As part of the current discussions about the future shape of the BBC, there is a lot of thought being directed towards how we interact with the UK’s local news media. What can we do that supports the sector, that ensures local life is well reported from a wide variety of viewpoints, that combines the best of what we do with the best of what others do?
The Hyperlocal Forum, which met for the first time in Birmingham on Thursday 12 November, is one way of finding out how the most diverse, vibrant and changing part of the local news landscape can interact with the BBC. We’ve committed to convening it twice a year, in whatever format works best (more on that in a moment).
Firstly, thank you to everyone who came and made it such a productive conversation, their names are listed at the end of this post. Naturally enough discussion travelled outside the room via Twitter and TalkaboutLocal have blogged a summary here.
Linking out
As Local Live modules roll out across the UK, so the opportunity to add links to other people’s journalism increases. All the online eds who run the English news sites are aware of the local web list and wherever possible will signpost BBC users to relevant content. A number of places use an agreed hashtag to actively suggest stories to include in the local live feed – the more people who take part, the better. It’s not as visible as we’d like and we’re working on that, but we’re confident it’ll get more profile across bbc.co.uk as soon as the roll-out is complete in the summer.
Training
There appears to be a widespread desire for the BBC to support the hyperlocal sector through training and development, beyond what is currently online. Sharing best practice and raising standards would benefit everyone, so we’ve taken away a long list of interesting suggestions for the Academy to mull over. We will continue to make sure that any training we’re involved in with other industry partners is open to hyperlocal operations too.
Charter ideas for local
We chewed over the BBC’s three primary ideas for this topic in the next charter (p65, section 5.3 of The Future of the BBC). While the local accountability reporters plan is being discussed, there was broad support for the news bank idea (notwithstanding the technical challenges) and also a data unit that made its work available for other news outlets to use. The head of English Regions, David Holdsworth, had made it clear at the outset of the day that the idea of the BBC buying some types of content from hyperlocals in future was very much on the table. However the detail of how that might work in practice is still to be worked out.
Future forums
We’re going to look at two ways of running the next forums. Firstly we’ll look at where we can incorporate them alongside existing events which have a relevant audience and secondly we’ll look at using technology to increase remote participation. If you’d like to suggest a suitable event or a simple solution to include a virtual audience, you can contact me matthew.barraclough@bbc.co.uk directly.
Contributors included: David Prior (Altrincham Today); Luke Addis (Birmingham Updates); Anna Noble (Birmingham Eastside); Emma Meese and Hannah Scarborough (C4CJ); Pamela Pinski (Digbeth is Good); Martin Russo (ENTWO); David Hayward (Hayward BlackMedia); Kathryn Geels (Nesta); Keith Morris (Network Norfolk); Beth Balshaw-English (Preston Local News); Sarah Hartley and Will Perrin(Talk About Local); Russell from (Twickerati); Frank Kennedy (Tyburn Mail); Pat Gamble (West Bridgford Wire); and Sarah Pulleyn (Your Local Link).
Matthew Barraclough, BBC Local Journalism Working Group
