When Alex Morrison turned up for his first day as a rookie reporter at the Crawley News in 2007, he was apprehensive; he had realised teaching was not for him two weeks into his PGCE, and feared journalism would be the same.
“I had a feeling that maybe I would instantly hate journalism, and what the hell do you do then?” Luckily, Alex didn’t have to answer that question because he loved it from the outset.
From a sex bed in a car park to a bag of dead bats, Alex’s new book There’s Someone in Reception tells the tales of local journalists and various ‘walk-ins’ they have encountered over the years. It’s an ode to local journalism, which, although changed, Alex hopes is not quite dead yet.
When he picked up the phone in his first week, Alex had no idea it would lead to his first big splash. The woman on the other end of the line said: “I bought a little trinket on eBay, and got into a dispute with the person I bought it from and ended up with the police barging into my Sunday lunch, handcuffing me on my dinner table, and dragging me away in front of my kids.”
Alex couldn’t believe his luck. “I was just scribbling notes. I was like, this is amazing. It can’t be this easy.” He adds: “I was lucky I found a job I really loved.”
Alex Morrison (L) and his new book There’s Someone in Reception (R)
A Man And His Aubergines
Less than a year into Alex’s job at the Crawley News, a rather enthusiastic man walked into the paper’s offices with an armful of aubergines. Still the paper’s newest recruit, Alex greeted the man he would later come to know as 78-year-old “Aubergenius” Antonio Massimo.
Excitedly, Antonio informed Alex that, because of these aubergines, he had reached a conclusion still much debated: the world was in fact getting warmer. So, Alex accompanied Antonio to his allotment, where, with his partner, Antonio grew his own food and also provided the local hospice with homegrown produce.
This walk-in touched Alex “not just because it straddled the line between the hilarious bloke walks in with prize-winning vegetable staple of local silly walk-ins”, but also because Antonio was “so open-hearted and kind”. Alex adds: “I think he knew he was quite eccentric and was quite comfortable with that.” Glen, Alex’s editor at the time, came up with the “Aubergenius” line, which Antonio was “delighted” with.
"It straddled the line between the hilarious bloke walks in with prize-winning vegetable staple of local silly walk-ins [but he was] so open-hearted and kind. I think he knew he was quite eccentric and was quite comfortable with that."
Alex Morrison, author of 'There's Someone in Reception'
Alex now works in climate science communications and says his own interest in environmentalism and nature partly came from this encounter with Antonio.
“As I sat down to write the conclusion for the book, I Googled [Antonio] just to see if I could find anything out and saw that he died a couple of years ago. That moved me,” he says.
There’s Someone in Reception contains many amusing yet meaningful local journalism tales from the 1950s up to the 2020s. Since publishing the book, lots more people have contacted Alex with their stories. So, could there be a sequel or, perhaps a podcast on the joys of local journalism? “If someone wants to do a love for local news journalism podcast, I’d be all over that. It would be really good fun.”
Making a splash: One of Alex’s first big stories for the Crawley News
The Gorilla That Went To School In Gloucestershire
Another story in the book is about a gorilla who was adopted and sent to the local primary school in the early 1900s. Years later, somebody posted a photo of the gorilla with a group of schoolchildren in a Facebook group, which was found by a reporter.
Alex considers social media a modern-day version of the walk-in. “If the very same person who would have walked into the reception with, let’s say, a bag of dead bats to take an example from the book, they might well take a picture of those bats lying on the ground where he found them, and put that on Twitter.”
Alex left local journalism in 2013 and national news in 2016, so when asked about the future of local journalism, he chooses to “reflect [on] what people said to me about it.”
“Some were very gloomy,” he says, with one person referring to “an extractive model”, where “big companies with no particular interest in the location just extract profit from it by running a newspaper or a media business”.
Other journalists Alex spoke to held the view that good journalists can still operate in areas they care about “with the help of or in spite of their employer”. Alex says he has seen promising work with local, community-based models which are finding viable ways “to do proper community local news that cares about that area”, like The Enfield Independent and Glasgow’s Greater Govanhill.
He adds: “I think the collapse of the massive traditional local papers we used to have not that long ago, has effectively created a sort of vacuum. It’s like the thing in the Attenborough documentary when the forest burns down and the green shoots appear. I think it’s not yet clear what the media landscape looks like.”
"It's like the thing in the Attenborough documentary when the forest burns down and the green shoots appear. I think it's not yet clear what the media landscape looks like.”
Alex Morrison, author of 'There's Someone in Reception'
To give you an idea of how quickly things have changed, Alex says several of the journalists he interviewed spoke about “feeling the printing press downstairs through the fabric of the building”. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it wasn’t that uncommon to have printing presses at newspapers.
It’s difficult for Alex to choose a favourite story from There’s Someone in Reception, but there is one from ‘The ones that count’ chapter which stuck with him.
The story involved a homeless man who had approached a local BBC radio station as his last resort. The man, who had been sleeping in a graveyard and was a self-confessed drug addict, told the station: “I’m going to die. This is the last place I’m going.”
Alex says: “They brought him in and pre-recorded something and put it on air the next night, and then called a homeless charity and got him temporary accommodation for the night, and then, over time, followed his story as he went from temporary to permanent accommodation.”
"It's not too lofty, because it's very easy to see yourself as a world-changing, worthy person.”
Alex Morrison, author of 'There's Someone in Reception'
The reporter then bumped into the man six months later and found out he had been able to see his children again. Alex says the story sticks with him partly because of something the reporter said about “a little bit of heart” doing well for him during his career.
“That, to me, works really well. It’s not too lofty, because it’s very easy to see yourself as a world-changing, worthy person.”
As a journalist, Alex adds: “You’re just there to tell people’s stories. You might not agree with them, you might not like them. That’s not the point. But I liked his line of a little bit of heart – not lots of heart. You can’t save everyone, you can’t change every part of the world. It’s complicated.”
In an industry full of live leaderboards and competitions for clicks, a little bit of heart can go a long way, says Alex.
Hannah Bradfield
After joining the Journo Resources team at the end of 2021 as a trainee, Hannah was promoted to staff writer in 2023. She focuses on writing original features at Journo Resources, as well as managing our TikTok and X accounts.
Currently based in Norwich, Hannah also recently completed her NCTJ Diploma with News Associates on their remote, part-time course.
You’ll usually find Hannah trying to beat her parkrun PB, hunting down the nearest baked goods, or sweeping the shelves for any new designer dupes.
Hannah is also a freelance writer and journalist, available for commissions on a variety of lifestyle topics including but not limited to health and fitness, fashion, mental health, sport and education. She has written and created content for BBC Sport, BBC Sounds, Stylist, The Telegraph, Happiful Magazine, South West Londoner, The Indiependent, Mancunian Matters, and Runner’s World.
Header image and aubergines image is AI-generated by Adobe Firefly.
