hyperlocals


and Hove News do not bombard readers with pop-up advertising or other distractions. The same is true of Blog Preston, set up in 2009 by Ed Walker, then a student at the University of Central Lancashire, and now co-edited by Rachel Smith and Kate Rosindale. Smith, who previously wrote court reports for the website as a freelance, is proud of its quality and content. “You don’t have to complete a survey to read a story,” she says. A former staffer at the Lancashire Post, she continues to freelance for other publications while co-editing Blog Preston. As well as stories about crime and missing people, the site


carries council news, which is generally well read. “We’ve a lot of local contacts. Our Facebook inbox is always pinging away,” she says. “We try to keep everything local and relevant.” In 2014, Blog Preston became a community interest


company, and its surpluses are reinvested in the business. More recently, it began selling recruitment advertising along with other advertising. The website also raises money from ‘instant articles’ ‘promoted on Facebook. These articles load onto the social media site far more quickly than they would on to the website and the articles then direct readers to the website. Relations with the Post are good, with Blog Preston supporting campaigns run by the paper. Most importantly, the website makes her feel part of the town where she was born and grew up. “I feel like it’s my community,” she says. “I say: ‘I’m Rachel from Blog Preston’ – and people know who you are.”


Llanelli Online was started three years ago with an office opposite the building where the Llanelli Star, a print paper, was once based. It has a team of five including editor Alan Evans and focuses entirely on Llanelli – readers object if it reports an accident on the M4 a few miles outside the town. Wales News Online is run from the same office and carries


news from throughout Wales. Funding comes from advertising, with a Welsh Government grant of £200,000 helping to pay for journalists. “We are churning out more content than any local newspaper,” says Evans. However, Carmarthenshire Council does not place notices with Llanelli Online as it does not “conform to the definition of a newspaper”. A monthly print magazine closed after six editions as it did not attract enough advertising. Around the UK, some independent news websites appear


“ ”


It’s hard to make money out of journalism or from the internet as a journalist if you want to provide community news, but it’s not impossible


to be flourishing more than others. It is not unusual to find sites with broken links, and contact details for journalists (including phone numbers) can be elusive. “The sector is incredibly diverse,” says Matt Abbott,


pointing out that creating a news website carries the same risk as any business start-up. Some are run by journalists who spot a news gap locally but rely on other jobs to make a living. In some cases, a title may start online and then a print edition is launched to attract more advertising. Others start as protest magazines and expand or disappear. “It’s not just financial pressures that may mean a business fails,” he adds. “It can be personal issues such as family problems.” Back in Southampton, Churchward is aware that, since its launch, everyone has provided articles for In Common for free. The article on hedgehogs was written by her web designer, while another volunteer is photographer Chris Moorhouse, a colleague at the Echo before he was made redundant in 2017.


Moorhouse, also a freelance, is pleased to be involved with a media outlet that values good pictures rather than using those by “reporters with iPhones”. In the long run, Churchward would like to pay contributors.


Perhaps £10 per hour in line with the living wage, although that throws up the issue of whether non-journalists should receive the same as journalists. For now, she is pleased that her site is helping to cement


community cohesion in Southampton. “I didn’t want to lose that sense of community,” she says. “I always valued being able to give people a voice.”


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