Mel Ramsay
Mel Ramsay focuses on subcultures and fandoms at the BBC, using alternative music and gaming stories to bring niche communities into mainstream news output. She works as a journalist and producer across BBC News, including digital, radio and YouTube platforms, on stories that span music, games, politics, technology and online culture. Her coverage is defined by treating fan communities as central to the story, building interviews, explainers and social content that show how artists, players and audiences shape each other. Her professional profile describes her as an award-winning journalist with a specialism in subcultures, reflecting a career built around gaming, alternative music and wider geek culture. She is particularly associated with coverage that takes niche but highly engaged audiences and brings them into the core of the BBC’s news offering.
Alternative music and festival culture
Ramsay covers alternative and rock music with a strong focus on live events and the fan communities around them, including a high-profile interview with Linkin Park at Download Festival.
In that conversation she explores how the band has evolved, what they look for in new collaborators, and why their current era feels different, while also touching on their relationship with UK fans, gaming influences and new music. She follows up on moments from these performances by telling fan-side stories, such as a Newsbeat piece about a UK rapper who was thanked by Mike Shinoda for a freestyle shout-out, connecting festival stages to emerging artists and online audiences. Her music coverage looks beyond release cycles, situating artists within the wider alternative scene and examining how headline festival appearances, collaborations and viral shout-outs reshape their bond with dedicated fanbases.
Across these pieces she treats alternative music as part of a broader cultural ecosystem, linking it to gaming, internet culture and the ways fans organise around bands.
Gaming, fandoms and online subcultures
Ramsay regularly covers video games as culture rather than just products, co-authoring features on blockbuster titles like Black Ops 7 that examine how long-running franchises work to stay on top. She writes in-depth pieces on emerging games such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, tracing its path from a pandemic project to a critically acclaimed title and exploring why it resonates so strongly with players.
Her expertise is also drawn on in BBC audio formats, where she explains the rise of hit games from China and unpacks both their appeal and the controversies that surround them.
She brings linguistic and world-building aspects of games into her storytelling, discussing how constructed languages like Skyrim’s Dovahzul help bring fictional worlds to life for fans. Across these stories she treats streamers, esports and wider geek culture as interconnected communities, linking game mechanics, online discourse and fan creativity in accessible language for general audiences.
Youth-focused, cross-platform storytelling
At the BBC, Ramsay works across broadcast, digital and social platforms, combining interviewing, producing, filming and editing into end-to-end packages.
She uses YouTube explainers to respond quickly to audience questions on major news topics, including health crises, by taking viewer queries straight to experts and turning the content around within hours. For stories like her Linkin Park Download interview, she repurposes the material across formats, editing a YouTube video, creating social clips, writing a BBC News website article and arranging a Newsbeat interview that extends the narrative.
Her role includes shaping scripts and refining output alongside correspondents and presenters so that complex subjects around politics, tech, subcultures or music land clearly with online-first audiences. She also creates voxes and short-form videos for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, using on-the-ground filming and social-first packaging to show how fans and players experience events as they happen.
Subculture and fandom specialist
Ramsay’s professional description emphasises her specialism in subcultures and fandoms, spanning gaming, alternative music, horror, animation, streamers, esports and wider geek culture. She focuses on covering these scenes authentically from within, highlighting that many of the communities she reports on are ones she belongs to herself. That perspective underpins her aim to challenge gaps in legacy media coverage and bring niche but highly engaged audiences into mainstream news, particularly through the BBC News YouTube team. Her work has been recognised within the organisation for overcoming significant challenges, and she describes her current stage in the newsroom as the most rewarding of her career.
Across music, gaming and broader culture, she maintains a balance between lighter entertainment pieces and serious explainers, keeping subcultures and fandoms at the core of her beat.
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.