My experience working with a hyperlocal pioneer – Alan Evans
We run 6 news sites, 5 hyperlocals, one national news, and a Talk Radio
I first met Alan Evans (editor of Llanelli Online) in 2018 he was at the time involved in compiling a half-hour video on Jim Griffiths, the former MP for Llanelli and Charter Secretary of State for Wales. He came to my home, full of exuberance and ideas. His journalistic, camera work and broadcasting skills stood out immediately.
He ran the business from a small room adjacent to the kitchen in
his then home in Pontyates and I was immediately impressed with his set up and
know how the few times I visited him a year later, in the summer of 2019. What
was also a surprise to me was that were always two and sometimes three media
students helping him and ‘learning the trade’ as it were.
As we talked during the summer months I became more and more
interested in his ideas and particularly taken by his determination, work rate,
skills, professionalism, and vision for journalism in Wales.
I had run my own business for 20 years and knew full well what
it takes and the commitment involved. Come the autumn there was a small office
in John Street Llanelli where I started volunteering, not on any significant
scale but more as a colleague to assist in the future planning and development
of the business. At times he endeavoured to teach me some extra IT skills so
that I could be of more help on the journalism and broadcasting side. At my age
the lessons were hard but with Alan’s perseverance, I became quite adept and
valued as a member of his team.
To cut a long story short since the early spring of 2020 I have
become more involved and my contribution has broadened from being of assistance
with business development, dealing with press release content, and covering the
Welsh language side of the by now six online sites. We also have a partnership
agreement, which Alan handed me as a thank you for my contributions.
To be honest I wasn’t too much into ‘community’ news and the
term ’hyperlocal’ was new to me – I was familiar with ‘hypermarket’! But by now
I fully realise the importance of hyperlocal news and the value of this public
news service we now provide.
Increasingly over the last five years, if not longer, hard
copies of weekly local papers have been in serious decline. Indeed many have
ceased publishing I daresay that the coronavirus pandemic will add further to
that decline. Weekly newspapers, once so dominant in the communities of Wales,
have suffered enormously and many are a pale shadow of their former selves and
indeed many have gone to the wall. Even daily national and regional papers have
seen their print sales significantly decrease and as a result, they have been
increasingly switching to online publishing and very recently emulating Alan’s
pioneering hyperlocal style.
Increasingly as the ‘bigger boys’ turn to a variant of the
hyperlocal and the result is that this development places greater financial
pressure and presents a competitive challenge to the original ‘community’
independent groupings. I fear that unless we’re careful it could become the
same old story, as in so many other sectors of business, when the bigger
companies notice something going well, developing and expanding they then muscle
in.
Hyperlocals contribute greatly to community news and
participation, they add to the essential task of holding authority to account,
encouraging wider involvement and campaigning, giving communities a voice,
covering local stories and events, reflecting cultural identity, and promoting
civic life and pride. They also fill the gaps in news provision so obviously
lacking even from the giant BBC.
I came across that most vividly covering the General Election
2019 from Selwyn Samuel Centre. Llanelli Online and Wales News Online in-depth
reporting and live interviews on the night were of a high order. There were
candidates interviewed that otherwise would never have received any coverage.
These smaller, independent, entrepreneurial businesses by now
play an important part in ensuring a thriving news sector in Wales. It is vital
that they are no longer put at a disadvantage because they find it difficult to
access the same level of funding and support, as so often is the case when
compared to the traditional newspapers and broadcast media, which can
dominate and influence too much of the scene in Wales.
We run 6 news sites, 5 hyperlocals, one national news, and a Talk
Radio
Our visitor figures at the end of 2020 were as follows:
Llanelli Online: launched July
2016.Total 3,505,506 visitors. 792k in 2020 (68k per month)
Wales News Online: Launched April
2019. Total 1,114,258 visitors. 519k in 2020 (44k per month)
Ceredigion Online: Launched November
2020. Total to date 33,300 visitors
Carmarthenshire Online: Launched November 2020
Total to date 17,000 visitors
Pembrokeshire Online: Launched December
2020 and is slowly gaining a following
Swansea Online: Launched December
and attracted 10,000 visitors by mid-January.
Llanelli Talk Radio: Launched mid-2020 120k
session listeners in 115 countries
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and video channel with over 25k
followers
We have built a very successful news model for Wales and we have
advised others in the industry to share our experiences openly. We maintain that
Wales needs 4 regional hubs for news production and training and we see
ourselves as being able to fulfill the role for a South West Wales hub.
Alan and his wife Angharad have a working day that can be up to 15
hours such is the volume of news we process. My daily input is much less in
time than that. We also run a 24/7 online radio station, which has taken off
and is gathering a large audience. We promote the Welsh language throughout our
service. We do not have any political agenda. We maintain plurality publishing
news from all political parties with no preference at all.
We process hundreds of PR’s from sources across Wales but we
also actively seek out news from within each of the communities and from
organisations embedded in the communities like the NFU, Cylch Meithrin,
Schools, colleges, Local Businesses, RNLI stations, RSPCA. We also take content
from other news agencies, former journalists, and the BBC Local Democracy
Reporters Service.
We have given placements to students from several universities,
all of whom have gone on to find work in the industry.
Because of Covid our advertising, which was increasing in 2019,
has suffered. We now face an uncertain 2021 unless we can secure some funding.
The pervasive view of businesses and those who wish to advertise
or publicise is that the newspaper is the place to do so. They still get public
notices, part of the NHS advertising budgets, and other notices we are excluded
from They too benefit from the supply from the BBC local democracy service.
I find it intriguing that old habits die hard. The 3,000 printed
copies of a local newspaper is more often than not the preference of many when
it comes to advertising, even though online news outlets such as ours cover
well over one hundred thousand visitors a month. What is more, advertisements
appear within every news story.
We have had a modest amount of funding from the Welsh
Government, which came in two tranches and was greatly appreciated by us all.
The first tranche was in the autumn of 2019 supporting
hyperlocals. We used the majority of the money to fund two new members of staff and
open an office in the centre of Llanelli. When the funding ended and news of
the pandemic emerged it was clear that the office had to close. So using our
own resources we set up a very professional studio operating from Alan Evans’s
home in Mynydd y Garreg.
Despite all the difficulties the commitment and enthusiasm that
we have has resulted in us opening four new online sites in late 2020 for
Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Swansea/Neath Port Talbot. In
two short months, visitors to those sites exceed 60 k. The studio uses cutting
edge technology and it could be said that what most are experiencing, having to
work from home and interview online is something Alan was trying to persuade
the media industry and the offices of public servants to do all those years
ago. His operation has been described as a hyperlocal beacon by the Independent
Community News Network and was invited to become a board member of that organization.
Despite the setbacks and the far from a level playing field we have stuck with it and adapted to make use of whatever we
could to maintain a very valued hyperlocal and national news service for the
people of Wales.
w www.swanseanewsonline.com
W www.carmarthenshirenewsonline.com
w www.pembrokeshirenewsonline.com
