From fly-tipping to polar bears: life on the world’s most northerly newspaper

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/08/polar-bear-attacks-avalanches-norway-newspaper

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Eirik Palm, editor in chief of the Svalbard Posten, hadn’t provided me with directions to find his office, but in Longyearbyen, you just ask around. A friendly woman walked me to the door and I was waved in by a man wearing a woollen jumper. It was a bright June day with the temperature at 3C, and the sun hadn’t set in two months.

At 78 deg N, and well inside the Arctic Circle, the Svalbard Posten is the world’s most northerly printed newspaper. It’s also an excellent regional publication, voted “local newspaper of the year” three times by Norway’s local newspaper association.

Five people work on the Post: Palm, two journalists and two support staff. It’s quiet at noon – in Palm’s office every so often a colleague knocks on the door to ask him a question.

Palm is evidently satisfied with his lot, saying that moving here two years ago was “a dream” for him. Before relocating to Svalbard, where it’s light for five months during the summer and totally dark during the winter, he worked around Europe and the USA as a news editor and editor-in-chief.

At first glance, the Svalbard Post is like any other regional rag. There are press deadlines (2pm on a Wednesday), and distribution on a Friday. It is printed in Tromso, which means that delivery can occasionally be held up by factors out of their control, namely the arctic weather conditions. “A few times the weather has been too bad to fly the plane, and then people must wait,” Palm says. Sometimes if the Scandanavian Airlines plane that the paper hitches a ride on is too heavy, it is shifted in favour of the passengers or post. “Sometimes we win the battle,” he adds, wryly.

Palm’s colleague Geir Barstein has worked on the paper since February, and was drawn to Svalbard after being sent there for a story. “I got hit by polar fever before my flight even touched down. When I looked out the plane window and saw the vast arctic wilderness go on for miles I felt like I was descending on another planet.”

Topics on the paper will seem familiar – there’s an election coming up in October, litter and fly-tipping are commonly covered, as is the future of coal-mining on the archipelago. Then there are the more unusual stories, polar bear attacks, maulings and avalanches. He tells me a particularly sad story about a pair of young women who went hiking without a gun (everyone in Svalbard is required to learn how to shoot when they arrive) and met a polar bear en route. Although they both tried to scare the bear, one woman was able to escape by jumping off a cliff, while her friend was attacked and killed.

Getting your hands on a story can prove challenging in the Arctic. Barstein explains how the enormous distances and harsh conditions make reporting difficult. “Breaking news is especially hard to cover outside of the settlements. It can be impossible to report from the scene. On the mainland you just jump in a car, but that’s not possible here. There are no roads connecting Longyearbyen with any other settlements or places. We use snowmobiles during winter and boats in the summer to get around, but we depend on getting a ride on board a helicopter with the police department from the governor of Svalbard if the distances are massive.”

Yet, it’s an exciting time to be a journalist in the Arctic, says Barstein. “Svalbard’s location – sandwiched between Russia and Norway – makes it an important piece in the geopolitical puzzle. Plus, there’s a lot of interesting science happening, especially around climate change.” He also explains how, as one of the only papers that reports regularly from the Arctic, it also acts as a watchdog for northern affairs and so has global significance.

The paper serves an important community purpose in Svalbard, and people are happy to be featured in it. In such a small place – there are just over 2,000 residents – checking facts and sources becomes extremely important. Palm says, “If you get a fact wrong or make a mistake then the person who you made the mistake about will tell you all about it in public very loudly.”

For Palm, working at the Posten is an opportunity to move away from clickbait journalism and social media-obsessed stories and return to grassroots reporting. “That’s what I like about [being a journalist] here. It is back to the streets journalism, hunting down stories, getting to know the community.”