Bridging the News Gap

Bridging the News Gap – Addressing the Democratic Deficit for Communities

There’s a problem with our local news. In many areas, the capacity of local newspapers is withering and standards are declining. This is leaving a democratic deficit across many regions and making accountability a long-forgotten dream for many communities.

But there are some organisations working to address these problems, building new local news outlets that have different relationships with their audience: more transparent, more collaborative and more like a genuine community than a readership. They’re building sustainable new democratic business models that rely not on advertisers or corporate owners but on regular donations from a community of members or co-owners.

Advances in both transparency movements and tools and platforms for investigative research are making it easier than ever for active informed citizens to hold power structures that affect their communities to account.

Join this workshop to learn the skills, tools and techniques that can help you advance accountability in your own local area, whether you are a journalist, researcher or just a member of a community that wants to take some power back into your own hands!

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Tom Sanderson is Project Manager at the Centre for Investigative Journalism, an educational charity that specialises providing training to journalists, researchers, producers and students in the practice and methodology of investigative journalism. For the past two years, Tom has been running projects across the UK aimed at increasing the capacity of community-led news outlets to conduct public-interest investigations.

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