Giselle Richards wore aeroplane earrings to mark the big day, and posted a selfie. It made a nice human touch to a momentous story that I couldn’t have covered on my unusual hyperlocal website without the help of people like her.
On 15 September 2015, a large chunk of the population of St Helena lined the hillsides to watch an aeroplane: the first one ever to fly to the island and actually land. The shops all shut.
When the little aircraft touched down at the end of its thousand-mile flight into history, it was an unnamed member of the public who phoned Saint FM Community Radio with the news. Presenter Catherine Turner put it out on air, and I tweeted the breaking story. A couple of minutes later I’d updated my live report – a world exclusive, of a kind, for St Helena Online.
I was sitting in an office 5,000 miles away, wearing two pairs of headphones as I monitored Twitter and both of St Helena’s radio stations.
Hyperlocal journalism from 5,000 miles away: monitoring two radio stations as first plane lands on #StHelena. @c4cj pic.twitter.com/MuIlivYtfO
— St Helena Online (@StHelenaMonitor) September 15, 2015
Without Catherine, and her son Andrew manning the phones, and the unwitting “reporters” on social media, there would have been no way of covering the story until long after the plane had touched down. Island journalists were stranded at the airport with no way of getting the news out: the mobile phone network wouldn’t go live for another six days. 
The commentary from Catherine– normally the island’s human rights officer – provided the content for early reports, from the moment she said the plane would definitely be landing, because it had flown too far to turn back (a serious matter, when there’s no other land within 700 miles).
More came on Twitter from the chief of police and from Paula, the government statistician, neither thinking of themselves as citizen reporters. Paula just “wanted to share the excitement”. Confirmation came that the plane was in sight, and then, that it had safely landed. “I’m breaking up,” said Catherine in the studio, unable to see it. “It’s so exciting. When we looked out in the street the only thing we could see moving was a cat. I think everybody must be up there.”
There had been talk since the 1940s of building an airport on St Helena, home to 4,000 British citizens way out in the South Atlantic. The first members of the construction team stepped ashore in January 2012, the same month, by chance, that I started running my somewhat long-range hyperlocal. I wanted to learn about blogging and I’d lived on the island, so it made a good subject. At present, supplies and people take five days to reach the island by sea aboard the RMS St Helena (which used to operate out of Cardiff). The hope is that the £250million airport will bring some sort of economy, and with it, spoils such as sustainable local media.
St Helena residents wait for the flight to arrive
For the past three years, St Helena Online has been part of a collective effort to run the St Helena Independent, a feisty paper that lives up to its name. In return, the site benefits from the kindness of islanders – “Saints” and expats – who let me use the pictures they post online. Their Facebook comments make characterful quotes, often in “Saint talk”, as they call it.
That culture of sharing found wonderful expression on the day the plane landed. Some of the island’s very accomplished photographers sent images; snaps by onlookers showed the social side of the occasion. Later came YouTube videos: the government even posted footage of the landing, shot from inside the cockpit. The aircraft had flown to the island for a series of flights to test the airport’s navigation and communication systems.
The big story will come when the first commercial flight lands in 2016. Then, we’ll have mobile phones to break the news, and maybe a few journalism students to help. It was too much for one person this time. But again, it will be the witness accounts of the islanders themselves that make the story – their pictures, and their comments. From the epic…
The Eagle has landed. The world now linked to St Helena by air. Lucky world. https://t.co/hApAi20sUS — St Helena in Focus (@sthelenafocus) September 15, 2015
… to the wry:
A new excuse on the St Helena Golf course this afternoon, the sound of a plane overhead was very distracting! #StHelena calibration flights
— Dr Niall O’Keeffe (@Visit_St_Helena) September 19, 2015
Images in this article courtesy of Nick Stevens and Darrin Henry of What the Saints Did Next. Homepage image copyright Alexander Babashov.
