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Two new innovative projects that aim to boost the provision of local journalism in Newry are being developed in the city thanks to support from the Newry Local News Fund that has been championed over the past few years by the Public Interest News Foundation with the generous support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
'Celebrating Young Voices: The Newry Youth Journalism Programme' led by Kayley Curtis and involving pupils from Our Lady's Grammar School and St Colman's College and the Newry.ie led 'Transparency Hub' which aims to enhance media and citizen access to local government information have both been funded by the initiative.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, the Public Interest News Foundation conducted public consultations with the various groups, stakeholders and entities that create the community of Newry. The purpose of these consultations was simple: to explore what role the local news media plays in the community, and gauge interest for creating a Local News Fund - the first of its kind in the UK.
Across these consultations, the message was nearly unanimous: local media sits at the heart of Newry. It informs residents, connects diverse groups across the city, and fosters a sense of pride and belonging. Yet, a sense of realism underscored these conversations. There was widespread recognition that, like many large areas across the UK, there is a declining presence of local public interest news, largely due to limited funding and staffing.
TransparencyHub: Bringing Local Democracy to Light in Newry
The first project funded by PINF aims to enhance media and citizen access to local government information. Online news outlet Newry.ie CIC's ‘The Transparency Hub’ is an AI-powered platform that plans to revitalise local public interest news in the Newry area.
Newry.ie Editor, Columba O’Hare sees it as a way of simplifying the compiling of stories about local council. O'Hare said “Currently researching a topic can involve endless hours of trawling manually through council meeting agendas, minutes and audio. Audio especially can reveal a lot more about what goes on in the Council Chamber than the subsequent minutes but it can take frustratingly long to check.”
While the Hub is incredibly beneficial to Newry.ie, its community ethos means the platform will also be shared with other news gatherers in the Newry area.
Key features
- Automated document downloading, processing, and uploading
- AI-powered transcription of council meeting audio
- Advanced search capabilities, including semantic search
- Visualisations and analytics tools and named entity recognition to track key people, projects, and issues.
The TransparencyHub platform aims to transform how local news organisations, citizens and activists access information about Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDDC). Rather than having to hunt through hundreds of PDF files and audio recordings, the platform automatically collects data from the council website and makes it easily searchable.
AI is used to convert documents and audio recordings into a comprehensive database where users can find specific discussions in seconds. Dashboards reveal patterns that would otherwise remain hidden, enabling users to track how councillors vote, see which committees they serve on, and which issues they prioritise.
For local journalists, investigating council stories becomes faster and easier. Instead of spending hours reading through documents hoping to find relevant information, reporters can search for keywords and immediately see every time a topic has been discussed.
Citizens are finally able to see how their representatives actually behave, rather than relying on campaign promises or occasional news coverage. Like many councils, NMDDC's online information remains practically inaccessible to most people.
TransparencyHub changes that, turning raw data into a tool for effective public interest reporting, genuine accountability and informed engagement.
Celebrating Young Voices: The Newry Youth Journalism Programme
The second project to be funded came about as local people noted a stark absence of opportunities for young people to pursue journalism, one of the least socially mobile career paths.
In response, Kayley Curtis created the Newry Youth Journalism Programme.
The Newry Journalism-Schools Partnership takes students from local schools and partners them with an established media outlet to create stories written by young people, aimed primarily for other young people. This project met several objectives:
- Support overstretched newsrooms by providing student-generated stories, which are edited by a Youth Journalism Manager — requiring no additional work from already busy editorial teams.
- Offer valuable experience to aspiring journalists by helping them build professional portfolios published by respected local outlets — an asset for university applications or entry-level job opportunities.
- Reconnect young people with local news, a demographic increasingly disengaged from public interest journalism.
For the pilot, the Programme partnered with St Colman’s College who worked with online publication Newry.ie, and Our Lady’s Grammar School who collaborated with the Newry Reporter.
Over the course of three months, students learned the value of local journalism, how to find a compelling story, source and interview subjects, and reflect critically on their interview techniques, before putting this learning into practice by conducting and writing up their own interviews. The students sourced interviewees from across the community: politicians, charity founders, actors, community workers and much more, painting a tapestry of the diversity and vibrancy of Newry.
The young journalists involved in the project are phenomenal: positive, passionate and diligent young people who question and analyse everything - all essential traits of a successful journalist.
Their pieces are due to be published in the Newry Reporter and on Newry.ie later this year.
This project, although simple in nature, is highly replicable across the UK by offering a practical response to the ongoing challenges of underfunded newsrooms and limited entry-level journalism opportunities.
A well-known Irish language proverb in Newry ‘Mól na óige agus tíocfaidh sí’ - praise the youth and they will flourish - perfectly encapsulates the spirit of this project. By teaching, encouraging and affording opportunities to our young people, we are ensuring the future and prosperity of our public interest news, the lynchpin of our connection and communication, for decades to come.
