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Lost in Space
Back to the Future
Diane Abbott Writes
Festival News
Martin Rowson
News in brief
Wheels on Fire
Latest Edition
Write On
Straight to the Point
Potty Training
Eating Thai
Vinyl Frontier
Going Private
Glenn Thompson
Arts Stuff
Drama in Dalston
Room for Jazz
Surfing N16
Shot in the Park
Feeling Lucky?
Lapdancing on Stilts
Man in the North Bank
Crossword
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Nik O'Flynn is a hack to her bootstraps. Small, smart and fiercely intense, but overlaid with an easy, un-neurotic charm, she is the 32-year-old editor of the Hackney Gazette, possessed of a clear vision of the paper and its future. 'I love working in this community', she enthuses. 'It's vibrant, exciting and of course there are loads of good stories. I see my job as reflecting this but the bottom line is producing a good product that people want to buy.'

Nik, who comes from Luton and has been in the Gazette's driving seat for less than a year, has steered a rise in circulation, a tidier looking paper and less obsessional stance on the machinations of the Council. 'What's happening in Hackney Council is of course important and we report that but I firmly believe that what concerns most residents is not the political minutiae but how it directly affects their lives. For instance, is the rubbish going to be collected?' she says with an arched brow.
The daughter of an engineer, Nik drifted through school with no big ambitions and came to journalism relatively late in her twenties. 'I was managing a bar. My early days were full of jobs which I hadn't intended to do', she says. 'when I began to produce a
magazine about local bands. I have a passion for music. It became very successful, an enthusiastic but amateur affair and we didn't get the business side right. But it gave me a real taste for journalism.' So she did a one-year diploma at the London College of Printing and, with typical terrier-like tenacity, found a succession of jobs on local papers until she pitched up at the Hackney Gazette and worked her way up. Nik is essentially a news woman. 'It's getting that extra bit of the story, going the extra distance and leaving your rivals standing which turns me on', she says with relish. 'I like to think I'm a friendly open boss but I do expect my reporters to have that same instinct.'

Criticism of the Gazette has been widespread in the area. That it constantly dwells on the negative -rapes, drugs, muggings, old ladies getting thumped outside the post office, that sort of thing. 'The biggest story gets the splash (front page)' she says simply, giving me a 'this is Hackney not rural Norfolk' kind of look. 'I'm trying to make the paper more upbeat, more entertaining, to be precise, and certainly have no wish to edit a Penny Grisly. But it has been proved time and time again that those kinds of headlines sell the paper.' Bottom line again. Nik O'Flynn works hard, long hours. 'It's the name of the game', she says, 'but now things are taking shape I'm trying to leave some room for me. I've taken up the odd physical exercise, skating, that sort of thing. I still go to a lot bands. I think the Ocean venue is fantastic.'

I was surprised to hear that there are no ethnic minority reporters on the staff of the Gazette and wondered what priority Nik put on redressing that. 'Of course I want to see that change', she says firmly. 'But we get very few black applicants for jobs. I believe in appointing the best person for any job regardless of ethnic origin. We have excellent community links and one of the joys of Hackney is that there aren't the great demarcations of race which you get in other boroughs.'

172c Stoke Newington Church Street N16 9JL enquires@rainbowglassstudios.co.uk 0207 249 0276 www.rainbowglassstudios.co.uk

Nik is very aware of the paper's core constituency -'families, older readers, long-time Hackney residents' -and that the paper is not aimed at the new professional middle class influx. 'Ideally I want the paper to contain something for every section. But the new arrivals can always peruse the property pages to see how much their flats and houses are now worth', she laughs. One of her community crusades is that those who gentrify the area should be made to put something back. 'I don't think new private housing developments are by their nature a wholly bad idea but the regeneration of Hackney should mean precisely that. If you build posh new apartments you should be asked to contribute, for instance, a new children's playground as well.'

What does she think of the alleged Hackney 'crime wave'? 'Yes, there's a lot of crime but the police have a certain confidence and understanding about it. The issue of the moment has been gun crime mainly controlled by four gangs, two of whom are in Stoke Newington apparently', she says chirpily, 'but there seems to be good intelligence on the ground.'

Nik lives part of the week in Leytonstone -'I bought the flat just before I got the job but spend most of my week with my boyfriend in Green Lanes' - and has no plans to move on from her editorship in the near future. 'This is a great job. I am naturally a tabloid journalist, the broadsheets aren't really my thing, but I've no desire to move onto a national. Not for a long while anyway. Why swap an editor's position in such a interesting place?' she says. Somehow, I think the siren call of a national will seduce Nik O'Flynn eventually.

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