Media Law, Interviewing and News Writing: Skills Scottish Community Radio Needs to Expand Its News Coverage

Kocic, Aleksandar

Abstract

Could community radio, run in the UK on a not-for-profit basis by volunteers without journalistic training, help slow down the decline in local news provision? The majority of community stations in the country already offer news in some form. This usually includes announcements of cultural and other events, interviews with local artists or volunteers and similar. What community radio offers much less is ‘hard news’—stories with high level of newsworthiness, usually regarding politics, economics and social matters. Community radio stations do not have professional newsrooms and do not employ experienced, trained journalists; instead, they rely on volunteers. Research has established that by and large community radio volunteers regard it as their moral duty to assume the role of journalists and help reverse the current downward trend in local news coverage, using their links with local community as a strength. Yet, in its ambition to assume the role of a citizen journalist, community radio faces numerous challenges including a limited relevant skillset with which volunteers enter the sector, lack of training and limited funding. With that in mind, the paper presented here and focused on Scotland only aims to establish what the existing journalistic and production skills community radio volunteers already have and what skills they would most benefit from to be able to produce more news and speech-based programming. The findings presented here serve as a starting point for further projects aimed at helping community radio volunteers gain essential journalistic skills.

Citation

Kocic, A. (2024). Media Law, Interviewing and News Writing: Skills Scottish Community Radio Needs to Expand Its News Coverage. In J. Morrison, & S. Pedersen (Eds.), Silenced Voices and the Media: Who Gets to Speak? (47-61). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65403-9

• Online Publication Date: Oct 5, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2024
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 47-61
• Book Title: Silenced Voices and the Media: Who Gets to Speak?
• Chapter Number: 4
• ISBN: 9783031654022
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65403-9
• Keywords: Community, Radio, Skills, Scotland, Assessment