Neighbourhood News
Neighbourhood News is a £50,000 competition to improve local news reporting. The competition is open to local commercial media and civil society organisations across the UK and Ireland who can apply to become a ‘Carnegie Partner’ and develop innovative ways of producing local news.
The Trust has a long-standing interest in the relationship between the media, civil society and democracy. Through our recent work on Better Journalism, the Trust has identified the need to explore how to support more accessible, pluralistic and diverse local news for citizens and communities.
As part of Neighbourhood News, the Trust is making £10,000 available to five Carnegie Partner organisations during 2013-14. This funding will enable each Partner to deliver a local news project in a clearly defined geographic area. Projects could cover a new area of content, work with new news gathering partners, or develop new platforms to deliver news. An introduction to the project and a competition overview can be found in the Neighbourhood News Leaflet (see icon to right).
Our Carnegie Partners
The external Advisory Group met on 2 May to select the five Carnegie Partners.
The Group reached a consensus that that the Trust should support Brixton Media Ltd, Cybermoor Ltd, Local News South Wales Ltd, WHALE Arts and YourThurrock.com, based on the Trust's primary and balancing selection criteria.
Brixton Media Ltd will provide structured work placements for trainees from the Brixton or Lambeth area who will contribute to news content across the platforms used by Brixton Media Ltd. Trainees will gain experience in the journalism industry while learning skills such as media law, ethics, story-writing, and video and audio editing.
Cybermoor Ltd will train two community reporters from two communities in rural Cumbria. The content produced by the reporters will be published on community websites and be available to all media outlets including the BBC and other local newspapers.
Local News South Wales Ltd will develop their existing online newspaper to produce a monthly printed newspaper to provide local news to those who have no access to the internet, given the lower than average take up of internet in Port Talbot compared to the rest of Wales.
YourThurrock.com will replicate their model to produce a local internet based news source which acts as both a local TV station and an online newspaper in Harlow, where there is a need for news and a democratic deficit. The community and journalism students at Harlow College will be engaged from the beginning of the project to develop user-generated content and a hub for journalism students to develop their skills.