Indie News Week events revealed

Indie News Week is nearly here! Under the banner of ‘No News is Bad News’, Indie News Week is a national campaign which gives us local journalists an opportunity to meet with communities, showing them who’s behind their local independent news outlet and what goes into accurately covering our stories.

This year we’re collaborating with Sarah Hartley of The Northern Eco (NE) who will be bringing you some special reports and events by focussing her attention on County Durham. Sarah will be setting up office in our SWDN newsroom, upstairs in the Shildon Town Council Building, so if you’re a local resident or business owner, please pop in – Sarah would love to see you. It will be a chance to dive into how both SWDN and NE create stories, choose formats, and stay accountable to you –  we’d love to hear your stories, ideas and feedback.

What’s on the agenda?

Along with almost 40 independent news organisations, we’ll be celebrating, campaigning and fundraising during the week. Here’s just a glimpse of what’s planned:

• On Monday we’re producing a podcast: What is Indie News Week and Why Does it Matter? Archie from SWDN and Sarah from NE will be joined for this discussion by special guest, Beckie Shuker, Campaign and Communications Manager at the Public Interest News Foundation.
• Tuesday: We’ll bring you a special report from The Northern Eco in which your attitudes to public land tidiness across County Durham are revealed.
• Wednesday: From 1pm-6pm we’re throwing open the doors of the newsroom and you’re invited. Pop into the offices on the first floor at the Town Council Offices, Civic Hall Square, Shildon, County Durham DL4 1AH. No need to make an appointment, just drop-in to see how we work and have a chat!
• Thursday: Join us for a walk on Ferryhill Carrs. Meet at 11am on Cleves Avenue by Wood Lane for an informal wander for approximately one hour at the nature reserve.
• Friday: We’ll be hosting a stall at Ferryhill Market in the town centre between 9am and 3pm. We’d love to hear from you with any stories or ideas – or simply to say hello!

INW is hosted by The Public Interest News Foundation (PINF), the UK’s first charity to support public interest news – ethical and impartial journalism that informs and empowers the public about the things that matter to all of us.

Why are we doing this?

As well as giving our readers more of an insight into what goes into our journalism, the week is also an important opportunity to raise funds to keep the news flowing.

We were delighted by the support we received during last year’s Indie News Week and we very much hope our readers can support us again this year. 

Your support tells us that the news we produce is relevant to you and that you feel part of a supportive community. We appreciate your feedback, which helps inform us where we need to focus more of our attention, and we also appreciate your ongoing support, without which we couldn’t continue to operate.

In the post-Covid years, it has become increasingly challenging for us to remain sustainable, but we don’t just want to stand still, we want to grow and provide the highest possible standards of journalism to our communities.

We want to do more to hold our public bodies to account; we want to stand up for our communities when they need a voice; we want to continue to support and raise the profile of local groups, businesses and individuals, celebrating their fantastic work. 

We want to work with you to embrace opportunities to get your stories heard and to learn the latest skills and techniques in the media. It could even lead to us achieving our dream of having local apprentice journalists working alongside us.

In order to do so, we need your help to grow. 

We will be launching our annual crowdfunder on Monday 9 June, which will remain open for one month.

South West Durham News delivers its free-to-read papers to approximately 30,000 homes across the region. If every home reading this donated just £2 once a year during our crowdfunder, it would allow us to employ up to three apprentice journalists, providing skilled jobs and the first step on the road to the career of their choice. It would also mean we could achieve all our goals in providing you with the best possible news service, telling the stories that matter most to you.   

Thanks again and hope to see you at one of our events next week.