Local News & Information

Asynchronous forms of engagement can be synchronized with regular weekly or daily reports provided by the platform that serve something of the function that “talk of the town” columns in local newspapers used to provide.

The new public square is not centred on a stable set of shared sources; instead it is structured by a small number of competing, for-profit platform companies bundling a bewildering array of stuff for different people in different ways through various ranking and recommendation algorithms.

Audiences and advertisers seem to prefer this new reality,... See more

People will pay for the convenience of not poring through internet sludge all day and having someone clarify what they need to know.”

Journalists are needed so people have access to the information and answers they need to guide their lives.

that local journalism is a crucial facet of society that connects us to the places we live and the people who live around us and gives us a sorely needed sense of shared reality in an atomised age; that this kind of journalism has been decimated in Greater Manchester and pretty much every other community in this country because its old business... See more

Note that I’m casting the goal in terms of the number of local reporters, not the number of local news outlets, hours of coverage or number of articles. We shouldn’t care about “saving newspapers,” or any particular delivery system. New models of news distribution will continue to be invented — along with compelling new storytelling techniques —... See more