Why I wrote for The Post…and why you should join up
Why I wrote for The Post…and why you should join up
A note from Matt O’Donoghue
Dear Post readers,
Last weekend we published a long read on the story behind the spectacular combustion of a half-finished residential block in Everton. The article was the culmination of an investigation that has spanned six years.
For a journalist like me, stories such as these are vocational projects that you fit in around the other jobs which put food on the table and pay the bills - and you have to keep a number of them on the bubble. Over time, you learn to slice these stories up, to deliver them at the standard limit of 800-1000 words that most publications insist upon. This helps to chip away at the huge investment of time on those investigations that you have faith in, believe are worth it and need to be told.
But with this slicing of a large story comes a huge compromise. We rarely get to expose the bigger picture or offer the reader a chance to look behind the story, to see the patterns that only come into focus over years of research. This does the journalism a disservice but — most painfully — it leaves the reader short-changed.
The Post has created an environment where readers and journalists are offered something increasingly rare in today's cut-to-the-bone newsrooms: the chance to read and to write stories that really delve into the depths and show how complex processes really work. Pieces of journalism that are thoughtful, and that don’t let companies off the hook by just quoting a few lines from their press release and then moving on.
In the past 30 years, I have reported for ITV’s Granada Reports (where my interest in Fox Street Village began), I’ve worked on investigations for the likes of the Sunday Times and Channel Four and I’ve been involved in the production of major projects with the BBC, including on the flagship investigative programme: Panorama.
In the past year, I have written Post stories about Liverpool City Council squandering £1 million on an investment in a company making supercars (revealing confidential emails that showed that council insiders had concerns the deal would leave them out of pocket), a conman whose lies took down Liverpool’s oldest family-run building business and of course, the Fox Street Village fiasco, last weekend.
From my perspective, The Post offers a rare opportunity to work with a small team and deliver 4,500 words and pictures to an audience who expect more than clickbait. I get to properly tell the story and — hopefully — you gain real insight. In all honesty, it's a privilege to be in such a position and able to share.
The modest fee from a commission like the story I wrote last weekend — ‘Village of the Damned’ — comes purely from those readers who subscribe. Their commitment helps to keep investigations like these alive.
It’s very simple: the more paying members who join The Post, the more of this kind of reporting will be possible. This city and this region needs a lot more scrutiny; a lot more journalism that takes the time to analyse what is true, triangulate who is linked to who through public records, FOI responses, archive searches and in old filings on Companies House.
So, if you got something out of our story and you don't yet subscribe, please consider joining The Post as a member today.