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Hi All

 

You might be interested in the article by John Harris in The Guardian today about the decline of local radio in the UK.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/12/communities-losing-local-radio

 

He argues: “As outlets have closed, the idea of the media as a distant, arrogant thing, seemingly little interested in anything beyond the M25, has been confirmed. Given, moreover, that austerity has blitzed such shared local institutions as libraries, arts venues and youth centres, and that councils themselves are clinging on by their fingernails, you start to wonder how the places they once served are meant to maintain any coherent notion of themselves, let alone have a meaningful collective voice. In such disrupted times as ours, the world surely starts to look even more senseless and arbitrary than it actually is. As the police disappear from your streets, and your services are cut, there are fewer and fewer people who can shine a light on what is happening. If you have a local story that goes to the heart of corporate or governmental failure, where do you go with it?”

 

I’m going to try and meet up with John at some point and put together a visit to some community radio stations in Leicester.

 

I’ve opened a thread on the CMA Forum, if you have any suggestions of the key points to cover and examples we can give him of the effectiveness of alternative, community-based forms of media.

 

https://chat.commedia.org.uk/t/local-communities-are-being-silenced/1399

 

I’m going to be attending the BBC Local News Partnership review meeting in a couple of weeks, and I need to make the case for support for community radio stations being given support to access the Local Democracy Reporting scheme, which they don’t get at the present.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/lnp/

 

Are there any working examples of UK based journalism courses who are working with community radio stations who have access to the Local News Partnership scheme? How is this working? What are the sticking points? What sort of training and capacity building was involved in getting access to the scheme?

 

Any updates, pointers and guidance will be gratefully received.

 

Rob

 

======================

Dr Rob Watson

[log in to unmask]

+447817720688

@robwmedia

Skype: rw_uk67

http://robwatsonmedia.net

======================

 

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