‘It has been absolutely invigorating’

BRIAN PELAN, editor of VIEWdigital, told the September London Freelance Branch meeting about the experience of founding it. In his own words:

Brian Pelan

Image © Brian Pelan

IT WAS a real pleasure to address members of the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ recently, via Zoom.

After many years working in journalism on a number of newspapers in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic of Ireland, I set up the independent social affairs company VIEWdigital - www.viewdigital.org - along with co-founder journalist Una Murphy, in 2012.

To say it’s been an interesting journey would be an understatement.

After two years of really trying to find an identity for the magazine, we hit on the idea of producing a themed publication.

In other words, we would pick a topic and devote the whole magazine to it. Since then, we have produced more than 60 issues of VIEW magazine. They have dealt with a range of subjects including suicide prevention, drug addiction, the voices of migrant women, loneliness, domestic violence, the arts and the deaf community.

It has been absolutely invigorating to have spoken to so many activists and campaigners on the ground, and to try to reflect their stories as best we can.

Every issue has a guest editor who has a speciality in the area that we are working on. Together, the guest editor and I will have an initial meeting to discuss what we would like to see in the magazine.

It is really difficult in these times to find an audience for print, but I still believe firmly that there are readers who want specialised journalism which concentrates on stories that are not often told.

At VIEWdigital, we also run community journalism courses aimed at people from marginalised groups. Organised by Una Murphy, the courses have enabled women from the disability sector and migrant women to tell their stories: see here.

We have also just finished a Participatory Journalism initiative carried out over the past few months with disability campaigner Dermot Devlin. The project was supported by the Social Change Initiative. A report on their investigation into the lack of wheelchair-accessible taxis in Northern Ireland was launched at Queen’s University Belfast. The full report is available here.

We try to produce journalism that will last and provide a point of discussion for activists, campaigners and the general public. I love being the editor of VIEWdigital and I will keep doing it for as long as I can.

© Brian Pelan

• Back issues of VIEWmagazines are available on our website, www.viewdigital.org
• Support social affairs journalism – subscribe to VIEWdigital here