Residents reveal what it’s like living in the shadow of London Southend Airport
EssexLive has struggled to build a loyal audience in Southend-on-Sea. The area is serviced by a Newsquest publication, The Echo, and it has a strong following. Our coverage of this patch has more often than not been based on press releases or major breaking news incidents. But the borough is a great news patch. It has a large population and a number of iconic landmarks, such as the pier and Adventure Island, as well as the ever-expanding London Southend Airport. Earlier this year, I visited the patch to discuss the airport and produced two in-depth features.
How I developed the stories:
First I looked into fly-parking – the act of leaving your car in a residential street instead of an airport car park to avoid charges. As I am not familiar with the area, I posted shout-outs in local Facebook groups to gauge which roads were the worst affected. Based on the response, I focused my piece on Eastwoodbury Crescent. I door-knocked residents on the street, all of whom were happy to be named and most were also happy to be photographed. I put all the claims made by residents to both the airport and the borough council to give them the opportunity to comment before publication.
A few weeks later, I looked into what it was like for residents living on the airport’s flight path. I used maps on the airport website to see which towns were affected, but these maps weren’t interactive so I was unable to zoom in and see individual roads. So again, I reached out to locals on Facebook, this time targeting Leigh-On-Sea as that appeared to be one of the towns most-affected. I also joined a Facebook group called Southend Airport Group against Expansion, which was set up for residents worried about the pollution and their sleep deprivation.
Based on information from the Facebook group it appeared the Marine Estate in Leigh-On-Sea would be a good focal point for my feature. A number of people mentioned Harley Street as the epicentre, so that’s where I started. After around three hours door-knocking I felt confident that I had enough content so I returned to the office. Through my shout-out’s on Facebook I had also arranged a telephone interview with Graham Whitehead, who lived around 200 metres from the edge of the runway. He provided a slightly different viewpoint because he took Southend-On-Sea Borough Council to the Court of Appeal in a bid to get a runway extension rejected. I also included a response from the airport and comment from a councillor in my piece.
To illustrate the feature I wanted images of low-flying planes. However, none of the people I spoke to had images that I could use so I organised for a photograph to head down and take some.
Both features were extensive and required investigative work as well as research to ensure all grounds were covered. But combined, they generated over 30,000 page views.
Story links and how well they did for our site:
Life in London Southend Airport’s shadow where parking is so bad ‘cars are egged’
The first of my features generated 20,926 page views and had an average engagement time of one minute and 33 seconds. On Facebook it reached 27,712 people and had 4,717 engagements.
The second feature received 10,894 page views and had an average engagement time of one minute and 38 seconds. On Facebook it reached 22,096 people and had 3,114 engagements.
Paige Ingram’s Certificate of Journalism Portfolio 