Latest community reporters course launches in busy ‘25

We’ve had a busy start to 2025.

Not only have we taken on our new Community its reporter support worker, Jean Hollings, to better support our team of community reporters, we have already seen almost 250,000 page views on our website, held a community reporter course at Dixons Unity Academy school in Armley and published the first of six print editions.

We’ve also expanded our patch to include Horsforth, where we’ve been very well received.

We are running our next community reporters training course later this month at Swinnow Community Centre, and you’d be very welcome to join us.

The course runs every Wednesday for six weeks and is free. It teaches all the basic journalism skills including writing, structuring an article, photography, interviewing techniques, ethics etc.

Full details can be found here:

Be great if you could sign up, you'd be very welcome.

I’ve been really proud of the stories we’ve been running - I strongly believe our coverage of the Abbey House Museum closure contributed to the council’s decision to keep the facility open. Our Cutswatch series (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) chronicling local cuts has been very well read and a good example of why public interest journalism is so important.

Oh, and we will shortly be announcing the date of our special tenth birthday celebration, which we’d love to invite you to. We’ll be in touch shortly.

Best wishes - and many thanks for your continued support - John Baron, editor