ABSTRACT
The role that local independent and community news outlets play in the supply chain of public interest news in the UK is little understood. In particular, tensions exist over the republication of stories by other media, and the revenues this generates. To fill this gap, this chapter draws on exploratory work during a project to build a platform for syndicating content from members of the Independent Community News Network (ICNN) as news feeds or one-off content sales to mainstream media. An online survey in January 2019 and semi-structured interviews with ten alpha participants in January 2020 find they make little money from selling content. Ten purposive semi-structured interviews in May 2020 then illustrate mainstream journalists’ interest in using community content. Thematic analysis finds there is high demand for contextual case studies to improve regional and national news, especially for beyond-London representation. Independents are found to be “an essential part of the news supply chain.” Staff shortages stimulate demand for external content production, in particular deeply connected community reporters. However, there is limited-to-no budget to pay for content and the practice of linking, copying, or developing stories between media is not standardised.
