We’re Looking for People in the Rotunda and North City Areas to Tell Us What You Want from Your Local Media

Do you live or work around the north city or Rotunda areas? If so, we want to hear from you for a journalism project starting mid-September.

A lot of the time, and despite our best intentions, the flow of communication in journalism is mostly one-sided. We’d like to change that and listen more to the needs of the communities we try to serve.

We want to know what people living and working in this area think about and want from their local media, through focus groups and surveys. And then, to work together to provide that.

That could mean us covering specific stories, providing free journalism training, offering paid freelance journalism work, or a chance to work on a group journalism project together – or whatever else participants would like to do.

The first wave of the project, we hope, will run from 15 September to mid-October and will involve two group chat sessions, ranging from an hour to two hours each, depending on people’s time commitments.

We’ll draw up a menu of what we can offer, based on what people have said during those sessions about what they want. And then, we’ll ask those who have engaged to vote on that.

The next phase will be doing what participants choose. That’ll take place from October until December, and depending on what participants want to do, will end in either December or January.

So, if you live or work around this area, or close enough to it, and want to find out more, please click on our registration form and fill in your details. Also if you know people who might be interested, please feel free to share.

Even if you live far outside of this area, please do feel free to register interest. While we may not be able to involve you in this round, it will help us gauge whether there is demand to replicate this elsewhere in the city – if, of course, it goes well and people think it’s worth it.

This initiative is supported by the Stars4Media programme.