Orkney editor: 'We had to be the best we’ve ever been and keep our newspaper going'
The Orcadian was Highlands and Islands Newspaper of the year in 2019, a first for the newspaper. Photographed are Leah Seator (centre) picking up the award in Inverness, with colleagues Sarah Sutherland (right), and Kerry Martin (left). The Orcadian is also currently shortlisted for Scottish Weekly Newspaper of the Year.
With its rolling hills, brisk sea air and breathtaking views, the Orkney archipelago has a lot to offer but for a young Antrim-born teenager forced to move here with her farming parents, it was a big and unwelcome change.
In 1996, Leah Seator moved to the Orkney Islands at the age of 14, leaving friends, family and her life in Northern Ireland behind.
As a teenager, she swore that as soon as she was old enough, she would leave and return to Ireland and her “life in the real world”.
However, 25 years later, Leah has well and truly fallen in love with island life, is embedded in the community and is even the editor of the local newspaper, The Orcadian.
Speaking to The Irish Examiner, Leah admitted that it would have been hard to predict her current love for Orkney when she was just 14, and had to move from her home in Larne to a remote location off the coast of Scotland.
“My parents were farmers who wanted to expand and they loved Scotland,” Leah explains.
“So they came over here and the further north we got, the cheaper the land got and they ended up in Orkney and fell in love with the place.
“It was a huge culture shock for a young girl from Larne because not only did we move to one of these islands, we moved to one of the smallest islands here Egilsay,” she adds.
“It was about two miles long by one wide. There were no shops, no people basically.
“I can remember being absolutely devastated at the time having to leave my friends, my wee boyfriend and what I described at the time as life in the real world.” Leah admitted that when she first arrived, she could not wait to leave.
“I saved every penny I had and worked picking strawberries, and I flew back to Ireland whenever I could to see my friends and family.
“I had it in my head that as soon as I turned 16 I was going to head off,” she laughs.
“Of course that didn’t happen because I gradually became immersed in community life here.
“To enable me to go to school, I had to stay in a hostel in Kirkwall on the mainland during the week and I think that, as much as it was a curse at the time, it was probably a blessing because it allowed to independently merge into the community a bit more and find my feet really in this strange, new environment.
“It helped me realise that I was the one who was different and then I really began to embrace life here.
“As different a way of life as there is here in Orkney, it’s a huge melting pot of people from all over the place and there’s such a brilliant community and a diverse range of things to do in terms of arts, sports, community events, clubs and societies - there’s loads to do.”
Leah did eventually leave home to study music on the Scottish mainland at the age of 17. However, she found the course was not for her and tried her hand at a journalism course in Edinburgh with the aim of becoming a music journalist.
“I found myself doing a course in journalism in Edinburgh and I loved it,” she says.
“At that stage, I probably had aspirations to move back to Ireland and live there for a while but halfway through my first year, a job came up at The Orcadian here in Orkney.
“It was a trainee position so I went for it and I had this idea in my head that I would get my training in this wee local newspaper in a place that I knew before heading off to take over the world some day.
“It’s 17 or 18 years later and I’m still here,” she laughs.
As a trainee with The Orcadian, Leah worked mainly as a music journalist at a time when there was a growing and vibrant music and culture scene on the islands.
The likes of bands such as The Proclaimers, Embrace, Ocean Colour Scene as well as comedians like Billy Connolly, Ross Noble and Bill Bailey were just some of those to raise the roof in Orkney during Leah’s tenure as music and arts reporter.
“It was a brilliant opportunity for a fledgling reporter and at the time, I probably didn’t realise how lucky I was but it was probably why I didn’t move on and go elsewhere,” Leah says.
As well as finding her niche in music and culture, learning the trade at The Orcadian also provided Leah with the opportunity to develop her knowledge of local news, Council proceedings, court reporting and more.
With her plans for leaving Orkney well and truly shelved, Leah took over as editor of The Orcadian in 2016. While many might assume a newspaper might struggle for news and events, Leah said the reality is actually the exact opposite.
“When you’re in a small community and you’re the only newspaper, it’s always busy,” she explains.
“We find ourselves at the centre of everything that happens on this whole archipelago and it’s a brilliant place to be as a journalist.
“It’s very exciting, very fulfilling and every day is different,” she adds.
Just a few years into her role as The Orcadian’s editor, Leah and her team faced a very “different” scenario as the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic shook the globe.
Over the past 18 months, The Orcadian lost 20 percent of its staff, was at the forefront of a campaign for greater transparency of Covid-19 infection on the islands and broke a news story that made waves nationally.
While the islands fared well in terms of infection rates, businesses in Orkney took a hit, including The Orcadian itself.
“All of the advertising revenue disappeared overnight with all the businesses closing and that’s our main income source,” explains Leah.
“We lost 20 percent of our staff to redundancies and we had to downsize but because we’re a newspaper and because of our important role in the community, we had to be the best we’ve ever been and learn how to keep our newspaper going.
“We had to learn how to make a newspaper with no one in the office except for myself. We did all our communicating online.
“We didn’t have any sports to fill pages, we didn’t have any adverts but it was amazing to cover the many, many little acts of kindness that helped people through this awful time,” she adds.
At the beginning of the pandemic, The Orcadian were met with a stony silence when they sought figures on infection and other information from the local health board.
However, a Dominic Cummings-style event, which was revealed by The Orcadian, led to an overhaul at the top of the board itself and greater transparency for the paper and its readers.
“The Chief Executive of NHS Orkney was at the forefront of this huge campaign to tell Orcadians to stay home and comply with government regulations,” Leah recalls.
“However, we found out that he was travelling to see his family every weekend.
“We managed to unearth that and it was a difficult story to cover because we knew he’d take the flack for it, and it’s never nice to expose somebody.
“It did lead to a significant change and a new chief executive and we now have all the figures and information we could possibly need,” she adds.
“It was testament to the power and the role of local press, and it led to us being nominated for a British Press Award which is a huge pat on the back.
“Many local papers have been struggling in recent years to remain relevant but this is something we can be really proud of.
“It’s been a rough year or so but we’ve managed to get through it, and long may it last.” So it has been far from the quiet, island lifestyle that many might imagine for Leah over the past 25 years or so.
The Larne native who was once so desperate to leave the archipelago even married a local man, Mark, and together they have two young daughters, Lola (11) and Amber (9).
Leah, who takes part in the regular music initiatives and festivals on the island, said she is well and truly embedded into the community here.
When asked what she would say to her 14-year-old self who was so determined to leave this place, if given the chance, she laughed and then responded thoughtfully:
“To come from a big place to a small place, you sometimes think that you know better but actually the reality is, your narrowmindedness in terms of what huge opportunities there are in a small place can hold you back.
“I would tell myself to realise that I was the one that was different, and that in a small place like this, the opportunities, ideas and possibilities are bigger,” she says.
“That’s the irony of it and I’m fully immersed in it now - as much as I have that fondness for Ireland, Orkney is home.”
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