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The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is an initiative in the United Kingdom funded by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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. The scheme pays for the employment of journalists by local independent news outlets, in order to improve the coverage of issues relating to
local democracy.
Its core purpose is stated as being "to provide impartial coverage of the regular business and workings of local authorities in the UK, and other relevant democratic institutions such as mayoralties,
combined authority areas,
P&CCs,
quango
A quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGO or QANGO) is an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of "quasi-NGO", where NG ...
s, etc."
The scheme launched in 2017.
As of the 2021 contracting round, 165 Local Democracy Reporters (LDRs) were employed by eighteen participating organisations, ranging from large bodies including
DC Thomson
DC Thomson is a media company based in Dundee, Scotland. Founded by David Couper Thomson in 1905, it is best known for publishing ''The Dundee Courier'', ''The Evening Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Post'' newspapers, and the comics ''Oor Wull ...
,
Reach plc,
Newsquest
Newsquest Media Group Ltd. is the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers in the United Kingdom. It is owned by the American mass media holding company Gannett. It has 205 brands across the UK, publishing online and in print ...
and the ''
Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
'', to smaller outlets such as
Radio Exe
Radio Exe (formerly Exeter FM) is an Independent Local Radio station based in Exeter, Devon, England.
As of March 2023, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 39,000, according to RAJAR.
Presenters
Presenters include Matt Rogers, Ne ...
and Social Spider, a
community interest company
A community interest company (CIC, colloquially pronounced "kick") is a type of company introduced by the United Kingdom government in 2005 under the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004, designed for social ente ...
which publishes three north London community newspapers.
Stories written by LDRs are
pooled and can be used at no cost by over a thousand participating news organisations, including the BBC.
LDRS stories have featured on national BBC radio and television news programmes.
In the first four years of the scheme almost a quarter of a million stories were filed, with a peak of 1,321 in a seven-day period in September 2021.
The scheme has been replicated in New Zealand and Canada.
Bristol Mayor dispute
The scheme itself came into the news in June 2022, when the Mayor of Bristol,
Marvin Rees
Marvin Rees (born April 1972) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Mayor of Bristol since 2016.
Early life and education
Marvin Rees was brought up in Bristol, partly in Lawrence Weston and Easton, by his British mother. ...
and his council's head of external communications, Saskia Konynenburg, challenged the line taken by LDRS reporter Alex Seabrook in questioning the mayor's return flight to Vancouver to speak about
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
at a
TED conference
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
, and whether it was appropriate for a LDRS reporter, rather than “a journalist from a newspaper”, to be asking the question. Shortly afterwards it was reported that LDRS staff would not be allowed to attend the mayor's future press conferences, resulting in a boycott of those events by several local news outlets, as well as the BBC and
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
.
References
External links
*
{{BBC
BBC
Journalism in the United Kingdom
2017 introductions