How I reported the death of a local legend and brought his story to life

The passing of Rayleigh’s Laughing John: ‘A local Legend’ whose ‘infectious laughter’ lit up the town

Background to the story:

‘Laughing John’ was a ‘local legend’ formally known as John Daines. He spent most of his time around Rayleigh High Street and town centre, and had lived locally for several years. ‘Laughing John’ was a local celebrity, and those who knew him would say that he was harmless. He was best known for his unusual dress sense, infectious smile and eating sugar. He even achieved ‘fame’ a few years ago after a video of him talking about his sugar eating habits went viral.

On June 26, 2019, I saw a Facebook post stating that ‘Laughing John’ had passed away. At first I had no idea who he was, but it soon became apparent that he was a very well known member of the community. I set up telephone interviews with a number of people who were happy to share their memories of John. I also found a Facebook page dedicated to John called Laughing Man John of Rayleigh. I interviewed Reece Giles, who created the Facebook page and I also tracked down John’s neighbour, Rob Yates, who discovered John’s body on the evening of Tuesday, June 25.

Legal and ethical considerations:

I approached my sources with “sympathy and discretion” as outlined in clause four of the Editors’ Code of Practice, which covers intrusion into grief and shock. I also believe the final publications were “handled sensitively”.

While there were a few images of John being shared on social media, I knew I had to track down the person who took the original photograph due to copyright laws. Copying images from social networking sites may infringe the copyright of the site as well as the copyright held by the person who took the photo. Unfortunately, I was unable to track down the copyright holder for the photographs I found online. but I managed to work around this.

I asked the people I had previously interviewed whether any flowers had been laid in John’s memory. When I was told the community had created a shrine for him on the High Street, I sent a photographer to the market town. He was able to capture both people paying their respects at the shrine, as well as close ups of the tributes themselves. Although we didn’t have a photograph of John, the ‘RIP John’ poster from the shrine worked well as the feature image.

Follow-up pieces:

Following the first tribute story I ran, I kept an eye on social media for any potential follow-ups. I ran three further pieces; one based on a mural of John, a breakout on how John’s neighbour discovered his body and one covering John’s funeral service.

I wanted to attend John’s funeral service however, due to low staff numbers on the day we didn’t have the resources for me to be out of the office. I managed to get permission to use images and videos of the service from people who lined the streets to say their final goodbyes. I also tied this in with a comment from A. R. Adams Funeral Directors who organised and ran the service.

Story links and how well they did for our site:

My ‘Laughing John’ articles generated a combined 27,143 page views and reached 77,231 people on Facebook, which shows that there is still an appetite for hyper-local journalism.

Story link: Tributes pour in for Rayleigh legend ‘Laughing John’ whose ‘infectious laughter’ lit up a community

The first of my three pieces had a joint byline due to an overlap of shifts. It generated 9,251 page views and had an average engagement time of one minute and six seconds. On Facebook it reached 16,566 people and had over 3,000 engagements.

Story link: The special way Rayleigh is remembering local legend ‘Laughing John’

The follow-up based on the spray-painted caricature of John had 1,056 page views and an average engagement time of 41 seconds. On Facebook it reached 9,813 people and had over 400 engagements.

Story link: The sad story of how a neighbour found Rayleigh legend ‘Laughing John’ dead in his home

The shocking account from John’s neighbour had 4,668 page views, 56.1% of which was from search. The story had an average engagement time of 47 seconds and on Facebook it reached 15,093 people and had over 1,000 engagements.

Story link: Laughing John Funeral: Watch as hundreds of people line the streets to pay their final respects to Rayleigh legend

The coverage of John’s funeral generated the most amount of page views – 12,168. It had an average engagement time of 35 seconds and on Facebook the story reached 35,759 people and had just under 9,000 engagements.