Jordan Shepherd
Jordan Shepherd focuses on how political decisions, public services and regulation affect everyday life, reporting these stories as a news reporter for Glasgow Live. His beat spans local politics, public-interest news and accountability reporting on institutions that shape the city. He links policy detail to concrete consequences, whether through council finances, workplace disputes or enforcement actions against employers.
Council decisions and public services
Much of Shepherd’s recent work follows the decisions of local authorities and oversight bodies and how they impact services on the ground.
He has covered warnings from the Accounts Commission about growing demand for services and high poverty levels, reporting on the “significant challenges” these pressures pose for the council’s financial health. He tracks the future of civic spaces, such as the council’s announcement that Queen’s Park Glasshouse will remain open while officials work with stakeholders to secure a long-term plan through the People Make Glasgow Communities programme. His coverage explains the concrete implications of these decisions, from budget strain to the preservation of public amenities, and situates them within wider debates about how local government manages austerity and community assets.
Labour disputes and workers’ rights
Shepherd regularly reports on industrial disputes and employment issues, with an emphasis on how workers respond to restructuring and funding pressures in major institutions.
He has covered professional services staff at Glasgow Caledonian University voting to back strike action over redundancies, setting out the scale of proposed job losses and the union response. He reports on ballots among workers at the University of Strathclyde as they organise against plans to cut dozens of full-time posts to address a multi-million-pound funding shortfall.
His reporting also follows enforcement of employment law, including a story where fourteen companies were ordered to pay tens of thousands of pounds in arrears to more than two hundred employees after failing to pay the national minimum wage. Across these pieces he treats unions, regulators and employers as central sources, but keeps the focus on the workers affected and the financial decisions driving the disputes.
Regulation, enforcement and the environment
Regulatory decisions and their environmental and community impact form another strand of Shepherd’s coverage. He has reported on the closure of the Greenoakhill landfill site after the Scottish Government rejected an appeal to allow more waste into the site, explaining how that decision cuts off further expansion and what it means for nearby communities and operators. In his enforcement reporting on minimum wage breaches, he details the number of firms involved, the amount owed and the authorities’ response, giving readers the key facts needed to understand how regulators act when employers underpay staff. These stories show a consistent interest in the point where environmental concerns, regulatory frameworks and local livelihoods meet, with attention to both official statements and the lived impact of policy.
Incidents, human stories and political context
Alongside politics and regulation, Shepherd covers incidents and human-interest stories that illuminate how people experience the city. His work includes reporting on a car bursting into flames at Silverburn, providing straightforward incident detail and reassurance that no injuries were recorded. He has also written about a resident left traumatised after being followed by a rat in their own home, using the story to reflect wider concerns about housing conditions and pest problems.
These pieces show a willingness to move from institutional reporting to vivid, ground-level accounts that illustrate how broader policy and infrastructure issues manifest in everyday life.
Shepherd’s political beat extends beyond local institutions into national and international themes when they intersect with the city.
In a recent article on tributes to a Glasgow spy who helped extract KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky from the Soviet Union, he connects Cold War intelligence history to contemporary political figures paying their respects. Earlier in his career he reported for other news titles before joining Glasgow Live, and he now combines that experience with a fellowship from a journalism trust that supports reporters’ development.
Across his body of work, his distinguishing strength is the way he threads together council decisions, workplace disputes, regulatory actions and human stories into a coherent picture of how politics and power are felt on the ground.
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