Guardian to go local with blogger-fed sites

The Guardian has finally revealed further details of its planned local online news project. Starting with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, guardian.co.uk  is planning to launch a local news project in a small number of locations.

At the moment guardian.co.uk is looking for bloggers - with journalistic qualifications "desirable" - to help cover community news, and report on local developments. The project will emphasise local political decision-making, and is scheduled to go live next year.

"Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010," said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

Sarah Hartley, the Guardian Local launch editor, said, "While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I've been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local websites and blogs. This experimental project reflects both the shifting nature of journalism and the reality on the ground."

Keeping up local coverage is seen to be important, as there is a risk that the decline of local news could allow corruption in public institutions to grow. To prevent this, the US public broadcaster NPR has received public funding of $3 million for a hyper-local news project to compensate for the decline in local press. With the help of this public subsidy, a pool of bloggers will provide news topics of interest to local US communities.

The Guardian, one of the UK's more serious national papers, tentatively demonstrated its desire to embrace the local market last November, when it released its 'Guardian cities desirability concept' questionnaire, seemingly concentrating on the Manchester area as a test bed.