The chicken shed

Much of the output of PA, Britain’s national news agency, is produced not by go-getting reporters but by overworked and underpaid staff processing information in a new-build news factory in Yorkshire. ALEX BOLTON tells the story from the inside.

NEW YORK. Howden. India. Clocks showing the time in the Press Association’s far-flung outposts proudly greet visitors to its operations centre in the obscure East Yorkshire market town of Howden, assuring them they are at the hub of a mighty global empire.

The New York office is actually usually a lone reporter valiantly covering the whole USA. In India around 100 employees in Mangalore and Pune work on relatively menial tasks such as TV listings and on digital packages, which are collections of stories and images ready-subbed for websites and other digital media.

The operations centre, regarded by Howden residents as a new-build monstrosity on the site of the town’s former courthouse, is presented to starry-eyed journalism trainees as the glittering jewel in the crown, with glossy brochures featuring a shot of a TV studio, although, in truth, London remains the real hub of newsgathering and editorial control.

If the real meat of PA journalistic work is in the capital then Howden has the McJob, to quote writer David Coupland: “A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector.”

The craft of journalism requires trained and experienced professionals to make their own editorial decisions based on their understanding of news values, broad general knowledge and understanding of subtle nuances. Howden staff do work hard to maintain those standards, despite low material rewards, but many are frustrated by what they call “McJournalism”.

In the Teletext department, which has a high staff turnover, subs have been stripped of editorial decision-making to the extent that they mostly just shovel wire copy onto template pages. Some of the subs are raw trainees, so some spoon-feeding is understandable, but more experienced staff find the regime stifling and patronising.

Lack of union recognition removes any outlet for questioning bad management. Being located in the middle of nowhere makes staff more nervous about standing up to managers, since finding alternative work inevitably means relocating as well.

With this suitably compliant workforce, the management gets away with routinely changing the job without consultation. For example the regional wire department was axed and Teletext subs were suddenly expected to do regional wire versions of each story they subbed, drastically increasing the workload for the same pay.

Teletext veterans say that when the service was still in London, up to 2003, they could expect to sub maybe 40 stories in a shift. Obviously there would be more on busier days — but if all was quiet and the previous shift’s stories had been replaced, the job was seen as done and people could even leave half an hour early at the chief sub’s discretion. This discretionary half-hour was one of the first things that was clawed back after the move to Howden.

Subs are now shovelling 80-plus stories a day, each requiring headlines to three different lengths. All must have the geography in the intro, which must always be longer than two lines but no longer than four; the story must always be explained in the intro and the rest shoehorned into two more pars. Many of these stories come straight from PA’s main wire and rarely have the geography in the intro. Writing decent intros within these constraints gets tricky with court cases, when the only regional angle may be that a witness lives in a particular town.

But the biggest bane for regional Teletext subs is what are called “crossovers”. If a story is in, say, Luton, versions must be done for the London, Thames Valley and Anglia Teletext regions as well as for the regional wire. The 14 wire regions have different boundaries to the 18 Teletext ones, just to make life even more fun.

As if that wasn’t enough, some chief subs mark up every mention of a location as a regional angle, no matter how tenuous, and with no discernible sense of news values. One sub cited a recycled press release about house prices that was marked up for 14 regional versions merely because particular towns were mentioned: “It wasn’t even a story,” he said. “It was just estate agents’ waffle about price rises over the past five years, when the only news interest was how they are performing now since the credit crunch.”

There is a tendency on busy days to pass the whole wire input downstream — often with spurious angles hurriedly marked up — where the sub is left to make sense of it. Most news organisations trust subs to make editorial judgements and spike non-stories, but a PA “working standards document” [see panel] unilaterally imposed on Teletext subs says that “spiking stories without discussion with chief sub or managers” is unacceptable conduct which may lead to disciplinary action.

This document reduces the job to a set of tickboxes covering such criteria as “sub-editing stories to a high standard”, “speed of work failing to match managers’ reasonable expectations” and “completing all stories under direction of chief sub and managers”. Such management methods may work in a burger chain but are a world away from journalism.

None of the boxes measure journalistic criteria, it’s all about doing what your manager tells you to do, and it’s your word against theirs on how well you have met them. Under such a regime, where subs are having to run faster and faster just to stay on the treadmill, mistakes inevitably happen and they are always the sub’s fault.

In 2007 an 80-page “procedure guide” was issued. It dictates what managers now consider to be a sub’s job description, accompanied by a letter which everyone was pressured to sign, agreeing that it was their “contractual obligation” to comply with this and all future changes via the company intranet. Many staff had reservations but signed anyway, observing that unquestioning obedience was the virtue valued above all others.

Working conditions add to the oppressive atmosphere. A grim silence looms over Teletext subs’ desks punctuated only by televisions blaring out Sky News bulletins. Subs try to avoid looking at them, however, lest they be accused of “watching TV”.

A battery hen atmosphere prevails in the building because daylight is permanently shut out. This was forced on PA as Howden residents complained that employees would be looking into their homes.

Relations with the locals had already soured over parking, since most staff must drive to this small town with its inadequate transport links. Even the kitchen doesn’t escape the air of alienation and control freakery, with multiple laminated signs ordering staff in contemptuous tones to wash up their crockery and advising how many litres of milk are allowed in the fridge door.

As for pay, a clandestine NUJ survey found that 30 per cent of staff earn below £15,000 and almost all aged under 27 earned below £25,000 — with extra hours unpaid.

Forced to choose between climbing the greasy pole, grinning and bearing it, or leaving, it’s no surprise that most vote with their feet within two years. Luckily Howden’s one redeeming feature is that it’s a quick drive out — it’s just two minutes from the M62.

THE HOWDEN “working standards document” defines how staff are expected to behave. Provisions include:

PUNCTUALITY

ACCEPTABLE — Arriving a few minutes before required start in order to be ready to work at designated time

UNACCEPTABLE — Arriving late for any shift.

ACTIONS — Punctuality to be monitored by department manager and instances of lateness will be raised with employee.

POTENTIAL RECOURSE — Persistent lack of punctuality or unexplained/unacceptable absenteeism may lead to disciplinary action.

WORKING HOURS

UNACCEPTABLE — Taking a break longer than 30 minutes; taking breaks in the first couple of hours of a shift; taking shorter breaks off company premises.