The Paul Foot Award for investigative and campaigning journalism, organised by The Guardian and Private Eye and supported by the BJR, was presented in London in October to David Harrison for his Sunday Telegraph exposé of the Eastern European sex-slave trade. The overall standard of entries was extremely high and among those making the long list was the Salford Star, a pugnacious local publication that, although it failed to progress to the Award’s final stages, highlighted the irresistible rise of community journalism.

Welcome to Salford, the epicentre of some of Europe’s biggest regeneration projects – and home of the free, independent Salford Star magazine, which, among other things, aims to ensure that Salfordians living in some of the most deprived areas in Europe get a fair deal. So far, Salfordians aren’t happy with their deal. The Star’s summer issue revealed how more than £15 million of regeneration money is being pumped into the awardwinning Urban Splash “upside-down terraced house” development – bedrooms on the ground floor, living accommodation upstairs – in Salford’s Chimney Pot Park area, for a return to the community of not one single affordable home in its first phase. That’s a scandal. And there’s more. Lots more.

This particular story was sitting up and begging to be written. The reason why it never broke – despite God knows how many well-paid writers working for the nationals down the road in Manchester – is the reason community journalism is on the rise. The “proper” journalists, who are supposed to be the guardians of democracy, accountability and stuff like that, are swallowing the hype and either can’t be arsed or haven’t got the time to investigate it. They’ve got no personal stake in the place. Instead, Urban Splash riding into a “crap place” – U.S. chairman, Tom Bloxham’s words – and saving the day by making the neighbourhood funky makes a good, quick, cheap feature, alongside all those Harvey Nicks-type ads.

The mainstream media are never going to touch real community stories because there are a million value judgments going on, seeded by the social class of the people who run the media industry, and informed subliminally by everything from Shameless to shameful government assumptions that communities are “problems” which need to be “sorted”. Meanwhile, community stuff doesn’t attract advertisers, or celebrities, and community voices can’t afford to employ poncey PR companies to state their case. So the community that doesn’t wear hoodies, take drugs, shoot everyone, carjack the kitsch and confess its obesity just isn’t on the media agenda.

Good news and propaganda only

That first issue of the Star had pages and pages of voices and features written by people who lived in the soon-to-be-bulldozed areas telling it like it was – “…social cleansing... Ripping the heart out of Salford...” alongside top-quality photos and enhanced by Jamie Reid’s pre-Sex Pistols agitprop graphics. Forget “objectivity” and being “emotionally removed” from a story. Community journalism is about reacting to your daughter’s nursery being demolished, your son’s school being merged with three others into a bright shiny gulag, or your gran’s house getting pulled down to make way for unaffordable riverside apartments. It’s about investigating the facts and figures behind the bullshit and telling everyone. It’s about questioning the political agenda, exposing it, challenging it and, if necessary, campaigning against that agenda. It’s about getting the real voice of the community out there, about getting authorities to listen and respond. It’s about using the power of words, graphics and photos to bring positive social change, not tickbox cosmetic tinkering or fancy iconic buildings.

Issue one of the Star also featured a comic book photo-style exposé of The Lowry arts centre actually kicking out local kids while sucking in nearly £6,500,000 of public money. The mag celebrated working-class Salford and slagged off developers, speculators and regenerators who want to wipe that from the map and memory. It was Salfordians fighting back in a magazine that couldn’t be dissed, because not only was it quality but it had been delivered by local kids, mums, dads and grannies to 12,000 mailboxes in East Salford, with a further 3,000 copies splattered all over the city, from bookies to pubs to launderettes, shops, cafes and community centres. Within half-an-hour of hand-delivering the first issue to the town hall, the leader of Salford City Council was on the phone screaming: “How dare you?”.

Bothered? Ten minutes earlier we’d had our first supportive phone call. Indeed, the response from the community absolutely blew us away. More 100 emails, txts and letters, all positive, and all along the lines of: “At last we have a voice”. The phone didn’t stop ringing with messages of support. We handed out copies of the Star on Salford Precinct and people were coming back ten minutes later giving us money; and there was a traffic jam on the main road as cabbies refused to budge while they were reading it. It all went way, way, way beyond expectations. As for the council, we were treated almost like terrorists, with the deputy leader demanding to know at a Cabinet meeting where we got our finances. And the leader’s phone call was followed by two letters accusing us of “deliberately misleading... highly inaccurate content” and “a cynical tone”, plus “I confess to being very angry...” Not half as angry as his own citizens. But what was this “deliberately misleading content”? We stated that 7,500 homes were to be demolished in Salford over the next decade. The figure came from three separate council reports. Inaccurate? No way. Cynical? Well, I confess to that.

The people running regeneration agencies with phenomenal amounts of public money try to make you feel like you’re ruining the plan for a Brave New World but, taking our cue from the community, we’ve every right to challenge it. We’ve every right metaphorically to pull their pants down and embarrass them. It’s called democracy, accountability, equality and all those other things that, coincidentally, were fought for in Salford by the Chartists and Fred Engels onwards. It’s about empowerment of people, stuff that public bodies and agencies are very good at talking up but not really doing.

Big brave gobs

We had kids aged eight-to-14 running press conferences and savaging Salford’s deputy leader of transportation over road safety during our summer spin-off youth magazine project. At the end of the project we gave out what we believe to be the world’s first Citizens’ Journalism certificates. Now we want to inspire people in other cities to set up their own high quality, high-powered community magazines. The software has never been cheaper, the tools of the trade have never been cheaper and information has never been more accessible, with transparency policies of public bodies ensuring that at least some juicy minutes and reports are online. If the local and national media aren’t doing it for you, do it yourself.

The Salford Star is uncompromising and can print anything that isn’t libellous, because we have no one to answer to but the community. We can go into territory where other publications fear to tread and our readers are responding to the point where we can’t keep up with demand. One small shop gave out exactly 1,000 copies of issue two and the owner was still asking for more, which we couldn’t provide. We’ve had to increase the print-run on the third issue to 20,000 to cope. This mad, back-of-an-envelope idea has become a magazine that’s having a real effect on the city. For instance, The Lowry, obviously embarrassed by our feature, suddenly dropped its previously stated £5,000 hire charges for a huge community film premiere; the leader of Salford City Council, despite being “very angry” with the magazine, personally went to visit some of our community contributors to try to sort out their grievances.

And on another level, we’re not only holding the public bodies to account we’re also discovering and showcasing talent in a city that’s been wickedly stereotyped by the media. We’re unearthing Salford stars all over the place, from our own contributors to new bands, artists, film makers, poets and playwrights. We’ve had Salfordian celebs, such as actor Christopher Eccleston and poet John Cooper Clarke, contributing too, and there’s an eight-page What’s On section with previews and reviews. It’s a positive publication in every sense: a celebration of Salford’s incredible community pride and heritage that are currently being knocked down and rebuilt in the cash-machine eyes of outside developers.

Unfortunately, because the Star is what it is, those cash machines aren’t opening for us. And we wouldn’t expect them to. So it’s still catapults against giants when it comes to finances and resources. The Salford Star might look the part but is produced on a pittance. We get a bit of public money from national funding agencies, and a growing number of adverts from small businesses, shops, genuine community organisations and colleges that recognise and understand what the Star is about. We also get a bit of income from donations, worldwide subscriptions and Salford Star T-shirt sales. It’s enough to scrape together the costs of producing and distributing the magazine but it’s financially tough, as it always will be for any community group that’s challenging vested interests. We’ll be delighted if we can get a regular, very average wage out of the enterprise. In the meantime, we don’t have trust funds and we’re skint. But we’re not in this to make money. We’re doing it because we want to do it, because we have to do it. Because we get only one life. It’s not just about the community taking control of the media. It’s about journalists taking control too.

The Salford Star was a project that burned its way out of my psyche, born from absolute frustration at trying to get socially meaningful features through the mainstream. After a long freelance career, writing for an array of national lifestyle mags, newspapers and supplements, it became apparent that there had to be a different outlet for community voices and features. Like, I was desperate to write about the social (and financial) bankruptcy of Manchester’s Commonwealth Games. No one wanted it. Why? Maybe because most of the media were either sponsoring the games or tied into them via competitions and giveaways. Instead, I found myself writing for a prestigious national glossy magazine about which female cartoon character I fancied. It kind of does your head in. How many times can you sell out your own conscience to keep a roof over your kids’ heads because nobody wants “socially meaningful” features? You become as much a media whore as the Zlist celebs you’re interviewing. And the consumers of the media are treated with contempt. One features editor described his readers to me as “masturbating goldfish”.

Respect for intelligence