In my last blog post, I wrote about how many regional papers are calling themselves community newspapers despite being nothing of the sort.
I want to reclaim the term "community newspaper". A real community newspaper is created by the community with the fundamental aim of enriching the community it serves. This enrichment may take many forms, including but not limited to:
At the time of writing, Google is returning 1,160,000 results for the search term “community newspaper”, as opposed to 192,000 for “regional newspaper”. On that basis, you could be forgiven for thinking that community journalism has become the most prevalent form of print media in the world today.
At the end of next week, I’ll be leaving Leys News, the community newspaper I’ve been editing for the past two years. I’ve learnt a lot in that time, but the biggest epiphany was this: community journalism is a sector in its own right.
It’s so easy to start a blog. People do it all the time. And I'm yet another monkey with a typewriter coming to join the party.
I hope that this blog will get across a rough idea of what on earth it is that I do. More ambitiously, I'm hoping that sharing my experiences and views will be a good way of connecting with others in my line of work - whatever on earth it is that we do. But, frankly, I'll be happy if I can avoid the deep pit of one-post wonders.
