We are all the Clarion
Occasionally we are asked “Who is behind the Oxford Clarion?”
At our core is a small writing team who work for free – we have no funding from anyone. Among them are people with backgrounds in journalism, communications, and community media.
Our volunteers contribute time and effort sourcing stories, writing up and contextualising press releases, and poring through thousands of pages of council documents. Our pieces on the city and county budgets about which many of you were complimentary? Written because we read the budgets and the amendments, and at first glance, they didn’t make sense to us. We put the hours in so people, including us, could understand how our council tax money was being spent. (We needed a lot of coffee and a bunch of spreadsheets for those. There were many swears.)
We have been accused, variously, of being a project or the mouthpiece of the Green Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Coalition for Healthy Streets & Active Travel, a disgruntled employee of one of the councils, and (we love this one) “posh boy Tories a la David Cameron”. We are none of these, but we take news and tip-offs from them all and more. Our articles have been shared on Facebook pages and WhatsApp chats across four political parties, Reddit, Bluesky and Nextdoor. (Thanks!) We are citizen journalists, not councillors.
Why are we doing this? Democracy in Oxfordshire is important: no one party has a monopoly on good ideas. But too often, reporting has simply focused on what drives the most clicks. As residents of the city and county, we all lose out if every attempt at progress is shouted down by vested interests and clickbait media. We don’t seek to report everything, only what we believe is missing elsewhere. Progressive, but non-partisan.
We write not for clicks, but to shine a light. Occasionally we’ll report an important story in the full knowledge it will only score a few hundred views (like this one…). Sourcing quotes and delving through documents takes time, especially for volunteers, but we believe it’s important. We hope that Clarion readers will be better informed as a result – and when we get things wrong, we are not afraid to correct ourselves and apologise.
Why anonymous?
It’s all a load of bollards.
The debate around Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in Oxford is so polarised that the city was spotlighted in a 120-page Demos report earlier this year. The report quoted several people who felt that Oxford’s media provided a partial picture. It concluded:
the lack of sustainable funding for local news has had a clear impact on the depth and breadth of local news available to the public… the abuse and harassment experienced by journalists also shows the risks faced by those acting as information producers in the public sphere
We are not party political, but every newspaper has its own editorial line, from the Guardian to the Telegraph, the Mirror to the Mail. Ours is that there is a climate emergency; that transport is one of the major contributors; that providing safe routes for active travel is essential in tackling that; and that this also makes for better, more liveable cities. This, inevitably, puts us in conflict with some in Oxford.
This is where we’re a little different to BBC Oxford and the Oxford Mail. If you get a pay cheque at the end of the month, it’s easier to shrug off the abuse. If Oxford is a stepping stone on your journey to the Sun, Times, Telegraph or Mail (congratulations to Tom Seaward, Ed Halford, Albert Tait, and Olivia Christie and Noor Qurashi respectively!), you don’t have to worry too much about being doorstepped in Oxford. We do. We live here, we’re not moving away, and we’re unpaid.
We wish we weren’t anonymous – it would free us up to do much more interviewing and openly attend more events. In reality, our identities are really not that exciting. We recognise that for some would-be readers the anonymity is a deal-breaker, and we can understand that: if that’s you, we hope you find a news outlet that suits you better.
But we’re not going to stop reporting on Oxford transport, because this is important. We believe you can get a week's shopping on a bike, and still, it's okay to take a fridge to the tip by car or your old blind dog to the vets. We believe that some people need to drive and a whole lot of people just want to drive, and there's definitely a difference. We believe in the joy of cycling and walking and safe streets, of toddlers wobbling on a balance bike, of pensioners re-learning how to cycle. Of electric buses zooming through the city while we chill on our phones. Of a joined up transport system and cycle paths without tree root hazards. Of safe routes for wheelchairs and decent infrastructure for pedestrians. We passionately believe that e-bikes are the future, as anyone who’s schlepped up Headington Hill on one will already know. We don't believe Oxfordshire’s councils have got it 100% right, but very few schemes are born perfect.
100,000 new homes in Oxfordshire in the next decade will generate 140,000 cars; our roads are already crowded; doing nothing is not an option. The county, which means all the people in it, will have to make tough choices. We will continue to shine a light on that.
Fellowship is life
In 1891, Robert “Nunquam” Blatchford, Alexander “Dangle” Thompson, Edward “The Bounder” Fay, and Montague “Mont Blong” Blatchford set up the Clarion: a progressive weekly newspaper based in Manchester. (That’s them at the top.) Nunquam fervently believed a better world was possible, and that existing papers – including his then employer the Sunday Chronicle – were stuck in the past.
But the Clarion became more than its four founders. It was a movement. Clarion cycling clubs, rambling clubs, cafés and hostels sprang up – even a New Zealand colony. They believed that progress was achieved not just by playing politics, but through a commitment to the outdoors, fellowship and mutual support. The Clarion Cycling Clubs still exist. Their motto, “Fellowship is life”, celebrates that anyone can be a Clarionette. Today, as every year, they are gathering at the last surviving Clarion House in Lancashire.
You ask: who is the Oxford Clarion? If you sent us a tip or a press release, a comment or a correction, a retweet or a like – you are. You might be telling us the difference between an accordion and a melodeon, or sending us pictures of an obscure hunting trophy buried in the basement of City Hall, or deciding Oxford should really know about your festival, your shop opening, or a neighbourhood issue that’s keeping you awake at night. We have contributors from all four major parties and none, town and gown, city and county.
You haven't yet? Nothing stopping you: we read all your messages. Our news is crowdsourced in the finest tradition of the web and the original Clarion. And we love our city and county. For all its flaws, it’s home. We want to make it a better place.
I am the Clarion. You are the Clarion. He on a bike, she on a bus, they in a car – we are all the Clarion.