LeftLion Editors Past and Present Lift the Lid on Looking After One of Nottingham’s Longest-Running Publications

What was your proudest moment as Editor?
Bridie: Definitely when we did the treasure hunt. It was the best day. We buried a box of treasure at Stonebridge City Farm…
Ash: It’s so funny that you actually buried it
Bridie: I know! That was the best part. It was really simple - we made a treasure map with clues to all these locations around the city and put it in the magazine. I think one of the clues is still up in the Fox & Grapes. I was worried no one would do it, but someone completed it the day after the mag came out. At that point I was like, shit, we should have made it harder! 
Jared: I’m most proud of the fact it’s still going. If I think back to issue one, we printed 8,000 copies, got those delivered back to our flat in a van and had to work out how we distributed them all from there. But just seeing what that many magazines looked like in your hallway was pretty cool. 
Ash: You’ve got a much different perspective on all of this… You started the whole thing and have watched it change and grow over the years…
Jared: It's probably not something I will be able to leave behind and go on to other things, I think that's fair to say. But at the same time I guess I kind of have left it behind; hopefully I'm not that in your face, Ash! 
Ash: Mine is a weird one that’s probably more personal, but it was that first online-only magazine we did at the beginning of lockdown. I remember having conversations with everyone about whether we should just stop making the mag for a bit, and everything was really confusing and fragmented. But that was the closest team I’ve ever been part of. Everyone just channelled that weird nervous energy into making the magazine, and the support we got from all of the contributors was insane - I remember my wife’s sister even chipped in with an article. Even though we never had a physical magazine, it was the most satisfying one to make. 

Jared, as one of the founders of LeftLion, how involved are you with running the magazine nowadays? 
Jared: I think it varies. The truth is I’m not very involved with the creative decisions in the magazine nowadays. There's 150 issues, for over 100 of those I've read it cover to cover before it goes to press. For the last few years I haven't done that, which makes it more pleasurable to sit down and read it after. I still get involved editorially here and there, but it works well because I have contacts from ten years ago and you guys know more current stuff; so there's a synergy and we cover different areas. In my role now, I have to be hands-off because I don't have the time. I need to concentrate on helping to run the business. 

There are lots of creative cities without a creative magazine, why do you think LeftLion works in Nottingham?
Bridie: I think people get their bang for their buck with LeftLion - even though it's free - just with how in-depth the articles are and the level of quality (if I do say so myself!), whereas a lot of magazines in other cities probably aren't as in-depth or as good quality. We're constantly giving people a platform, and also evolving all the time.
Ash: I only really noticed that recently when I was going back through all of the archives. Every editor has put their own stamp on the mag…
Jared: Everyone has their own personality, too. Like Ash, the way I hear you tease people in the office - if it was anyone else it would probably be a HR issue…Ash: True. 
Bridie: I can be a perfectionist, and I remember Jared saying that not every magazine will be your best and that was a reality check. Having to bang them out every month, it can be relentless and I was astonished at how volunteers came through every time. I was an anxious wreck every month!
Ash: Look at this issue: the cover was meant to be a Great Gatsby-style photoshoot but I got COVID and had to cancel everything. I sent an SOS email out to our illustrators asking if anyone could put this together in five days and Ana Caspao, who has never illustrated for us before, absolutely smashed it. Sorry, back to the question…
Jared: There are other cities with decent magazines, but probably none that lasted as long as us. Sheffield's isn't bad, but we are a special case. Print media tends to die because the owners strangle it to get more money. That's why NME and the Independent newspaper died. Al [Gilby] and I started this, and we think of ourselves as custodians rather than owners. We don't strangle the magazine for profit and we do other things to make our living. That’s a boring business answer, but that's how it works. Secondly, there's something unique about Nottingham - we aren't North or South and it's a good size and scene to maintain a magazine, compared to somewhere like Manchester. A lot of it goes back to the people who make it what it is - the contributors. Hopefully it'll keep going forever. When you look at other media in this town, The Post was a newspaper back when we started, rather than the internet atrocity it is now. We’ve changed, but there is a recognisable identity that runs through it all.

What is the LeftLion identity?
Jared: Counter-culture, I guess. We're a bit liberal, and left-leaning politically, but we haven't been particularly party political, at least until we gave Nadia Whittome a column! When this all started, the Xylophone Man was someone that everyone I knew talked about and traditional media never covered. That was the most popular article we did. It resonated. Traditional media just won't understand it or cover it. What we're not trying to do is clickbait or appeal to the lowest common denominator, we're print first and we want to continue that. I don't think we need to be any more dominant in the city than we are now, I’m really pleased with the readership we have.

What was it that first attracted you to LeftLion?
Bridie: A job advert! Obviously I used to read the magazine, but getting that initial apprenticeship changed my life. I'd been working at a casino, a call centre, then as a support worker, but my hours were cut - so when I saw the advert for Editorial Apprentice it was like the mothership was calling. I was always writing poetry and loved English. I remember going to Confetti for the interview and I was sweating and shaking. I wrote a poem to include in my presentation and it was nuts. I don't think there are many opportunities like that in Nottingham. It was a wild move but I'm glad it happened.
Jared: I remember that. You were very intense! But you’d written us a letter in the Nottingham dialect and you applied at a time when we were becoming more professional as an organisation. For the first ten years it was more of an elaborate hobby. 
Ash: I remember LeftLion being one of the first things I saw when I moved to Nottingham in 2010. I went to Broadway Cinema during my first weekend here and was blown away that there was a cinema that let you drink alcohol, and that it had this wild magazine that was free. I just emailed Ali Emm, who was Screen Editor at the time, and told her I’d helped run my uni newspaper and wanted to carry on writing if she’d have me. I remember penning my first ever film review and spending about six hours making sure every word was perfect. I used to be obsessed like that! One of the first interviews I did was with a comedian called Tony Hawks. It was just a throwaway phone thing for a short online piece, but I went to Waterstones and bought every book he’d written, watched hours of YouTube videos about him and pulled an all-nighter reading everything I could like a true psychopath. I never really thought I’d have an opportunity to be Editor - it wasn’t something I’d even considered. 
Jared: I don’t think we’d met for quite a while, but I remember reading your articles and thinking you had a lot of warmth and humour. We knew Bridie wanted to pursue other opportunities and we had a chat about who would be best for the role and your name came up.
Ash: I’d literally just finished a Masters in Documentary Journalism. I thought I’d just carry on making films…
Jared: We saved you from a life of making serious documentaries…

What’s an interview you’ve done for the magazine that made a big impact on you?
Ash: Can I have two? My first was in 2010 when I’d only been writing for a couple of months. I got asked to interview a guy who reviewed toilets in Nottingham and it was amongst the most surreal afternoons of my life. It made me realise how goofy you were allowed to be at LeftLion. The second was when Derry [Shillitto] and I got Emilio Estevez for the Screen Podcast. The whole thing was so involved and ridiculous - we basically had to blag our way into an event by pretending we were proper journalists and spent an entire morning being humiliated by news organisations and celebrities just so we could grab five minutes with Billy the Kid himself. We kept sneaking off to hide in a cupboard and record more of the podcast, so it was like a running diary of the day. Very little has made me laugh more. 
Jared: Shane Meadows was a big one early on. Then Xylophone Man and Donovan Whycliffe. In terms of interviews other people have done for the magazine, James Walker did some great ones. We got the last ever interview with Alan Sillitoe, as well as a remarkable interview with Ray Gosling. Al Needham finally interviewing Sue Pollard was a big moment! We’ve interviewed so many cool people like The Prodigy, Alan Moore and Kasper Schmeichel - in fact, I’ve still got his gloves! 
Bridie: I really like the community ones, like Louise Cooke at Sharewear and Louise Evans at Nottingham Community Wardrobe. Benjamin Zepheniah stuck with me as well, and Jason Williamson. I look back on some interviews and just cringe, though. I get so starstruck. Jason was a good interview on paper, but I was so awkward during it…
Ash: There’s nothing worse in the world. I remember interviewing Robert Lindsay and thinking that the fact we were both from Ilkeston would just blow him away and lay the foundations for a beautiful conversation. He literally couldn’t have cared less. 
Bridie: It’s so funny to transcribe other people’s interviews and hear how awkward they can go. I remember Hazel [Ward - former LeftLion legend] had one with Alan Davies. 
Ash: I remember Ali Emm having a stinker with Samantha Morton too…

What's your favourite feature in the magazine?
Ash: That’s easy for me - the Out of Time history articles. I’m obsessed with finding these enormous moments in history - literally days where the entire course of history changed - and finding there was just some bloke from Sneinton there watching it. The fact that there was a former Notts postman fighting against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn makes absolutely no sense to me. It blows my mind.
Bridie: I really liked bringing the Snap Notts feature in where we teamed up a poet and a photographer and sent them to a location. I was really proud of that. Everyone went about it so differently, the variety of stuff that was produced was nice - I think the two forms marry up well. I also love Day In The Life, I'm glad we started that.
Ash: Yeah that’s still going strong…
Bridie: It started off with A Toilet Attendant in Notts. That summed up LeftLion for me. It's like, yeah, we interview celebrities, but it's also about giving a voice to the average Joe on the street. It's a bit like Humans of New York - a rip off of that! Everyone on the street has a story. I find it fascinating.
Jared: I’ve got to say Overheard in Notts. As you get older, you sadly laugh out loud less, but that genuinely still makes me laugh. If people are reading this, it’s important for you to know that they are real comments - we don’t make them up!
Ash: So many people ask about that. I wish we were that funny.
Bridie: I remember someone heard a guy saying ‘Overheard in Notts is all made up’ and it made it into Overheard in Notts! There’s a Facebook group that people contribute them to
Jared: There you go, readers. Join the Facebook group and see for yourself.
Bridie: It’s private! Funny people only, sorry.

What are some of the changes you made to the magazine during your time as Editor?
Bridie: I brought in the centre-spread poster, which the cover artist used to do. I liked it because it gave the mag a bit of breathing space. I liked doing themes, too. We didn’t do many…
Ash: That’s the backbone of the whole process now.
Bridie: I think it’s nice having something to work around. Some sort of focus.
Ash: And it really helps you reach out into those hidden pockets of Notts that otherwise you might miss, or it helps you look at familiar people in a different context. Sometimes the themes work really well, and sometimes they don’t. I loved doing the recent mythology issue, where we reimagined all of these Notts people as ancient gods, but literally no one agreed that it was good. I’ve never seen so many blank faces when I was explaining it, but I was sure that if I could just get it down on paper people would realise that it was in fact a stroke of genius. Turns out it was even more baffling in reality as it was conceptually. Ah well. Swing and a miss.
Bridie: That’s one of the hard things about being in a continual mag cycle - you don’t really have the mental space to step back and look at your own ideas.
Ash: Sometimes you don’t realise an idea is stupid until you’re looking at the physical mag for the first time, and then it’s too late. In terms of changes,I think the biggest one I made was introducing the regular sections at the back of the magazine, which was actually our old Assistant Editor Emily Thursfield’s idea. We noticed that we’d sometimes go three or four months without having any content on one subject, like film or poetry, so that helped make sure we were always covering them. It also helped give a bit more autonomy to the section editors, as they each had their own page to focus on each month.

What’s the hardest part of the job?
Bridie: Like Ash just said - it’s those month after month deadlines. It’s all-consuming. I did manage to do other things but it takes over your whole life. I understand that, with LeftLion being what it is, it’s not possible to pay contributors but I used to panic each month not knowing whether we would have enough content. But we always did. I know people take the piss out of saying ‘we’ll pay you in exposure’ but when you’re young it’s great to say you’ve been published.
Ash: I wrote for LeftLion for free for eight years before I became Editor. I loved having the freedom to write whatever I wanted in my own voice for an audience. That doesn’t happen often.
Bridie: Yeah, there are always a lot of people who want to contribute, so it always comes together.
Ash: I remember talking to you during my handover, and asking what happens when there’s no content or contributors, and you just shrugging and saying “It always just works itself out.” It made me panic so much, but you were 100% right. For me, the hardest part comes just after you’ve finished a mag. My mood always dips because this one thing has been your whole life for the past month, and then it’s just gone.
Jared: It’s like a comedown.
Bridie: It really is. I used to be so pernickety about proofreading and then as soon as the mags came back I’d open them up and immediately see a mistake.
Jared: I just don’t want to know where there's mistakes. There needs to be a period of time before anyone points them out.
Ash: The inbox is another one. Before this job I used to hate the idea of not replying to people, but it’s literally impossible. I’ve just had to accept the fact that I’m always going to have about 1,000 unread emails at any given point. I feel like I’ve hacked a path through the jungle, turned my back and it’s just overgrown again.
Jared: It's intense. I wish we could pay all our contributors, but financially there's no way we could do that and stay afloat. I justify that by saying we're upfront about it. If people don't want to contribute under those rules, they don't need to. It's just one of those things. LeftLion is such a big part of your life. There were less mags when I was doing it, but it wasn't my day job. It was a group of friends, it was my social life. It becomes part of your identity.

What’s your favourite cover?
Bridie: I like our 100th issue. And any cover Leosaysays does - he's just amazing, the level of detail that goes into it. He's a lovely human being as well.
Ash: Leosaysays is incredible. There are a few artists like him that have done multiple covers - Raphael Achache is another one. They put so much character and detail into them. The level of talent is insane. I think my favourite was one of Raph’s - the gaming issue. Partly because I managed to get my little nephew on the front cover, and partly because the whole LeftLion team were re-imagined as iconic video game characters. I loved being Donkey Kong!
Jared: It might not be my favourite cover aesthetically, but the one I was most involved in was the Rock City one where we got 500 musicians together for one photoshoot. It looks like it's photoshopped, but it's not. We got David Baird, who at that point was NME Photographer of the Year, to take the photo. There are people on that now who are pretty big. There's a Sleaford Mods song about the event actually.
Ash: That must have been a ball-ache to organise.
Jared: It was a stupid thing to do really! 

What's the angriest letter or message you have received from a reader?
Jared: I've been punched a couple of times!
Ash: To be honest, that’s my favourite thing about being free. We’ve got no responsibility to listen to people who just moan for the sake of it. Obviously constructive criticism is good, but a lot of the time I can just reply saying ‘Thanks for your feedback, but please stop reading LeftLion’ and we don’t lose anything. When I used to write film reviews I’d always get emails complaining that my opinion about a film didn’t match up with theirs, and it always baffled me. It’s such an odd thing to pick up a free magazine, think ‘this doesn’t exactly represent how I feel!’ and then send an email to complain. If that’s the case, just write down exactly what you want to read, and then read it. Cut out the middleman.
Jared: There's been a couple of times where people who smoked too much weed read into things too much. They're dead sure you're sending them a message, when you don’t even know them.
Bridie: We got some grief on socials after a critical review of Mowgli went up with the headline ‘Sheer Con’.
Ash: That’s a great headline to be fair.
Bridie: People were accusing us of doing it for the headline but that was just the reviewer’s opinion. And I've had some hate mail once, just some sexist shit. It wasn't angry, but wasn't very nice. 

Have any of you ever struggled with imposter syndrome and can it affect you having such a responsibility for a beloved publication?
Ash: Yep.
Bridie: Yes, in a word. I seriously struggled in the beginning. It’s such a responsibility and it can feel really lonely.
Ash: Yeah, when things go wrong there’s no one else to blame and you’ve just got to take your medicine.
Jared: I’d say yes too, but probably in a different way to you. The times I get it is when I walk into the office and there’s all this buzz and I’m a bit out of the loop. I wouldn't be able to run this now, so it's important to step back and let other people do it. I get why you'd feel that way but you all did it, you all made it your own and did different things with it. It's like chucking someone in a river and knowing they can swim. You’re sure they won’t drown, but it just takes them a little time to figure that out.