Community Reporters - what's it all about?

The community reporters project is designed to give a platform and necessary skills to residents who want to voice their opinion in a more formal and recognised manner.

If you are interested in local issues, tend to have an opinion on matters and want to share your thoughts and ideas with others, then this project may be perfect for you.

In a nutshell, residents who are interested will undertake a short training/ discussion session and then will be free to report on whatever interests or topics that they want. Reports can be submitted at any time and at a frequency that each reporter is comfortable with. These reports will then be quickly checked to make sure they abide by the parameters of the project and will then be published with immediate effect. Other residents, businesses and the Council will then be able to read them and comment on each individual report if they so wish.

The intention at this stage is to run the training/ discussion group week commencing 20th February and for reports to be created and published from March onwards.

There is greater detail about the project below so if you are interested have a quick read and see if this could benefit you. Please let us know if you would like to be part of this project by e mailing feedbackteam@pendle.gov.uk or call Kris on 01282 661614 and we will make sure that you are kept informed of developments and invited to the training/ discussion session.

Many thanks.

Appendix A – project scope

The project will encourage the coverage of the following areas (please note that this list is not exhaustive and/or prescriptive):

• Sporting events
• Lifestyle issues
• Community safety
• News about the local area
• Traffic alerts/ transport issues
• Business issues
• Economic issues
• Environmental issues
• Financial issues
• Education issues
• Health issues

Appendix B – project terms

As a Partnership we commit to the following:

• We will adequately train and support all reporters to enable a consistent level of community reporting
• We will provide on going support for those who need it on an ‘as required’ basis
• We will continually provide feedback on the reports being submitted so as to give each reporter the opportunity to continually improve
• We will publish all material unless it falls outside the scope of the project and the report criteria
• Under no circumstances will we edit the material in a report. However, we will provide feedback to each reporter so that the report can be tweaked (so that the report criteria are met) and resubmitted

As a community reporter we will expect you to abide by the following rules:

• Attend the training and question anything that you don’t understand, are unclear about or are unsure how to implement in practice
• Contact the Partnership if you require further support or assistance
• Submit your reports on a frequency with which you are comfortable with and potentially be on hand to cover an issue of public sector concern
• Make sure that your reports are:
  • Reasonably short
  • Accurate
  • Balanced and fair, even if the report leans in a particular direction
  • Reflective of your personality
• Make use of pictures, audio and/or video to support your report
• Above all else, have fun and be creative!

Appendix C – report criteria

The following list makes up the criteria that each report will meet. These must be adhered to at all times by both the community reporters and the Council/ NHS. Please note that these are in place to ensure the smooth running of this project. They are not designed to limit creativity or freedom of voice.

Reports must be:

• Well informed and where statements are being made, backed up by evidence
• Balanced and present both sides of the argument (however, you are perfectly at liberty to fall either side of the fence as long as you present both sides)
• Fair, by giving affected parties the opportunity to comment

Reports are encouraged to be:

• Creative and evident of the personality of the individual reporter
• Fun and engaging
• Honest but frank - they should report both the good and the bad about living in the local area and the quality of the public services provided
• Open to inviting comments and ideas from other site users
• Punctuated, with quotes and references wherever possible/ necessary
• Written within 400 words to enable easy reading

Reports must not:

• Cover specific issues of limited interest (i.e. TV listings for this evening, weather forecast) unless in the context of a wider, more relevant topic
• Cover sales or sales related material, advertising or marketing
• Include content of a discriminatory, sexual or offensive nature
• Have material that is designed to discredit or devalue a person, service, business, community or community group
• Contain issues of a personal nature/ invade anyone’s privacy
• Contain swear words or wording that could cause offense
• Create civil unrest
• Create a conflict of interest for the individual reporter (i.e. if you run a local community group your reports should not cover the activity or interests of the group)

Appendix D – report example

For an example of how a community report could look, please see the link below. Note that all the quotes and facts in this article are totally made up (which flies in the face of the ‘report criteria’ but the intention is to give an idea of the look and feel more than the actual content):

http://www.feedbackonline.org.uk/communityreport/