Across Britain and around the world, the internet is allowing new forms of community journalism and hyperlocal websites to flourish. Often, these new services are in areas where traditional newspapers no longer exist. It’s an exciting new area of media development. I’m Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism here at Cardiff University, where we have a Centre for Community Journalism which studies and supports these new services. This course is going to look at why these services are growing up, what makes them successful, and how you can launch one of your own. Well, when the local paper goes, the danger is that the spirit of the community will go.

You can’t do everything by word of mouth, even in a medium size community, in a small town, or a small part of the city. You need a quality of information, you need to know how to get it, you need to be able to get it quickly. Actually, hyperlocal sites are often speedier updating than newspapers were ever able to do. People more than ever want to know what’s going on close to them in their neighbourhoods, in their communities, and they’re saying repeatedly that this is the thing the media don’t provide for them. So the Brixton Bugle comes out monthly on the last Friday of the month, and we print 10,000 copies.

And the paper’s normally around 24, 28 pages, depending on advertising. The reason why we chose Britain as the patch for the blog and the Bugle is because by saying I live in the centre of Brixton, love it, and feel passionate about it, and felt that it needed to be better represented in the media and the people that lived here deserved a better provision of news than they were getting. I have absolutely no idea where all of this will be in 10 or 20 years’ time. It’s a field of massive experiment, creativity, and innovation, but I’m certain it will be one of the most exciting results of the internet age. It will be a revival of hyperlocal media and hyperlocal activism.

This course will show you successful examples of community journalism, explain the theory behind this new sector, expand the skills you need to launch your own site, and introduce you to a network of people who can help support you in the future.