SWDN launches crowd funder campaign

South West Durham News CIC (SWDN), has launched a crowd funder campaign, asking the community to help it grow and better serve them.

The independent publisher of the weekly titles, Ferryhill & Chilton Chapter and Shildon Town Crier and the fortnightlies, Bishop Press and Spennymoor News has launched the campaign as part of Indie News Week, a national campaign organised by the Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) which is running from Monday 3 June until Sunday 9 June.

As part of the campaign, PINF is encouraging independent titles to hold fundraising events through the week, with the pledge that it will match the first £2,000 of funds raised by SWDN.

But SWDN is going further, with a call out to every home that receives its publications. Its message is that if every home – not every person in the home, but just every household – was to donate just £2 during the month of June, it would be able to raise £60,000.

That is because SWDN’s four publications are distributed to over 30,000 homes across South West Durham every issue, and PINF has extended the deadline for match funding to the entire month of June, not just Indie News Week.

In return, South West Durham News CIC is promising that it will use the funds to:

• Employ up to four apprentice journalists – one for each paper
• Pay its full-time staff the Real Living Wage, as set by the Living Wage Foundation
• Train its apprentices and staff on industry standard tools
• Invest in new equipment to provide an even better community service

As part of Indie News Week, South West Durham News is hosting an Open Day on Wednesday 5 June from 3pm-7pm at its offices in Shildon. It is also hosting a stall at the Friday Market in Ferryhill two days later, and another stall on Saturday 6 June at Hamsterley Village Hall, which is open for Hamsterley Big Dig, a weekend of archaeology, hosted by Archaeology News North East, who produce a regular monthly podcast, Tales from the Trowel at the SWDN podcasting studio.

Managing Editor, Archie MacKay said: “With a small staff of one full-time and two part-time employees, South West Durham News is very limited in the news service it can provide. That said, we hold our own and we are not without ambition, albeit we believe our targets are entirely realistic and achievable.

“This week, we are delighted to be part of Indie News Week and have already benefitted enormously from the support of the Public Interest News Foundation. We are now able to tap in to a nationwide community of independent newsrooms, sharing our experiences while receiving advice from others working hard to provide a similar service to ours.

“At my previous paper, which served a much smaller community, we were able to not only celebrate the good news in the community, but to hold power to account, to campaign on the community’s behalf, and ultimately to win several Community Newspaper of the Year awards for our journalism.

“If we can do that in a tiny Outer Hebrides community, we can do it here, where we have access to many more resources and a community of experts we are only too happy to tap into and welcome aboard.

“We want to be your go-to newsdesk when you have areas of concern you feel require investigating. We want you to come to us when you need someone to have your back – such as when public services are in danger. And of course we want you to share all your good news with us so that we can share it with everyone else.

“We are especially keen to support local young people who have a desire to become journalists. We already use the market-leading software to produce our papers, and we have converted one of our office spaces into a podcasting and YouTube studio in the knowledge that we are very much in the digital age now. We want any young person who comes to work with us to be able to move on having gained all the skills they would be expected to use in a major newsroom. And when they do move on, we want to recruit the next generation of young people in our communities.

“However, we must concede that we can’t do this alone. While we earn enough revenue to print and distribute our papers every week – and it costs around £3,500 per week just to stay afloat – we just about manage to keep our noses above the water, thanks mainly to the fantastic local regional businesses who support us with advertising revenue.

“But in order to grow, rather than stand still, we need the help of our community. We print around 30,000 free to read newspapers per issue, posted though letterboxes by our small army of paid deliverers. If every home that received a paper was to donate just £2 to our Indie News Week crowdfunder, we could raise £60,000.

“That would allow us to achieve our ambitions of giving a start to young aspiring journalists in our communities, supporting more full-time jobs, supporting our communities with their campaigns, and asking the difficult questions of our institutions when we have to.

“As a community newspaper and a not for profit community interest company that word, community, is at the heart of everything we do. Our papers are a collective effort. Similarly, lifting up our young people can also be part of that collective effort. It’s amazing the difference we could collectively make by donating just £2 per household, once a year. We urge the community to support our ambitions, not only for their local paper, but for the young people they know would love the opportunity to tell their stories.”