The Hedon Local News Hub - The Concept

So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.' Comedian Tim Vine

'LOCAL NEWS' is something that matters or is of interest to you in your local area. What matters to you, depends on your perspective and community that you are active in at that particular time. We are all active in communities even if we don't think of it that way - we're active in communities as neighbours, as workers, as travellers and at leisure. And as our lives interact with these communities then 'local news' takes on a different relevance. If you're stuck in a traffic jam then the relevant and useful local news is that which will inform you of how long you will be stuck - and what you might do to get out of the jam.

So the term 'local news' really does depend on where you're calling from and in which particular 'community' you are active in at that particular time. This is important to clarify because 'local news' is something that a new project proposed for Hedon hopes to discuss in some detail.

Hyperlocal news-gathering websites like the Hedon Blog, the Paull Village Hall website and Beverley's HU17.net concentrate on our 'community of place' i.e. where we live. Their 'niche' is our street, neighbourhood, village or town and they strive to bring together everything useful about that place under one virtual roof. How well they do that is open for discussion. But the fact they exist and are increasingly becoming a source of internet based information for local residents within those places means that they are a factor that can not be ignored.

The people behind the growing number (hundreds!) of hyperlocal websites across the country are varied and have different motivations. Some are redundant or student journalists, others are community activists or groups with a sense of civic duty - but all share a passionate belief that reporting the local news and providing local information can play a useful part in improving our communities of place.

Hedon Blog founder and Editor, Ray Duffill (that's me!) hopes to build on the hyperlocal model by establishing a Hedon Local News Hub which will have definitive aims to build a 'local news' infrastructure that can lead to better informed, engaged, and active local communities in Hedon.

The Hedon Local News Hub would aim to be a constituted partnership body bringing together volunteers, local communities, voluntary groups, local business, training providers that can draw in funding to provide a dedicated news-gathering and news-sharing service in the town - and a network of community citizen-journalist reporters with access to training and technical support opportunities. This network would dig out and investigate local issues - hold local authorities to account and strengthen local democracy, and be a source of positive press around which community action could ferment.

The News Hub would research what the local news-needs of the Hedon community actually are and then plan to meet these while providing a community newswire service to link those with news to share with existing media organisations that can do this.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring this concept. If you would like to get involved, have advice or information to share, or otherwise wish to express an interest in this idea, then please e-mail hu12@gmx.com and put "News Hub" in the subject line. 

In writing this article I have been inspired by the Media Trust document Meeting the news needs of local communities (published on Scribd).