the Lancashire cotton spinning industry. The firm employed freelance writers and photographers to serve news and features to British national newspapers, radio and television. I made the tea, kept reporters supplied with sandwiches or cigs and filed newspaper cuttings.

The week before I was due to return to school, I persuaded my bosses to take a further chance on a young working-class bloke. Keeping me on for a trial period as a trainee news reporter. My main advantage was that my grocery store “Saturday job” had paid for private lessons in typing and Pitman’s shorthand – essential skills for the press role. Probably, I had spent as much time on “required skills” as preparing for the next year in the sixth form and more exams, then further education options.

My English master was an ex-journalist who encouraged my ambition and admitted, “Walker, I can’t mark your essays by normal standards”. I took that as a compliment. That he might have meant it another way didn’t occur to me then.

My “persuasive words” at the news agency meant I could be a trainee journalist – my dream wannabe – sooner and with more certainty than taking the further education route. And, as they say in Lancashire, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. So I had pushed the idea to my parents (“Opportunity seldom knocks twice”) and, reluctantly, (“Look before you leap!”) they went along with it. One foot on the ladder in journalism (“You reap what you sow”) and I was ready to climb higher.

It also helped that, in 1958, I was in the right place at the right time as wartime shortages of newsprint were ending gradually. This enabled newspapers to expand with increased demand for news stories and features, with more people required to produce them. And, of course, more advertising because war materials production had switched to consumer goods – like twin tub washing machines, televisions and Ascot water heaters. Advertising gave additional pages for newspapers and magazines and more stories to “Keep the ads apart”.

Sniff out more good stories

Soon, I did my best with bottom-of-the-page stories in the Manchester Evening Chronicle and Manchester Evening News. As I watched and learned from my colleagues at the Oldham Press Agency, my confidence grew, as did my news sense – that elusive “nose for news” essential for success. Freelance journalists were paid only for what appeared in print and the number of column inches occupied. Do you need to eat? Sniff out more good stories.

As a trainee, I was paid a weekly wage, as were the three other reporters and two photographers at Oldham Press Agency. For this opportunity to learn on the job, I would have paid the agency… Getting to this same place on the career ladder might have taken five or more years of further education. What I needed now was more skills and experience. All looking good. I was in the right place at the right time.

The company was owned by Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley, two brilliant journalists whose skills and experience attracted every major newspaper and agency to their visionary news service. Within a few years, their talents were evident on successive hit television programmes, and millions of viewers followed their storylines on soaps like Emmerdale Farm and soccer saga United. Roy subsequently worked on This is Your Life scripts with presenter Eamon Andrews for 26 years.

They were inspirational and encouraged my early efforts with short “fillers” for the Manchester evening papers, which were keen to add circulation in the Oldham area. Snippets from local councils, police, fire, and ambulance contacts could be tagged onto more significant stories and help fill out the typeset column.

Trained to dictate stories

My first task during the working day was to browse every edition of every newspaper the news agency served and clip out the stories and pictures we sent as a check against payments duly received. I could study the nuanced differences in the treatment of stories in various national papers. That was an invaluable daily lesson in editing and headline writing. How do they do that – it was dazzling.

I was trained to dictate our stories (called “copy”) to lightning-fast typists (“copy-takers”) down the phone, adding in detailed punctuation and pacing my voice to synchronise with the typewriting. On a good day, stories flow at speeds of up to 120 words a minute.

Pictures were all black and white, and prints were sent to railway stations for collection by regular messengers. I slipped our captioned photo offerings into hard-back envelopes and labelled them for collection by the publication. Then I rushed to Oldham station to ensure they were deposited in the guard’s van of the next departing train for Manchester. It worked smoothly; often, photos went from the darkroom to the picture desk in about an hour.

Life at Oldham Press Agency changed as the principals, Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley, spent more time at the Daily Mirror’s Manchester office. By now, it was the biggest daily seller in the land, with its sensational story presentation, massive headlines, and appeal to the working man – epitomised by its cartoon character, Andy Capp.

Heady cocktail of local interest pieces

The Mirror and its sister paper, the Sunday Pictorial, had the most journalists. They were driven relentlessly to find the most sensational stories of each day. A heady cocktail of “local human interest” pieces full of colourful quotes and Lefty social ills reportage was served with every issue… Exactly the coverage the average working-class family in every region of the country could relate to.

Northern readers, who worked in the coal mines, the steelworks, shipyards, textile mills and other industries, mainly voted Labour while remaining conservative in outlook. They laughed and cried with their copies of the Mirror. Cartoon character Andy Capp has had his finger on the nation’s pulse since its launch in 1957.

Daily Mirror editorial staffers were the best paid in the business, and freelancers like Tom and Roy, working “day duties” at the paper’s Manchester office, became big earners. When they got too busy at the Mirror, they called in their senior employees from Oldham Press Agency to help with a few day duties.

First “death knock” with shotgun story

That gave a bit of a boost to the lower rankings like me, who stepped up to the bigger, better stories and the experience they provided. There were human interest stories all around. Oldham Press Agency managed to get ever-increasing coverage in the national dailies and television news programmes were a new and expanding market for freelance journalists.

One of my more gruesome stories was the 16-year-old farm kid from hill town Saddleworth who accidentally shot himself with his dad’s shotgun. I got to the scene quickly. It was not a pretty sight. Part of his face had been blown away.

This was my first “Death Knock” asking for a photograph from a grieving father whose gun had slain his only son, which is as bad as it gets. It was a tragic accident that would haunt his family and locals for many years to come. I remember it still.

There were quite a few “Happy Knocks” too. In those days, everybody played the football pools, including my dad and gran, hoping to win a fortune in prize money. Oldham Press Agency got a contract from Norman Martlew, a former Daily Mirror journalist who became the PR chief for Littlewoods Pools in Liverpool. The job was to tell the lucky punters they had won a big jackpot prize and get their story into the newspaper.

Football pools winners

Every time there was a big winner, Littlewoods sent in details, and one of us (with a photographer) would race out to get the interview and pictures of the delighted winners. A rare few had marked an X on their entry, requesting no publicity if they won anything. They quickly forgot this in the excitement and their story inevitably appeared in local and national papers and TV news programmes.

The pool wins got bigger, and in 1961, when Keith and Viv Nicholson won the £152,000 jackpot, it generated historic levels of coverage with her answer to the reporter’s first question. “I’m going to spend, spend, spend.”  It was all gone within three years, but her story of the working-class woman who preferred glam adventure inspired a TV drama, a book and a hit West End musical.

The Nicholsons lived in Halifax, so Oldham Press Agency missed out on the biggest pools story ever, including the cheque presentation by entertainer, Bruce Forsyth.

There were happy moments, too, as rock n roll swept across the Atlantic and newspapers learned how to cope with the social changes that followed the whirlwind. Rock groups as they stormed across the land.

One junior reporter sent out to review an early rock concert wrote:
“The double bass player had the girls in ecstasy when he lay down on the ground and waved his instrument in the air.”

It didn’t surpass an earlier Oldham Evening Chronicle headline over a story of the Commonwealth Trans Arctic Expedition, in which Sir Edmund Hillary led a New Zealand Team and Sir Vivian Fuchs was head of a large British team that raced each other to the South Pole.

“Hillary reaches Pole – Fuchs 200 on the way.”

The paper sold out within hours. Readers were delighted for Hillary and rushed to Failsworth Pole*- to join the fun. The devout, churchgoing Chronicle lady features editor responsible for the headline had no idea how it would be interpreted – and nobody dared to tell her.

Or, there’s this Oldham Chronicle headline reporting on a court case:
“Steak pudding and chips (twice) slapped on wife’s head.”

Times were good for the newspaper industry and profits soared in line with additional pagination, sales and advertising revenue. Pay rises for journalists were still few and far between, but there were no caps on “expenses, ” which gave newspaper owners and hacks tax breaks. Claims for “expenses” generated some of the most creative writing, and the industry is awash with legendary claims that got through.

Query on Middle East reporter’s expenses.
Accounts chief: “I checked, and camel hire is £400, and you’ve charged £1,000.”
Reporter: “Ah…yes, but this was a racing camel.” He was paid out.

World’s biggest newspaper publishing centre.

Newspaper readers enjoying their daily diet of unrelenting news from across their city, county, country and the globe probably imagine their newspaper has its journalists in all places providing stories for the day’s issue. This was almost true for people living in the north of the country, served by the mighty presses of Withy Grove, Manchester, for decades the free world’s biggest newspaper publishing centre.

The Manchester offices of the national newspapers employed around 700 full-time journalists who busied themselves in smoke-filled newsrooms located above the print rooms. These were manned by 1,000s of print and kindred trades operatives who controlled the publishing operation according to working agreements, entirely skewed in their favour.

They operated through craft chapels, each of which had a “Father of the Chapel” (FOC) whose main task was to oversee the agreements and cause trouble if they felt they were being breached in any way.

Journalists were also subjected to restrictive practices, such as not being allowed to physically handle typeset. A “job” for “Wall Men” had been generated as a direct result of this ban.

It worked like this: If the journalist, called a stone sub-editor, wanted to move a story from one page to another or carry over a long story to another page, he told the compositor working on the relevant pages. The page make-up comp would then look around the comp room, the walls of which would be lined by operatives looking pretend-attentive while chatting among themselves. This great skill had been honed over years spent leaning against the wall.

It was a highly prized job

The “Wall Man” task was to walk across to lift the indicated typeset and its accompanying paper galley proof and carry them to another part of the composing room where the destination page was located. Sometimes, it would be worked on by another compositor and stone sub, the latter being a journalist able to read upside down, mirrored (right to left) typeset.

Having fulfilled their turn, they returned to the wall. As there could be a dozen Wall Men, the chance of any of them becoming exhausted was minimal. It was a highly prized job, usually allocated to the “family” or “friend” of a FOC. Paychits were often made out to M. Mouse or R. Hood to complete the pantomime scenario.

Nobody suspected it then, but within three decades or so, hot metal typesetting and the restrictive practices that went with it would be swept away by a completely new electronic publishing method. Nobody at that time could possibly imagine the bloody last-stand to save their crafts by print trade unions, nor that I would find myself regularly at the frontline of the printers’ Battle of Wapping 1986-1987.

But it all happened; my journalism skills have evolved with the electronic publishing technology to the point that I can currently compose and publish an article like this using only a smartphone…

How we got there is highlighted in similar articles from My Life, in Words by Terry Walker.

UPDATE

‘Spend, spend, spend’ football pools winner, Viv Nicholson, died in April 2015 aged 79. Nicholson and her husband lived up to her promise, taking just three years to spend the £152,000 – the equivalent of £3.5m today – they won in 1961 – The Guardian.

** Failsworth Pole was a Germanic totemic pole in the town centre, dating back centuries. Pack mules, stagecoaches, trams, omnibuses, Royal visitors, and campaigning politicians all staged at Failsworth Pole. It was famous around the world. North Pole, Failsworth Pole, South Pole. There are no pubs at the North and South Poles, but Failsworth has three in the Pole conservation area. History of the Poles of Failsworth.

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