Heather Carrick
Heather Carrick uses music coverage as a way to tell wider stories about public life, focusing on how performers, venues and honours sit inside the everyday rhythm of the city.
She is a digital journalist for NationalWorld, working with the Edinburgh Evening News and covering music within a wider brief of city and community news. Her recent work ranges from reporting on major civic honours for Scottish musicians to interviewing street performers who have built large grassroots audiences. Alongside this, she reports on transport, policing, education and local campaigns, keeping hard news and cultural coverage closely linked.
Music legends and civic recognition
Carrick’s coverage of Scottish music legend Aly Bain receiving the 2026 Edinburgh Award shows her instinct to frame musicians within civic recognition rather than treating awards as standalone diary items.
In that piece she reports a prestigious city honour for a long‑established figure in Scottish music, drawing attention both to the artist’s status and to the significance the award holds in the city’s cultural calendar.
Her earlier work includes an arts and entertainment story of the year award for a review of an alt‑J gig, underlining that she is comfortable treating live performance as a serious subject rather than incidental nightlife. Taken together, these pieces mark her out as a reporter who treats music as part of civic identity, using official honours and critically recognised performances to show how artists are woven into the institutions and public narratives around them.
Street performers and grassroots scenes
Carrick also spends time with musicians working far from formal stages, particularly street and outdoor performers. An interview with violinist Jordan Sapphire, whose sunset performances on Calton Hill draw crowds of hundreds, captures the detail of how a single player can turn a public space into a recurring musical event. The focus in that work is on how the performer builds an audience, what it feels like to play in front of passing crowds, and how informal gigs become part of the city’s shared experience.
Across this strand of her reporting she highlights the logistics and atmosphere of grassroots music: where performances happen, how they are organised, and what makes listeners keep coming back. This gives communications teams working with emerging artists an indication that she is interested not only in names and releases, but in the lived dynamics of building a following in real spaces.
City news with a community lens
Alongside music, Carrick maintains a steady output of city news pieces that consistently foreground the impact on residents. Her reporting on bus lane fines emphasises the more than £1m raised in the first half of 2026, making clear the financial scale of transport enforcement and its implications for drivers. Coverage of a £10m refurbishment of Brunstane Primary School focuses on the long timeline and cost of upgrading local education infrastructure, treating schools as civic assets rather than only construction projects.
Other articles look at police raids in Granton and Leith that uncovered around £1.4m in cocaine and cannabis, a car crash on Slateford Road that left a vehicle on its roof but caused no injuries, and disorder around the Easter Road derby that led to arrests and political questions for football authorities.
She also reports on creatives in a shared building facing uncertainty over their future, a brewery owner explaining a decision to consolidate the business after difficulty securing immediate council support, and activists organising an anti‑racism demonstration. These pieces show a consistent pattern: she uses precise figures, clear timelines and direct quotes to show how policy, policing and economic decisions land on people’s lives, often with an eye on the cultural and community spaces affected.
Breaking news and international coverage background
Carrick’s broader portfolio at NationalWorld includes breaking news and international politics, including coverage of the war in Ukraine and other global developments.
She works across fast‑moving stories and complex geopolitical subjects, distilling them into accessible articles for a general audience. That experience underpins her local work: whether she is writing about city transport policy, policing or music awards, she brings a habit of clear explanation and careful sourcing that is typical of breaking‑news reporting.
This combination of international news experience, detailed city reporting and sustained attention to both celebrated and grassroots musicians marks out a reporter whose music beat is rooted in public life rather than entertainment alone.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alex Rigotti
Alex Rigotti is a freelance music and culture editor and journalist who joins fast-turnaround music news with detailed reporting on artists, fandom and politics. They report breaking stories and live music updates for NME and Paste Magazine, covering pop, rock, club music, underground scenes and cultural debates around art and identity. Their live-music beat includes setlists, tours, festival appearances, cancellations, ticketing, venues and onstage collaborations. They previously served as a contributing editor for NME’s Radar section, supporting coverage of emerging artists and new scenes. Rigotti also writes features on rap lyrics and criminalisation, Eurovision and politics, queer feminist bodybuilding, astrotherapy and contemporary art. Their reporting is direct and specific, using clear quotes, concrete details and artists’ own words to explain what happened and how music fits into wider cultural and industry trends.