David Harte

The Value of UK Hyperlocal Community News

The public interest value of news is often viewed through the prism of its relationship to democracy. In this respect news should act as: a source of accurate and plural information for citizens; a watchdog on elites; a mediator and/or representative of communities; and as an advocate of the public in campaigning terms. All of these roles are under pressure in the United Kingdom’s commercial local news sector. This has led many to speculate, often without evidence, that the output of a new generation of (mainly online) hyperlocal citizen news producers might (at least partially) play some of these roles. To test this assumption, we completed 34 semi-structured interviews with producers, the largest content analysis to date of UK hyperlocal news content (1941 posts on 313 sites), and the largest ever survey of UK community news practitioners (183 responses). We found that these sites produce a good deal of news about community activities, local politics, civic life and local business. Official news sources get a strong platform, but the public (local citizens, community groups) get more of a say than in much mainstream local news. Although there was little balanced coverage in the traditional sense, many community journalists have developed alternative strategies to foster and inform plural debate around contentious local issues. The majority of hyperlocal news producers cover community campaigns and a significant minority have initiated their own. We also found that critical public-interest investigations are carried out by a (surprisingly) large number of community news producers.

Discourses of Enterprise in Hyperlocal Community News in the UK

In recent years, a new wave of hyperlocal community news websites has developed in the United Kingdom (UK), with many taking advantage of new opportunities provided by free open-source publishing platforms. Given the trend in the UK newspaper industry towards closure and retrenchment of their local and regional press titles, it is perhaps understandable that policy-makers have shifted their gaze to these sites. This article examines the viability of hyperlocal news services with a particular focus on those that are independently owned and managed. Such operations often have a longevity that sits in contrast to a number of failed attempts by major media organisations to operate in the hyperlocal space. Yet many of the business models that underpin these sites seem precarious, often benefiting from a degree of self-exploitation. Drawing on 35 interviews with hyperlocal news publishers from across the UK, this article argues that publishers draw upon a civic discourse in order to make sense of their practice. This framing may limit the potential to develop economic sustainability and risks alienating policy-makers keen to work with an idealised “fictive” hyperlocal entrepreneur.

Reciprocity and The Hyperlocal Journalist

Increased interest in hyperlocal news has led to growing evidence of its economic value, its ability to play traditional democratic roles associated with news, and its merits and deficiencies in comparison with the outputs of a declining established commercial news industry. Given many hyperlocal producers cite the desire to play a role in producing better communities, this paper breaks new ground in examining the social and cultural dimensions of hyperlocal journalism’s news-making, community-building, and place-making roles. We examine this emergent cultural form’s affinity with telling stories, and enabling conversations, about civic and political concerns, but also its affinity with, and celebration of, the banal everyday. Employing the novel theoretical concept of reciprocal journalism, we provide new evidence about the mutually reinforcing online, and offline, practices that underpin relationships between producers and the communities they inhabit and represent. Drawing on evidence from the most extensive multi-method study of UK hyperlocal news to date, it demonstrates the different kinds of direct and indirect reciprocal exchange practices common in community news, and shows how such work, often composed of journalistic and community-activist practices, can enable and foster relationships of sustained reciprocity which improve and strengthen both hyperlocal news and the communities it serves.

Issues in Developing an Audio-Visual Cluster in the West Midlands

Abstract The uptake of clusters as a model with which to develop regional economies has been variable since the UK government first issued advice to regional development agencies in the late 1990s. The West Midlands made clusters one of its key strategies for economic growth and nominated the audio-visual sector as an embryonic cluster in order to help support its development. This article examines the development of this cluster from its inception and identifies issues in the way it was conceived and the roles played by the regional development agency, industry and higher education. The author draws on government and regional policies, cluster strategies and other internal documentation produced for the cluster, as well his own experience as an innovation manager for the cluster.

Hyperlocal Journalism: The decline of local newspapers and the rise of online community news

In the wake of the withdrawal of commercial journalism from local communities at the beginning of the 21st century, Hyperlocal Journalism critically explores the development of citizen-led community news operations. The book draws together a wide range of original research by way of case studies, interviews, and industry and policy analysis, to give a complete view of what is happening to communities as their local newspapers close or go into decline to be replaced by emerging forms of digital news provision. This study takes the United Kingdom as its focus but its findings speak to common issues found in local media systems in other Western democracies. The authors investigate who is producing hyperlocal news and why, as well as production practices, models of community and participatory journalism, and the economics of hyperlocal operations. Looking holistically at hyperlocal news, Hyperlocal Journalism paints a vivid picture of citizens creating their own news services via social media and on free blogging platforms to hold power to account, redress negative reputational geographies, and to tell everyday stories of community life. The book also raises key questions about the sustainability of such endeavours in the face of optimism from commentators and policy-makers.