nick mitchell at nationalworld, what are you concentrating on? our top story at the moment is actually about the vagrancy act which is a very old piece of legislation which has been found thousands of people are still being prosecuted under this piece of legislation which the housing secretary actually said six months ago should be abolished. there is some data which has been surfaced today. and something a little bit lighter we ve also got the york shire bank c. we got a video report with a street artist making a bit of a name for himself so there s a couple of things for us. ifan morganjones, for you what is top of the agenda? well, that the welsh - governments introducing devices, ozone cleaning devices to clean classrooms in wales i and that has attracted - lots of comments, not just from welsh media but. from uk media as well. shazia, i know you re newsroom is still very
so national world was the first of those to l launch in late march. we are now five months in, just over five months - and are getting to the stage j now where we are launching new city brands across some| of the major cities in the uk. so yeah, there is a lot- of competition in the regional media but i think it s an exciting time. - and we are trying to do things a little bit differently. - i want to talk more about those city brands in a moment. but with the launch of nationalworld .com. my understanding of that is that it s a national news site but the contributors are regional reporters. so how does that change the flavour of what you re telling people? it s interesting one. i think we are unique i in the sense that we are a national news brand but we are based - right across the uk. so i m in edinburgh, i we have editors in the midlands, york shire, . right across the country. so it s not really the sense that we covered regional. stories, we do pick up on regional stories. i we c
plans to shift focus from the capital and i quote, in a commitment to better reflect, represent and serve all parts of the country. when gb news launched it promised new voices from every part of the country, and to again quote, reach out to nonmetropolitan audiences beyond london and engagement in our national conversation . well, the impact of covid and movements like extinction rebellion or black lives matter, those stories are better told if everyone has an equal stake in them, irrespective of where they live. so what does it mean to have a non london bias when you are reporting the news? the market for producing local news is as tough as it s ever been. so, how do you do it? today we hear from four people about their new approaches to reporting across the uk. let me introduce them to you. lorna willis is in norwich and has been ceo of the regional and local news publisher archant since march. nick mitchell is in edinburgh and he is editor of the new website
nationalworld, a news site by regional reporters. he is involved in a series of new city websites and has previously from the scotsman. ifan morganjones is in bangor and in 2017 founded nation.com an english language news site in wales. shazia ali is a journalist leading a new initiative for the people s newsroom in swansea promoting diverse community led journalism. by way of introduction to each of you, perhaps a story that s currently at the top of your respective news agendas delivered in a short and pithy way. lorna willis, what is top of your agenda in norwichjust now? 0k. top of our agenda in norwich would be the nhs in crisis, the nhs at the brink. we have three hospitals really struggling in terms of waiting lists at the moment i think pre covid we had 93 people waiting a year
it s being held up by over 200 poles. we are campaigning to save that hospital in a way that the bbc will never be able to bring that to life on that national agenda. so, while those national stories impact us, ourjob is to really translate those at a local level and allow those local communities to have a voice, and for us to campaign for them. nick, tell us a bit more about nationalworld. this is a company that bought out jpi media at the end of last year. again, a little bit like lorna, give us a sense of the titles that are currently in your portfolio. i obviously, jpi media is a historicl regional publisher and was bought over by nationalworld plc at the turn of the year. there are approximately 150 newspaper titles - across the uk that we operate. ranging from the scotsman to the yorkshire post, -