When Keith MacKenzie shows up on our Zoom call, he’s quick to admit that he’s nervous: as editor of the West Highland Free Press, it’s usually him asking the questions.
MacKenzie was born in 1979 in Kyleakin, the very same village on the Isle of Skye where the Free Press got started. After graduating from Glasgow University with a master’s degree in history in 2001, he spent a year at home working as a postman before returning to the city to study journalism at Cardonald College. By 2003 he was back home again for good, this time as a reporter for the weekly Free Press, which turned 50 in 2022. “I always thought I would return to Skye,” he tells me, “but I didn’t expect it to be so soon.” He became editor in 2020, taking over from Ian McCormick, who was in the role for 44 years and died last June.
MacKenzie remembers the Free Press as a ubiquitous presence growing up. Founded in 1972 by a (self-described) “bunch of long-haired radicals”, it was establised to champion reform of landownership, support the Gaelic language and other issues that were crucial for islanders but given little attention by the national media or governments of the 1970s and 1980s. When the paper’s founders retired in 2009, the rest of the small team bought it: today the Free Press, which has nine staff, remains the only employee-owned newspaper in the UK.
One of its co-founders, the former Labour MP Brian Wilson, recently argued in the Stornoway Gazette that “the need for good local journalism with a radical edge is undiminished.” But MacKenzie, who represents the paper’s second generation, is more restrained in his language. “What is local journalism with a radical edge?” he throws back at me. The Free Press still takes an editorial stance on key island issues, including the political scandal surrounding the severely delayed and overbudget new CalMac ferries. It tries to hold the government to account when policies come up short, like those meant to boost Gaelic. “You could consider that radical for a local paper,” he says. “But I’m not sure.”
However you describe the Free Press’s politics, being “a voice for and of the community”—in this case Skye, Lochalsh, Wester Ross and the Western Isles—is the most important thing. “In a lot of the stories you’re doing, you know the people personally and, if you don’t, you’re only one step removed.” Building respect is part of the job. People will only part with information, MacKenzie says, if they trust you won’t misappropriate or “sensationalise” it. And on that count he is true to his word: he won’t be drawn on details of a recent news story, choosing to protect his connections with the people involved. “I’ll probably not say too much about that one,” he fumbles, with all the wariness of an MI6 operative. “No,” he says, shifting in his chair. “I won’t talk too much about that.”
Skye drew international attention early in the coronavirus pandemic, after the deaths of 10 care home residents highlighted (as the Care Inspectorate wrote) “serious and significant concerns” about the way the home was run. The New York Times drafted MacKenzie to contribute reporting on the story; he knew some of the people who died. “Having local knowledge means you can humanise that tragedy,” he says, “at a stage when the pandemic was still getting reported as numbers.”
The Free Press faces the same problems as local papers everywhere: declining print readership, declining advertising revenue, the struggle to monetise a more unwieldy digital output. But employee ownership has at least meant that the paper remains in local hands, and the reportage produced by those who live in the region. A 50th anniversary exhibition staged in Kyleakin in July 2022 also reminded MacKenzie of the other, often overlooked role of a local newspaper: to provide the “social history of an area”.
On that upbeat note we wrap up the interview, and I can sense MacKenzie relaxing a little. “Now,” he says to me, “I have some questions for you.”
