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Newry City is playing a central part as one of only six UK wide focus zones for a new local news project.
The Local News Plans pilot has been organised by the Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) to tackle what it sees as a crisis in local journalism and health in communities as a whole.
Ballybot House in the city hosted the recent event with attendance from the area’s MP Mickey Brady (SF) and Stormont Finance Minister Conor Murphy (SF) as well as local authority, business, community and media representatives.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDDC) chairman Michael Savage (SDLP), who hails from a background in the media says he was encouraged by the PINF’s interest in the city.
He said: “The role of the local media is not only as important to the community and economy, but also important in terms of holding local government to accoun
“It is very important that this event has gained a broad range of not only stakeholders, but potentially news makers and news gathers.
“I congratulate the organisers of the event for putting a new focus on local news and indeed its important role for the future.”
Head of the Local News Plans project, Sameer Padania has warned of the threat of news deserts appearing across the UK if support for local news is allowed to continue to decline.
He said: “The event at Ballybot House in Newry was conceived to test our hypothesis that the crisis facing local news is not just a problem for news organisations and journalists, but for the whole community and therefore representatives from across the whole community need to understand how they can play an active role in responding to this crisis.
“We spoke to a number of experts to get feedback on our shortlist, including in Northern Ireland.
“We picked Newry because of its manageable size, mix of locally and family-owned media and local digital media, and evidence of community organising and campaigning, for example, around the regeneration plan for the Albert Basin and the Newry 2020 agenda and its position as a border town, bordering the EU.
“It is widely acknowledged that a decline in or even disappearance of local news, what some call ‘news deserts’ has negative impacts on local democracy, accountability and the economy, and this affects the health of the community as a whole.
“At the convening, we facilitate a collective discussion about what’s working and not working in the present day local media environment, what a better future could look like, and what support the various participants in the convening and beyond could offer to local media.
“We, the facilitators, then take the record of those discussions away, we distil them into a document, which we share back to those community stakeholders, and which we then publish (on localnewsplan.uk) as the first version of their ‘Local News Plan’.”
