Your Thurrock to launch second on-line newspaper after scooping Carnegie Trust award

CARNEGIE UK Trust has revealed the five winning projects of its £50,000 ‘Neighbourhood News’ initiative which was set up to help develop innovative ways of producing local news.

The winners, Port Talbot MagNet in South Wales, ‘Your Thurrock.com’ in Essex, ‘Brixton Media Ltd’ in London, WHALE Arts in Edinburgh and ‘Cybermoor Ltd’ in Cumbria, were selected from nearly 80 applications from across the UK and Ireland to become a ‘Carnegie Partner’ in the Neighbourhood News initiative.

In return for £10k funding support each, the winning organisations will be required to participate in an external evaluation of their new local news project – so that their experiences and learning can be shared with policymakers, practitioners and funders across the UK and Ireland.

YourThurrock plans to launch a second on-line newspaper called YourHarlow.Com

A spokesperson for YourThurrock said;

“We are very grateful to the Carnegie Trust for placing their faith in us. It comes as YourThurrock is a few months away from its fifth birthday.

“We are growing and learning all the time but feel the time was right to launch a second on-line paper.

We already have a band of aspiring journalists, bloggers, film-makers and social historians in Harlow who are keen and ready to join our venture.”

Douglas White, Senior Policy Officer at Carnegie UK Trust, and Chair of the Neighbourhood News Advisory Group explained:

“The way we consume our news has changed hugely in recent years. Much of the content we now access comes from online sources, including online newspapers, Twitter and Facebook, while traditional sources of news have been under pressure. We are concerned that the supply of local news is particularly under threat.

“If people can’t access news about their local area then this creates a dangerous democratic deficit. The Neighbourhood News project was established to help test new models of delivering local news to meet demand.

“We received some fantastic applications from projects where local groups are producing great news outlets and creating a real sense of belonging for communities.

“We are delighted to be supporting all of our winners, and look forward to working alongside them to help make their vision a reality.”

The Carnegie UK Trust has a long-standing interest in the relationship between the media, civil society and democracy, stretching back to the 1940s. Most recently, the Trust published a report revealing where the nation sits on media ethics ahead of the Leveson report being published.