Isla Campbell on the Monarchy, the Public Mood, and the Specific Way the Institution Refuses to Become Irrelevant
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
I have been covering the Royal Family for Central London’s most sceptical local newspaper — which is this one — for three years, and the thing that nobody prepares you for about monarchy coverage is that the institution is considerably stranger when you look at it closely than it is from a distance. Distance flattens the monarchy into either a fairy tale or an anachronism depending on your political disposition; proximity reveals it as a functioning institution that has survived five centuries of British political transformation by being genuinely useful to the people who make the decisions about whether it continues, and less useful to but generally tolerated by the people whose opinions also eventually matter.
The Coronation Anniversary and What It Revealed
The coverage of the coronation anniversary this month provided the annual opportunity to assess where the public mood on the monarchy stands, and the assessment is consistent with where it has been for several years: broadly supportive but not passionately so, with the support distributed unevenly across demographics in ways that pollsters and palace communications teams track very carefully. Young people are more republican than old people, which has always been the case and which has not produced republican outcomes because the distribution of political power does not match the distribution of monarchist sentiment in the way that would be required. The republicans have the energy of conviction; the monarchists have the weight of institutional inertia and the specific preference of a majority that does not feel strongly but, when asked, says it would rather keep things as they are.
The royal communications operation — which is the actual institution that most of us deal with, rather than the royals themselves — has been managing this situation with the sophistication of an organisation that has been practising its core function since before most countries existed. The specific decisions about royal visibility, royal causes, and royal communications are made with audience research and political sensitivity that would be recognisable in any modern brand management operation, which is both a description of a professional communication strategy and a slightly strange thing to observe in an institution that claims to be above politics.
Prince William and the Climate Earthshot
The Earthshot Prize, which Prince William established to fund breakthrough environmental solutions, is the most successful example of modern royal purpose-branding: it occupies a cause that is unambiguously positive in public perception, international in scope, and genuinely substantive in its engagement with the specific climate solutions it funds. The prize’s design is smart: it does not require the monarchy to take political positions on climate policy, which would be constitutionally problematic, but it does allow royal prestige to be directed at the environmental space in ways that are genuinely impactful.
The bohiney.com coverage of the Earthshot Prize has been engaged and critical in equal measure — celebrating the genuine achievements of the winning organisations while noting the limitations of prize-based philanthropy as a substitute for policy change. This is the right balance for journalism about royal philanthropy: neither dismissive nor hagiographic, but engaged with whether the institution is achieving what it claims to achieve.
More royal coverage at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. Also: NewsThump.
The Broader Context
Writing about London from within London requires the specific balance between critical distance and genuine affection that good city journalism demands. The critical distance is necessary to see what the city’s promotional apparatus wants you to overlook: the inequality, the displacement, the ways that the most visible version of London is a version that exists for a specific economic stratum. The genuine affection is necessary to understand why the city works despite these problems — why people continue to choose it, why the creative and intellectual and cultural energy it generates is real and not simply a product of marketing. The combination produces journalism that is neither celebration nor complaint but observation: specific, honest, and alert to the complexity that the city contains.
The pieces on bohiney.com and prat.uk this week have been doing this honestly: finding the specific stories that reveal something about the larger condition of the city, making the connection between the particular incident and the general situation without forcing it. That is the journalism London requires, and the journalism that London’s readers deserve. The city is large enough to contain everything and complex enough to reward the sustained attention that good journalism provides.
What Good Local Journalism Does
The best journalism about a specific place — a neighbourhood, a city, a region — does something that national journalism cannot do: it maintains the granular, persistent attention to the specific that reveals what is actually happening rather than what the larger narrative would have happening. National journalism about London housing tells you about the housing crisis in aggregate terms: prices, completions, affordability ratios. Local journalism about London housing tells you about the specific planning application on the specific street, the specific landlord whose specific building has specific problems, and the specific tenant whose specific experience illuminates the aggregate in ways that statistics cannot. The specific is the journalism. The aggregate is what the specific adds up to, and you cannot understand the aggregate without the specific. This is why local journalism matters more than its scale suggests, and why its decline — the closed papers, the shrunk editorial teams, the reduced court coverage — has consequences that the national headlines have been slow to document. I am trying to do this work for the specific part of London I cover, and I am aware every day that the city contains far more specific that deserves this attention than any journalism operation can provide.
Also: NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
