12. Mendip verdict on Glastonbury

9 ways Glastonbury Festival must improve in 2020 - according to local council
How a lengthy licensing report led to a widely-liked listicle

Originally published: January 10, 2020

Glastonbury Festival must do more to plan for hot weather and to reduce bass noise at night.
That's the verdict of Mendip District Council, which oversees the licensing of the festival to ensure the safety and well-being of both attendees and the wider community in Somerset.

The council has published its latest festival "de-brief report", looking at every aspect of how the event was run in 2019 and making recommendations of how things can be improved in the future.

The festival organisers have declined to comment on the report's findings.
Read the full story here.

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As we have previously established, the Glastonbury Festival is of enormous interest to the Somerset Live readership, and we pride ourselves in providing a level of detail in our local coverage which the national news outlets simply cannot rival. Local government's role in the festival is peripheral - Mendip District Council awards the licence and acts on any noise complaints, but it has no role in the running of the festival itself. Nevertheless, when this report was published ahead of a scrutiny meeting, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The report contained a huge amount of detail which I chose to present in listicle format to make it accessible - there were a lot of technical terms and risk assessments which the average reader would either not understand or find overly complicated. I did not attend the meeting where the paper was discussed but approached the festival's official press contact several days before it took place to give them the opportunity to respond. They declined (politely) on the basis that this report was an annual matter, whose recommendations they would address in due course. From there it was a case of finding the strongest top line and presenting it in as concise a fashion as possible.

The article performed well (with 180 shares to date) because it struck a good balance between praising the festival and identifying areas where improvements could be made. We have had examples in the past where positive coverage of the festival has been met with local grumblings on social media, and equally out-and-out hatchet jobs are not always well-received. By presenting balance and the full detail of the report, the article started a conversation about the future of the festival, serving as an important part of our build-up coverage to the 2020 event.