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.

Hyperlocal-balancing justice with journalism

If hyperlocal becomes the trend of 2010 then one of the issues that it will have to grapple from a journalistic point of view is court reporting.

One of the criticisms of local papers at the moment is that the days of the journalist sitting in court all day are long since gone.

But it can be a minefield and as William Perrin writes

Ante-diluvian court processes combine with the minefield of contempt of court to make it tricky to write about local justice being done. As a local web publisher in an area with a long, tragic history of ASB with a sizable local audience I’d like daily court results and timetables posted to a courts website, preferably with an RSS feed. After all, you can go to the court and watch from the gallery or see the screens.

But he finds fault in this excerpt from a green paper earlier this year from the Ministry of Justice

It is clear that there needs to be a balance between providing communities with information on court outcomes, which is in the public domain, and the need to ensure that such information is not misused. This issue is particularly pertinent because of the power of the internet to collect and make available information from a wide range of sources, and the difficulties of regulating the way in which such information is stored and reused.

Court reporting service is saved

Court reporting is one of the facets of good hard local reporting and this story from Hold the Front Page caught my eye

It tells of how

James Brewster from Strand News, which covers the Royal Courts of Justice in London, wrote to local newspaper newsdesks across the UK appealing for unpaid bills to be actioned straightaway.

His company has covered the Royal Courts of Justice for the past 20 years and is the only agency dedicated to reporting from the High Court and Court of Appeal.

So it was good to know that James' letter has done the trick as least for the time being by staving off the immediate threat of closure