ABSTRACT
This book has looked at hyperlocal publishers both as contributors to the public sphere, fulfilling to some extent a normative journalistic role, and as chroniclers of the everyday. We have set out research that has offered a context for the necessity of this new form of journalism, provided an overview of the scale of its form and practice in the UK, and given insights into the actions and motivations of its producers. The narrative around the decline of the local press has resulted in much attention being paid to hyperlocal journalism, with such services pitched as filling the democratic deficit left when local newspapers close. There has been a weight of expectation on hyperlocal news services, with those who operate them framed in a way that situates them as heroic figures (Goode 2009: 1290), able to manage both the business and journalistic side of their endeavours while remaining authentic to the communities they serve. Fulfilling all of these roles feels like a rather tall order. Our research has therefore gone about unpicking this idealised image of the hyperlocalist and instead offers a more nuanced sense of the issues they face. Our aim was to raise questions about the value of hyperlocal journalism but to avoid framing those questions wholly around normative assumptions about the role of journalism in a democracy.
