Bringing journalism back to the Blues

Why I'm launching The Seal, and why I hope you'll join me

Covering Chester for the last time, with former joint-manager Anthony Johnson

I’ve very much missed this.

I’ve been a journalist for 15 years, 12 of them working in sport, six of them covering the business of football. Given that I’d planned to give it 12 months and see where it took me, to still be in and around the industry as I pass 40 is something that gives me great satisfaction.

I’ve done pretty much every job there is to do in a newsroom. I’ve seen the landscape shift from print to digital, and I’ve seen and experienced first hand what the death of local football journalism looks like, despite trying to push back against it during my time at the Chester Chronicle.

I’ve pivoted into the finance of football in recent years, it is a niche that I enjoy, one where I feel I add value, and one that has opened many doors to other exciting projects that I want to work on, including pursuing a career in higher education and sports consultancy.

But I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt such a deep and meaningful connection to a job that I have held, and the readership to whom I am speaking, than I did when I worked for the Chronicle. It’s getting on for six years since I closed my laptop for the final time covering the Blues, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really filled that void in my working life.

Anyone who knows me, either in real life or via my work for the Chronicle, will know what Chester Football Club means to me. It is the same for us all. We are bound together for life, even as strangers, by our love for this football club. It may be small, but it is ours. It lives with us, it gets under our skin, it can ruin our weekends or give us some of the most precious moments.

Football is part of it. I wrote about this when I lost my father back in 2019, the man who first introduced me to the football club as a small child. It was about the sense of identity that being a part of Chester brought. I felt closer to my roots, to the city of my birth, and most importantly to my Dad. It was the glue that bound us, and on any given matchday you can see the same thing playing out for new generations. Chester will be tie that binds, even when we inevitably drift apart as people as we get older. We can still come back together every Saturday or Tuesday and feel closer, sharing in the joy and despair.

I believe that journalism is of huge importance. In an age where we don’t know what is real and what is fake, and where content comes at us from all angles, much of it doing little to aid our understanding of anything in a meaningful way, real journalism has its place, and it has a place in local football.

When I was at the Chronicle it was my passion for the club and the duty I felt as someone following in the footsteps of the likes of Jim Green, Paul Wheelock and the wonderful Ian Bedford, that made me want to do all I could to create something worthwhile for fans every single week, something that held value, that was meaningful and important.

I never wanted to be the last of the Chester reporters covering our beloved football club, but I always knew that it would be the case. In a time when the Premier League requires every single second of everyone’s attention, and where thousands of writers are all furiously tapping away every day to analyse every moment in a minutiae of detail, the clubs outside of the elite have become forgotten.

But here’s the kicker. Chester matters every bit as much to a Chester fan as Liverpool matters to a Liverpool fan, or Manchester United matters to a Manchester United fan. There are no limits on your fandom, or how deeply you feel about your club because of where they lie in the football pyramid.

This is a club that has toppled English and European champions, that has won titles, that has had to fight back from extinction to live again, to be a beating heart of the city it represents again. We are all part of the collective, we pay our way to keep what we love going, and for a club as special as ours to have no independent media coverage, despite having been a mainstay of the sports pages in our local papers for 140 years, saddens me.

We have superb club media at Chester, we really do.

I am a huge believer that there has to be some element of independence from a media standpoint, though. There are some brilliant bits of content that clubs can produce, and the fan base becomes more engaged through that, but there are moments in time where an independent voice is required to hold power to account. That is the very cornerstone of journalism.

With all of this in mind, I’ve wanted to create something new for Chester fans for some time, something that has value, something independent that looks to be a critical friend of the football club, and one that looks to foster a strong community, where we all share the same passion and desire to see the Blues thrive.

The Seal aims to be that. There will be several editions weekly, including a free edition, as well as podcasts, and there will be analysis and reaction to every match. There will be news, views, interviews, exclusives and insight into what is going on at our club, and I want to close that gap that has opened up with the lack of local media coverage of our club.

Since going freelance I have been afforded interesting opportunities, but getting back to covering Chester has been on my plan of action for some time.

There will be a monthly cost, and at £5 the aim is to make it as close to the cost of a pint as I can. For context, for four weekly editions of the newspaper I used to cover the club for, that would now set you back £13.20.

I will pour my heart and soul into it, like I did in my previous role covering the Blues, and there will be some fun stuff included along the way, including ‘The Post-Match Pint’, where myself and any fans who want to get involved can chew the fat in a pub immediately after the game for our podcast.

As I said at the start, I’ve very much missed this, and I can’t wait to get back involved. Any support would be gratefully received, as I truly believe that this is the way that coverage of football clubs outside the Premier League will be heading in the coming years. And you’ll be delighted to know there won’t be any ads bombarding your senses, just clean, insightful copy on the Blues from a trusted source.

Thanks for reading.

Dave