Editor's letter: Thanks, team WLD!
I don't know about you, but my feet don't seem to have touched the ground in the past few months and I'm already looking forward to taking a little break at Christmas (is it still too early to mention that?!).
Last week we posted 37 articles on site, which is a record for us. More than a dozen of our community reporters have contributed content over the past couple of weeks.
And a few weeks before that we saw the publication of the latest issue of our print edition. I reckon more than 30 different people played a direct role in getting the paper out. This includes people either providing words, photos, proofing or helping to deliver the 5,000 copies to pick up points across West Leeds.
It's truly a team effort and it's humbling to see so many people care about their communities.
We're also got a couple of journalism students from Leeds Beckett doing one day a week with us at our community newsroom until Christmas. I enjoy offering them guidance and train iung as they learn their trade, so if you see either Christian or Louis out and about, please do say hi!
As well as welcoming them to the team (albeit temporarily) I'd also like to thank our new supporters who have joined in the past couple of months. Your monthly contributions truly make a massive difference to help make us more sustainable in the long-run. Thank you to them and everyone who supports us with monthly or occasional contributions. Without you we wouldn't be able to run things like the website, pay to send our e-mail newsletter to 1,400 people each morning and run a quarterly printed newspaper.
We also have a new board member to welcome. Sara Thornhurst lives in Bramley and has a background in journalism and PR and will bring some much-needed business acumen to our operation. Our board are a brilliant team - seven volunteers giving up their time to ensure we run smoothly. We're on the look-out for someone with financial experience and maybe business experience, so if you know anyone or may be interested yourself, please give me a shout!
You may not realise this but the WLD itself is part of a 'team', or movement if you like. Independent publishers from across the UK recently came together in Leeds for the first Independent News Forum at Leeds University. The aim was to boost solidarity between independent news outlets and support organisations and identify projects that could benefit the sector. We were overjoyed to host around a dozen editors and representatives at our community newsroom in Bramley the night before the event to talk about our community reporters and our setup. It's a feather in our cap that ther forum chose to meet here in Leeds!
Moving forward: Keep your eyes peeled for a new what's on section on our website coming soon, which is being run by a small group of local people who recently completed our most recent community reporters' training course. It was their idea to do this and it's great to see them working togegher to make it a reality.
Team work makes the dream work, as the saying goes. Thanks for being part of our team.
John Baron, editor
