Tag Archives: Archant

Emma Youle: “Local newspapers are one of the best places to do in-depth investigations because they are very well connected to the community”

1 Reply
emma youle

Emma Youle speaking at the Data Journalism UK conference in 2017 – photo by Wan Ulfa Nur Zuhra

As Archant’s award-winning Emma Youle announces she is to leave local newspapers to join Huffington Post UK as a special correspondent. Victoria Oliveres spoke to the investigative journalist about setting up local investigations, using data, and campaigning.

If you’ve looked at any UK journalism awards ceremony in the last few years, chances are you will have seen Emma Youle’s name: winner of the Private Eye Paul Foot Award in 2017, and the Weekly Reporter of the Year at Regional Press Awards 2016, she has also been shortlisted in many others, largely for her approach to showing the impact of national decisions at local level.

This success has come after a career of over a decade in journalism, including the last three years as part of Archant‘s investigations unit, where she uncovered in-depth stories from London boroughs.

Setting up local investigations

The unit was set up in 2015, which Youle considers to be quite pioneering at the time.

“I think local newspapers are one of the best places to do in depth investigations because they are very well connected to the community,” Emma says. Continue reading →

Local journalism is getting more data-driven — and other thoughts on Data Journalism UK 2017

1 Reply
megan lucero

Megan Lucero of the Bureau Local – photo: Jonny Jacobsen

Last week I hosted the second annual Data Journalism UK conference — a convenient excuse to bring together speakers from the news media, industry experts, charities and startups working in the field. You can read write ups on Journalism.co.ukand the BBC Academy website (who kindly hosted the event at BBC Birmingham), but I thought I’d also put my own thoughts down here…

The Bureau and the BBC: 2 networked models for supporting data journalism

2017 saw the launch of two projects with a remit to generate and stimulate data journalism at a local level: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Bureau Local project, and the BBC’s Shared Data Unit. Continue reading →

Here are all the presentations from Data Journalism UK 2017

4 Replies
Megan Lucero at Data Journalism UK 2017. Photo by Jonny Jacobsen

Megan Lucero at Data Journalism UK 2017. Photo by Jonny Jacobsen

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting the second annual Data Journalism UK conference in Birmingham.

The event featured speakers from the regional press, hyperlocal publishers, web startups, nonprofits, and national broadcasters in the UK and Ireland, with talks covering investigative journalism, automated factchecking, robot journalism, the Internet of Things, and networked, collaborative data journalism. You can read a report on the conference at Journalism.co.uk. Continue reading →

Stop being a snob: 10 ways hyperlocal media is contributing to UK journalism

6 Replies

In a guest post, Damian Radcliffe says that hyperlocal sites are being held back by regional newspaper snobbery, while he gives 10 reasons why hyperlocal should be recognised as a valuable part of local media.

With decade-old sites like the London SE1 community website and OnTheWight being joined by newcomers such as East Grinstead Online and Alt Reading, the hyperlocal sector is an increasingly established part of our local media ecology.

Research suggests that there are 408 active hyperlocal sites in the UK – compared to 1,045 local and regional newspapers (2011 Newspaper Society figures cited by the NUJ) – and hyperlocal media has attracted attention from funders, policy makers and researchers in recent years.

Despite this recognition, there remains a glass ceiling for the sector, particularly in terms of relationships with mainstream media. Continue reading →

Newspapers on Twitter: who has the most click-throughs – and why?

7 Replies
Regional newspapers on Twitter - percentage of followers retweeting

Regional newspapers on Twitter – percentage of followers retweeting – click for interactive version

Newspaper Twitter accounts with the highest click-through rates tend to follow more people, customise tweets for Twitter and engage in more conversation, according to an analysis by Patrick Scott in the first of a series of three posts.

The number of followers a Twitter account has is often assumed to be representative of the influence they command. But is it what we should be measuring? Continue reading →

Geotagging: the experiences of Archant’s Web Editor

11 Replies

Could 2008 be the year geotagging breaks through? Archant are the ones to watch in the UK with (delayed) plans to geotag all their stories. I asked Suffolk’s Web Editor James Goffin to write a piece for the OJB on his experience with the process – and the opportunities it’s opening up. 

Journalists have always asked the question “Where?”. People are interested in news from where they live, and it’s a sad fact that tragedies abroad have more resonance when there’s a British passport holder involved.

As communities have become more mobile, those associations have become more complex – people reminisce about their home town, where they used to work; they are interested in where they live now, where their brothers and sisters have moved to. The world around them has become more complex too, as has the sheer amount of information being pumped out around them. Continue reading →