Does the news make you hopeful?
Also meet the newest member in our news collaborative and get the lowdown on what it takes to run one of the UK's most northerly publications in Shetland
This week, I read a new report that made me excited about my role as a journalist. The News Literacy Lab was established in 2021 to help young people navigate the news. Rcently, the organisation has launched a specific educational curriculum for 14-18 year-olds – and this week, they published their first set of findings.
A key part of the programme is around solutions journalism, an approach to news reporting that investigates not just problems but how people are trying to solve them. And so, while some of the comments in the report were as you might expect – students who felt more equipped to spot bias, or who became more interested in news overall – others caught me by surprise. Over and over, young people involved in the programme talked about how it had increased their sense of hope, optimism and motivation for the future.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the everyday tasks and challenges of our work and easy to forget to think about its impact or purpose. It excited me to remember that my reporting had the potential to inspire such strong feelings and even action in the people who read and watch it, whether that’s through taking a solutions journalism approach or in what topics are covered and whose voices are included.
As our partners in communities across Scotland know, when people feel heard and informed, they can feel powerful and hopeful – and I feel lucky to be in a role where I can have that effect.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter, which is full of reasons to be hopeful – from stories about positive community initiatives and tackling health inequalities to Hans Marter’s reflections on running Shetland News for almost twenty years!
Until next week,
Eve
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News from the network
A warm welcome to our newest publication: Kyle Chronicle.
Kyle Chronicle is the first independent quarterly magazine for the communities of the Kyle of Sutherland, launched in December 2019. It covers a vast - and sparsely populated - area in central Sutherland: Ardgay, Bonar Bridge, Culrain, Rosehall, Invershin, Spinningdale, Migdale, Strath Oykel, Strathcarron and Glen Cassley. You will find more about them in the next week’s newsletter.
The Scottish Beacon welcomes all independent community-based publications throughout Scotland. We aspire to be the beacon that ignites connections among communities throughout the county. If you are aware of a local publication that should be part of this initiative, please inform us.
Meet our partners…
In each newsletter, we’ll introduce you to one of our partners. This week its the turn of Hans J Marter - Editor of The Shetland News
Tell us about your publication.
Shetland News is an independent online news service that has been covering current affairs in Britain’s most northerly island group for the last 20 years.
It all started as a news agency in the early 1990s when freelance material had value, and regional newspapers still did proper local news reporting. Our business model changed over time in response to the freelance market starting to erode and then collapsing.
The internet was quickly becoming the thing of the future, and some bright minds could see the potential for publishing from very early on.
So, when Shetland News was first launched in 1995, it was said to be the first online-only local newspaper in the world. It didn’t survive for long, though, and it was more than seven years later that the time was right to pick up the pieces and launch Shetland News again.
How/when/why did you get involved?
I joined Shetland News Agency in 1996 and initially did a lot of TV reporting for Grampian TV, part of the ITV network, as well as filing news copy for the regional and national press. When the then-owner decided to retire two years later, I became the sole owner of the agency.
By 2003, it had become very clear that times were changing rapidly, and we had to act and change as well. At the time, the agency operated as a partnership of two journalists and joined forces with a web designer; we re-launched Shetland News in an attempt to supplement our income through advertising.
As a freelance agency, we had plenty of news copy for which we created our own outlet. Shetland News has grown from very small beginnings, initially contributing just a few hundred pounds per month, to now being a trusted news source with a faithful readership generating sufficient income to employ five people.
What does your average day look like when working for the publication?
As the owner/editor of the website, I am responsible for the general direction of travel. At the moment, we have two news reporters, a webmaster/graphic designer and an advertising manager. We all work remotely; in fact, both our webmaster and the advertising manager are not even based on the islands.
The day usually starts at around 8 a.m. by checking the news, e-mails and messages that have come in overnight. There are usually a number of entries in the diary for each day (council meetings, court, invitations to events), and we usually quickly agree on who is doing what.
There is also an increasing amount of admin, bookkeeping, social media moderation, and the occasional troubleshooting to do in order to keep the whole operation afloat.
By late afternoon, we will have published and shared anything between five and eight, and sometimes as many as ten stories and letters. I usually manage to get out of the office before 6 p.m., but we all will continue to have an eye on the news, and, if need be, a news story will be researched, written and added to the website late at night.
Tell us about something you are proud of.
I am proud of having turned the attempt to create an online news service into a viable business that provides a livelihood to four employees and helps a number of freelance writers and photographers with additional income.
We have established an independently owned news organisation that is trusted and widely read in an already crowded local news environment.
Shetland is anything but a news desert. A weekly newspaper serves the islands’ 23,000 inhabitants with a website, a BBC radio station that broadcasts 30 minutes of local news and features five days a week, a commercial radio station and by us, Shetland News at www.shetnews.co.uk
How does the existence of your publication benefit the community you serve?
I guess this is something you need to ask the community we serve rather than me. But judging by the amount of positive feedback I am getting from local people on the islands and also those living away from Shetland, we are doing a reasonably good job in accurately reflecting life and current affairs on the isles.
This is also evidenced by the volume of advertising we receive from local businesses and agencies, including the local authority and the NHS Shetland. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
What made you want to join the Scottish Beacon?
Ever since the regional press abandoned local news reporting, there has been a massive gap in the market. People are primarily local people and, hence, are interested in what is going on in their immediate surroundings. That’s why local news matters.
At the same time, many of the stories we research and publish have wider implications and may well be relevant and of interest to an audience outside our immediate area. This is where Scottish Beacon comes in.
Similarly to how Shetland News started 20 years ago, this is a project we, as small, motivated, independent publishers, are all in charge of. There is a lot of positive energy here, and while there is still a long way to go, I feel we are on the right way.
Why does independent, community-based local news matter?
I probably answered that one already in my previous responses: yes, of course, it matters, and it matters because it’s independent and community-based!
Because it is closer to the truth and better reflects the reality than any regional or national news could ever do. Because it is accountable and because our journalists are members of the community they report on.
Elsewhere in local news…
A new report out of the U.S. this month sets out a ‘manifesto for community-centred journalism’ and presents many thought-provoking findings on journalism’s role, principles and methods: “the mission of community-centred journalism isn’t to “save” journalism or to restore local journalism as it used to exist but rather to strive to better serve the information needs of our communities.”
The Public Interest News Foundation has set up a WhatsApp community for independent news publishers across the UK, including a group for everyone to talk together and spaces for those in specific regions and nations. The community is intended as a space for discussion, collaboration and support as well as for PINF to share training, research and funding opportunities. To find out more and to be added to the community in Scotland, email newsforallscotland@gmail.com.
Our founder Rhiannon Davies is still away visiting innovative local news projects across the U.S. and Canada as part of a research fellowship. While we miss her at the Scottish Beacon, we’ve loved reading her reflections on LinkedIn throughout her travels.
We wrote in a previous newsletter about Ping!, a hyperlocal distribution platform that was being trialled as a way of ensuring publishers are paid when their work is used further afield. Two months on from the trial’s launch, a new report assesses the lessons learned and next steps for the platform.
If you’ve made it this far, we hope you are enjoying the Beacon and what we have to offer. If you want to support the project to keep it going, you can become a member by clicking the button below.
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