Two historic seasons & one journalist

Covering Falkirk and Stenhousemuir, with the Falkirk Herald's Ben Kearney

Falkirk clinched their first domestic league title in 20 years last weekend and Stenhousemuir, despite recent stumbles, are likely to be crowned League Two winners imminently. I spoke to the Falkirk Herald’s sports reporter, Ben Kearney, to discuss what it’s been like trying to juggle coverage of two historic campaigns simultaneously, the part AI plays in sharing Stenhousemuir stories online and what it’s been like dealing with John McGlynn.

Q: Ahead of the game last Saturday, you knew that Falkirk were already promoted [after Hamilton’s earlier draw] so what goes into writing your match report? Do you need to reflect on the previous five years in League One instead of just covering the game?

Ben Kearney: It's funny, it's probably the easiest match report I've ever written because about half of it was written about four weeks ago. It's been such a long time that they've been in League One it felt like you had to mention the past five years.

Obviously it's over now, which I'm sure they'll be delighted about, but it felt like that had to be brought up in some way.

I just included stuff off the top of my head. There's maybe been six or seven things like that Q&A [a Q&A with supporters in 2021 that ended in acrimony after the board criticised the fans] that have happened that you could have probably written a full article on. It was quite hard to keep it to any sort of page limit. And then it didn't help that they scored seven goals as well!

Q: This is Falkirk’s first title in 20 years and Stenhousemuir are about to win their first league title ever. What’s it been like to cover them both this season and how have you approached it?

BK: It's probably something you just don't expect is ever going to happen . It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, really.

I'd imagine for most local titles in Scotland, you might get a team winning a title every 20 years or so. But to get your two local teams both winning a league title at the same time is unheard of.

The parallels between both are interesting as well. They both went down at the same time and they’re now both coming up a level at the same time. Their seasons have also been similar in terms of the number of points they’ve been on and the fact they could have both won it on the same weekend.

It has been really difficult [to cover both teams], to be honest. I’m only one person and I can only go to one game.

Stenny and their [12-game] winning run was brilliant, but it was a real challenge in terms of coverage. I would have loved to have been there, but I couldn't because Falkirk were playing at the same time and they were also unbeaten in League One, going for a league title, which is just crazy because any other season you could probably have a wee bit of give-or-take; you could miss Falkirk one weekend and go to Stenny if their game was a big one.

Iain McMenemy [Stenhousemuir FC chairman] has had a wee pop a few times at the Falkirk Herald and it's fair enough. I would be the same if I was on the other side of things because it would be great to have someone at Stenny games but it's just not something that's going to happen.

The team I work in only has me and two other guys and I'm the only person that works on a Saturday and we cover, I don't know, maybe 35 pages of sport every week between us. So it's just something that's impossible to do.

Q: How do you - or the paper - try to bridge that gap then? Because you’ve presumably got Stenhousemuir fans buying the paper and you still want to cater to them.

BK: I suppose that the main thing has just been making sure that Stenny have been covered. For example, we have a freelance photographer who we get every Saturday and that's basically what what our sports budget goes on. And, I mean, we've covered basically every Stenhousemuir home game, which is great because that allows us to do a proper page that’s got pictures of the game and after-match reaction with [Stenhousemuir manager] Gary Naymsith.

So that's probably been one of the things we've tried to do to show that we're there and that we are taking an interest. Obviously, I can't be there, but at least if we can get our freelance photographer to go and get our own pictures, that kind of bridges the gap a wee bit. And Gary Naysmith's been great.

Q: Have you got any plans for a special commemorative issue, or is there anything you're quite keen to do to commemorate the season, either for Falkirk, Stenhousemuir or both, once the season comes to an end?

Yes, it's in the works, although the first thing we decided was that there just wasn't the manpower to do something at the time. It would be great to have a special pull-out coming out this week. But in terms of organizing that and getting it done, there'd be no chance of making sure you've got enough adverts to go in a pull-out and getting permission from [management] down south.

At the moment, as well as the Falkirk Herald, I also have to fill four pages of sport for the East Fife Mail. And then I also help out with the St. Andrew’s Citizen. And the problem for us is having only a team of three.

Last week was probably a good example; my boss was on holiday so that left me and my colleague Craig Goldthorp to do the Falkirk Herald; the Southern Reporter, which is, amazingly, 13 pages of sport; the Fife Free Press; the St. Andrew's Citizen; the East Fife Mail; the Glenrothes Gazette; and the Berwickshire News as well, which is a lot of sport for two people to do in a couple of days, so it doesn't really give you room to do a 10-page pull-out as well. It's just impossible.

The plans are in the offing though. When the season's over, what we're possibly going to do is a pull-out for Falkirk and then a different pull-out the next week for Stenny, just so they both get their own space.

I think it'll probably be something along the lines of 14-16 pages. A lot of picture-led stuff because we've got great original photography. Our main photographer who works at the Falkirk Herald full-time, Michael Gillan, covers every Falkirk game, home and away, which is brilliant. So we've got all our own original stuff. And then for Stenhousemuir we've got more than enough. And advertising and stuff like that's well underway now as well, which is good in terms of making sure that we've got the go-ahead basically. It's not going to cost us any money.

Q: Along with your weekly coverage, how important is it to go that extra mile for supporters, to maintain that link between the paper, the clubs and the supporters?

BK: I think it's really important. The first thing that Editor Jill [Buchanan] said, which is so true, is that it's the type of thing people will hold on to. Every Falkirk fan and Stenhousemuir fan, even if they don't usually read the Falkirk Herald, when they know that there's going to be a special pull-out on a title winning team, they're going to go out and buy it and keep it because they’ll want a souvenir. And I think it is really important when it’s something like Stenhousemuir’s first ever title; that’ll go down in the history books forever.

When we get to the year 3000 there'll be someone going into a Falkirk library to get the archive footage, or the archive paper, because they want to go back to that weekend and see what was written when Stenhousemuir won their first ever league title.

The Falkirk Herald has still got a great readership for Scottish levels. We're still one of the best-selling local titles in Scotland. And I think stuff like this goes a long way to keep that reputation, because over the years we've been well known as a really good local paper that's not gone the way of some others, which are full of adverts.

Q: Why do you think that the Falkirk Herald has maintained that audience in a way that maybe some others haven't?

BK: It's easy to say this, but I think people really matter. In Jill, they've got someone who lives in the local area, and has done all her life, and knows everything about Falkirk.

I should mention David Oliver as well. He was at the Falkirk Herald for around 13 years and worked his way up to a Sports Editor. It’s about having really strong people connected to the local area. Everything that goes into the Falkirk Herald is always about local issues.

Q: How has the way you’ve worked changed in your three years at the paper?

BK: [Journalism] seems to be going an interesting way in Scotland at the moment.

I think you've seen that over the years since I've been here; there's been more of a push to do online picture articles and things like that, stuff that people are going to click on. How long can we get people engaged to read a page? Stuff like that, that maybe when I started they weren't quite as bothered about, whereas now that seems to be the main focus.

Taking it back to Falkirk, it's simple stuff. Every Falkirk FC story goes on the main Falkirk Herald Facebook page because, obviously, they're well-read. And we've got an AI system that we use that actually picks what stories go on our Facebook and Twitter pages. It's called EchoBox and we've only gotten it recently. It's like a social media scheduling platform, but it decides for you what goes up, basically.

It ranks a score of how it thinks your story's going to do. If it’s a Falkirk story, it'll maybe get a score of like 70 out of 100, and if it thinks that it'll do pretty well you'll see it pop on the Facebook page at six o'clock at night, but a Stenhousemuir story might only get a score of 13, and then it'll be like, ‘nah, don't post this, it's not worth it, it's not going to get good traction’, which is really interesting. But that's the way the company's going.

Q: That's fascinating that the AI effectively decides that, if it’s not going to get much traction it just doesn't go up. So do you ever get any feedback about that from readers?

BK: Actually, not as much as I expected, to be honest.

There's been a couple of times this season where I've posted a story, before we had this system, where I've picked something to put on Facebook and see how it does, and it'll maybe only get like two likes.

As I've learned, if you have posts that don't do well, then it drags down your whole page in terms of engagement and it won't show the next thing to as many people.

Q: I find that fascinating. The idea of being disincentivized to share your work because it won’t get any likes…

But, last question - and more positively - how has it been as a journalist to cover Falkirk this season?

BK: The guys at Falkirk have been great. The two media officers, Andrew [Macleod] and Adam [Ouakli], are brilliant and I think it helps that Falkirk are big enough that there's always someone in. If you phone the club, or send them an email, you’ll get an answer because they're both full time and they dovetail with each other.

Guys like John McGlynn have been brilliant. I've actually been really lucky. Every manager that's been at the club has been brilliant actually, even going all the way back to Paul Sheerin.

John McGlynn has been so nice to work with. He's just an absolute gentleman. Everybody I spoke to beforehand was like, ‘oh, you'll get on fine with John’. I think he knows how everything works as well, which helps.

He knows the industry like the back of his hand in terms of how to deal with journalists. He's been there and done that. Matthew Elder, who's now The Scotsman, covered Raith Rovers for years and he told me stories of going into Stark’s Park and sitting with John for maybe an hour and a half for a weekly chat. And you could see how you could easily do that with John.

Even this season I've had some great stories, like the stuff about Bonnyrigg’s pitch.

I don't think he's bothered about what he says, basically, which also helps. I think that maybe comes with age. He's gotten to a point where he just doesn't care; he just says what he wants.

But the relationship with the club's been brilliant. So many people have been so nice.

Q: Last question: What are you looking to from covering the team next season in the Championship?

BK: You've seen over the past couple of years, teams that come up from League One generally do pretty well. And I can't see why Falkirk wouldn't do the same. I think they'll really challenge at the top end of the table, which will be really exciting.