School of Media & Communication staff team up with Bradford radio station for new community journalism project
The ‘Developing Confidence in Community Journalism’ project will take the form of a series of workshops co-designed to build key knowledge and journalism skills
Staff from the University of Leeds School of Media and Communication will be working alongside Bradford's community radio station, BCB, to build volunteer confidence in broadcasting local democracy content.
The ‘Developing Confidence in Community Journalism’ project will take the form of a series of workshops co-designed to build key knowledge and journalism skills.
BCB radio has been providing a local community radio service in Bradford since 1994 – with a team of nearly 200 volunteers broadcasting locally produced content.
The success of our Election coverage in 2024 confirmed that our volunteers and audience have an appetite for more political stories and content. This project with the University of Leeds will help us explore how to include more of this and provide an improved local democracy service to the city of Bradford.
Professor Julie Firmstone is one of the academics working on this project and will be sharing her research into trust in news and what audiences expect from journalism. She said: “Our research has shown that there is a big demand from the public for news about their locality and that audiences tend to find radio more trustworthy than newspapers and online news. We also know from talking to members of the public that confidence in the news media is declining, so we have been asking people what can be done to improve the credibility of journalism. Sharing and discussing these findings with BCB will help them make informed decisions about future content”.
The University of Leeds' School of Media and Communication
Teaching staff from the School of Media and Communication’s Journalism team, who are all experienced practitioners and journalists, will also be creating and delivering a series of practical workshops to give volunteers the skills and confidence they need to find and tell political stories.
Layla Painter, Programme Lead for the undergraduate BA Journalism course, said: “We’re really excited to be working alongside BCB and to share our research, expertise and teaching skills with the local community.”
Developing Confidence in Community Journalism. launches in Local Democracy Week (14-20 October 2024). Workshops will take place in 2024 and 2025.
