Thursday, February 25, 2010

Obstacles for hyperlocal in Ventnor and Leeds.

As the growing move towards hyperlocal continues,two rather worrying stories emerged yesterday seemingly putting up barriers to journalistic independence.

Down in the Isle of Wight,the husband and wife team of dedicated reporters at the Ventnor blog were prevented from entering a coroners court.

We were told by the coroner’s officer, Richard Leedham, that the coroner, John Matthews, didn’t recognise us as a member of the press (despite VB publishing articles for four and a half years and NUJ membership for longer) and he didn’t want us in “his court.”


Judging from the comments on the blog, 56 so far,this issue is going to run and run.It seems that this dispute centred around controversy around a previous report back in 2008 as the coroner made it clear that they would not be admitted even into the public gallery as public members.

Meanwhile in Leeds,it seems that local councillors no longer want their meetings tweeted.As the council agreed a 2.5 per cent increase in council tax,Guardian Leeds reports that

Lord Mayor Judith Elliott told everyone at the start of the meeting to 'switch off all electrical equipment' and said there should be 'no Tweeting' on social networking site Twitter.

1 comment:

Ed Walker said...

Haven't had that problem down in Cardiff, was tweeting away from Council budget meeting on Thursday.