Cardiff university's school of journalism is to set up a new centre for community journalism aimed at equipping people who work on hyperlocal outlets with the skills and support to maintain such projects.
The centre will bring together journalism staff and students with members of the public interested in working in community journalism.
School head Justin Lewis said the centre will seek to play an enabling role to "train, support and develop community journalists".
Journalism studies professor Bob Franklin told journalism.co.uk that it is important for communities "to have a public space" where they can discuss local issues, particularly in the face of newspaper closures. He said:
"When you lose a local paper it's like losing a local pub. When the pub closes a little bit of the village dies. It's the same as a local paper."
This chimes with several contributors to the book I am serialising at present, What do we mean by local? Witness today's instalment and Friday's extract and Wednesday's extract. Oh yes, and see tomorrow's too.
Source: journalism.co.uk
