LDR, your eyes and ears

where the Local Democracy Reporter project has its origins.

The BBC did something similar, and now it’s New Zealand’s turn to have a crack.

The Local Democracy Reporting (or LDR) project is a public interest news service that puts reporters where, in my opinion, they ought to be first and foremost, sitting in on the meetings of elected or publicly appointed officials.

The year-long trial will see eight local democracy reporters placed in regional newsrooms affiliated with the Newspaper Publishers’ Association. They will be employed directly by those newsrooms and report to the local editors.

Stuff has backed this project since its inception, with one of our head honchos travelling to the UK to see how the BBC model worked.

Stuff will employ two of the eight LDR reporters; one in South Auckland and one in Marlborough.

Express reporter Chloe Ranford moved into her LDR role mid-october, one of the first to start.

She will get multimedia training and will file stories, photos and videos.

The project’s $1 million funding has come from the RNZ/NZ On Air Joint Innovation Fund, which has allowed us to back fill Chloe’s position with Rahul Bhattarai (a double win for us). You may have seen his name pop up in the paper too.

For me, personally, as someone who champions regional journalism at every corner, these are exciting times.

Stuff and the Express are at the forefront of something pretty special.

How special? Well, Chloe’s stories will be made available to all media companies wanting to benefit from the project. This includes our competitors.

This is bigger than the media landscape in Marlborough, this is about protecting local democracy reporting across all of New Zealand going forward – should the project become permanent – to make sure our hard-earned dollars aren’t being dwindled, or swindled, by elected officials. Being the eyes and ears of ratepayers, as they say.

So you can rest easy Marlborough, we’ve got you covered.