2020: Collaborative Community Journalism

The Trust for London has committed to funding a full training and mentoring programme in the community journalism sector, allowing us to bring our experience of supporting independent public-interest news across the UK, back to the capital.

The project is set to provide investigative skills and guidance to collaborative projects between London-based community journalism outlets and groups working to campaign on the ground around issues that are affecting the local communities. The funding will pay for training and research time for ‘Investigative Fellows’ – young journalists who will work in collaboration with an outlet and a local campaign group, digging into decision making processes and holding local authorities to account.

Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the project had to be postponed while we translated our training and events to online formats. However, we were still able to run a pilot version of the project with the Tottenham Community Press.

“This was an amazing opportunity. Speaking to individuals I learnt about the cost of regeneration and the housing pressures eroding trust between the council and temp tenants.”
Bella Saltiel, Investigative Fellow 2020

The pilot was a great success, and we were able to provide training, expertise and support to staff of the Tottenham Community Press and an excellent young journalist, Bella Saltiel, who grew up in in the community. Using some of the skills learned, as well as her natural talent for digging out a story, Bella wrote ‘Living in Limbo’ a thoroughly researched piece of journalism covering the difficulties faced by residents in the Love Lane estate, many of whom are being displaced and forced out by the regeneration plans of the council. The piece was published in the December 2020 issue of Tottenham Community Press (pages 6-8).

Bella then served as the Editor of the new title Barnet Post and secured a post at the BBC.

Partners

2021: Collaborative Community Journalism

In late 2019, the Trust for London committed to supporting the CIJ to bring our experience in supporting independent public-interest news across the UK back to the capital. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we reluctantly postponed the project while we translated our training and events to online formats.

2018: Data-Driven Community Journalism

During 2018 we ran a focused training programme for community journalists specifically targeted at helping them to use the techniques of Data Journalism for their investigative reporting. Participants were chosen by application and we were able to support them to travel to a series of our trademark hands-on classes and work through their own investigations with the support and mentorship of our data journalism experts.

2018: Community Investigations Training Programmes

Wanting to build on our success with the workshops we held during 2016 and 2017, and backed by repeat funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, in 2018 we partnered up with some of the most established organisations we’d engaged then and worked closely with them to put together tailored programmes which would run for much longer and take a cohort of trainee contributors through their own investigations.

2016-17: Community and Citizen Journalism Workshops

Having identified both the demand for and the desire to produce more public-interest investigative journalism from within the community and citizen journalism sector across the UK, we spoke to many representatives in 2016 to determine the main barriers to advancing this.

Community Journalism

The business of journalism is changing fast. With the collapse of traditional advertising revenue models, the argument that thoroughly researched investigative journalism is a public good that needs to be properly funded cannot be made too strongly or too often.