'The future's bright – the future's local' – new report from Carnegie Trust UK

The Carnegie Trust has today produced the report, The future’s bright – the future’s local, after studying the space and its opportunities while running the Neighbourhood News initiative in locations around the UK.

Over the last two years, the Trust has been working with five local news organisations across as part of its project, which was set up to help develop innovative ways of producing local news with local organisations.

The headline grabbing recommendation from the report today is that the government should widen existing financial interventions in the local news market to include hyperlocals. For instance, it should permit local authorities to spend some of their statutory advertising budgets through hyperlocal news providers.

Along with changes to the way the BBC, Ofcom and the Lottery work, the recommendations are far reaching and would make significant changes to the further opportunity for independent and hyperlocal media operators.

Talk About Local has been working with Carnegie throughout the process and founder William Perrin explains more:

“The volume and quality of output produced by the sites we evaluated was remarkable given the tiny cash resources at their disposal.

“These sites and others like them show the way to a new future of news produced by social and commercial entrepreneurs on a human scale rather than traditional, impersonal, capital-intensive news corporations.”

You can download the full Carnegie report here.

The Future s Bright the Future s Local Web FINAL

The Talk About Local evaluation report is here.

Neighbourhood News Final Evaluation Report From TAL