Constructing the research setting, to generate sufficiently rich and abundant data to address the research questions, was a more linear decision-making process than determining the research strategy. The types of research sampling employed to access the data were, mainly purposive and snowball, with some opportunistic sampling. The first consideration was to provide geographical boundaries for the chosen topic area, as hyperlocal media is a worldwide phenomenon whose scale is difficult to quantify. For ease of data collection, the decision was made to limit the study to the UK and ultimately that was restricted still further to provisions in England and Wales. In Filling the news hole? UK community news and the crisis in local journalism, Andy Williams, Dave Harte and Jerome Turner cautioned about the absence of a comprehensive list of UK
hyperlocals (Nielsen, 2015: 207). The Openly Local website (2012), used for the large 2014 content analysis of the sector (Williams et al, 2014) was voluntary sign up so not exhaustive. Nevertheless, at the time of constructing my research setting this was the most accurate collection of data available so I consulted it. In addition, there were sites which had reached my attention during the literature review stage and I included four of these, since to provide a historical contrast with earlier studies.
Table 2:1 Hyperlocal operators interviewed
No. Interviewee Hyperlocal name Location
1 David Wimble The Looker Romney Marsh, Kent
2 James Hatts London SE1 London
3 Vijay Jain Dartford Living Kent
4 David Shafford Dartford Living Kent 5 David Jackman Everything Epping
Forest
Everything Harlow
Essex
6 Daniel Ionescu The Lincolnite Lincoln, Lincolnshire 7 Jon Cook A Little Bit of Stone Stone, Staffordshire 8 Jamie Summerfield A Little Bit of Stone Stone, Staffordshire
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9 Dr Rae Howells Port Talbot Magnet Wales 10 Richard Gurner Caerphilly Observer Wales
11 Sean Kelly ChiswickW4 London
12 Annemarie Flanagan Ealing Today Acton W3
London
13 Sue Choularton Wimbledon SW19 London 14 Will Perrin Kings Cross
Environment
London
15 Richard Coulter Filton Voice Bristol 16 Emma Cooper Keynsham Voice
Bishopston Voice Henleaze and Westbury Voice
Bristol
17 Richard Drew Frome Valley Voice Yate and Sodbury Voice
Bristol
18 Gary Brindle Downend Voice Fishponds Voice
Bristol
19 Paul Breeden South Bristol Voice: two editions.
Bristol
20 Michael Casey Your Thurrock Your Harlow
Essex
21 David Prior Altrincham Today Greater Manchester 22 Emma Gunby West Kirby Today The Wirral, Merseyside 23 Martin Johnson Stockport Today Greater Manchester 24 Adam Cantwell-Corn The Bristol Cable Bristol
25 Pat Gamble West Bridgford Wire Nottingham 26 Dr Dave Harte Bournville Village News Birmingham 27 Simon Perry On the Wight Isle of Wight
28 Emma Meese Centre Manager, Centre for Community Journalism 29 Kathryn Geels Programme Manager Destination Local, Nesta 30 Douglas White Head of Advocacy, Carnegie UK Trust
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From a research point-of-view it would have been easier to have chosen exclusively hyperlocal operators in the South-East of England, but my subjective knowledge of local media cautioned against this for two reasons. The dominant presence of the KM Media Group, where I trained as a journalist, influenced the local media ecology by creating a narrowing effect in terms of diversity. Also, in line with many other local media
organisations, The KM Group appeared to have cut costs and centralised during the recession, but unlike some news organisations elsewhere, had retained its flagship titles.
So, in Kent, there appeared to be less evidence of hyperlocals ‘filling the gaps’ left by retreating legacy media; as discussed by Williams et al (2015: 203-223). Openly Local (2012) listed very few hyperlocals in Kent, but Dartford Living was the most prominent, so after a successful approach to the operators was duly included. The Looker which covered the Romney Marsh area in Kent was not listed on Openly Local, but as it was the provision which had first attracted my attention to the hyperlocal phenomenon I was keen to include it.
Thereafter, I extended the study area to England and Wales so that operators of a greater range of provisions could be approached and thus provide more diverse data.
This enabled me to collect a more varied sample. Local newspapers in other areas appeared to have been more heavily affected by the 2008/9 recession (Fowler, 2011;
Mair et al, 2013) with evidence of a lack of plurality caused by local newspapers closing (Barnett and Townend, 2014). The potential for democratic deficit (Moore, 2014;
Williams, Harte and Turner, 2014; Howells, 2015) was particularly acute in Wales, with its high penetration of London-based news. In response to the large number of local newspaper closures The Centre for Community Journalism (C4CJ) was established in 2013 by Cardiff University to support local journalism. C4CJ has actively promoted hyperlocal provisions not only in Wales, but both the UK and worldwide with its first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2014 (Scarborough, 2014). After contacting C4CJ, I decided to extend the geographical boundary of my research beyond England to include the organisers of two Welsh provisions among a total sample size of 27
hyperlocal operators. Originally, I had planned to investigate fewer provisions, but after data collection began it became obvious that my strategy would not produce sufficient data. Following the first six interviews it was apparent that many hyperlocals only had one or at most two operators, so the sample size needed to be enlarged in order to generate sufficient data. Eventually I established the numerical limit as: 27 hyperlocal operators, with two rounds of interviewing, plus three additional interviews with
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representatives of meso layer organisations which had supported the sector: Emma Meese, Kathryn Geels and Douglas White (see appendix 1).
The overall concept behind the sample was purposive, to interrogate specific theoretical interests (Merrill and West, 2009: 79), with the primary consideration that interviewees should be involved in the operation of an ‘active’ independent hyperlocal provision. As well as choosing interviewees from across England and Wales, the aim was to interview hyperlocal operators from different professional backgrounds rather than just choosing those with a media background. The eventual sample included 20 media professionals of whom 15 were professional journalists. Of the remaining seven who had not previously worked in media production, several brought with them
transferable skills including website construction expertise, business or advertising expertise. In a number of cases, it was possible to establish a broad background of hyperlocal operators, either by visiting the websites of the provisions or connecting with individuals via the social media site LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com ) where an online curriculum vitae (CV) was available.
A second sampling criterion was to select representatives of not only online-only provisions but also some which produced a printed product; once again with a view to generating qualitative data. I was keen to include those with printed products for two reasons (a) Radcliffe (2012b) advised hyperlocals not to rule out print as a medium because it was attractive to ultra-local advertisers, (b) I had extensive knowledge of the print medium (see positionality statement) and was intrigued to see whether it had been retrieved and repurposed in the same way that the punk subculture adopted the
photocopier (Worley, 2015). My subjective knowledge told me that 21st century print was far more affordable than when I had published my own niche magazine Dressage in 1984, because technology changes had rendered several expensive processes
obsolete. Typesetting, ‘paste-up’, colour separations and transportation of the artwork to the printers had disappeared from the production process and print was cheaply
accessible to anyone with a computer, professional page make-up software like Adobe InDesign and an internet connection.
In all but one case, it was possible to establish in advance of contact whether a
provision also produced a printed edition. In most cases, as well as a physical presence, the digitally produced pages were also made available online. The most common way of achieving this was via a link to the digital publishing platform ISSUU (https://issuu.com/).
Only the Caerphilly Observer did not upload a digital version of the paper to the website.
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A third sampling criterion to include only provisions which had existed for more than five years was subsequently discarded since this would have excluded some dynamic new ventures such as The Bristol Cable and Hyperlocal Today thus potentially limiting the richness of data.
Although the overall strategy was purposive, there was a degree of snowball sampling which led to the selection of some interview subjects (Bryman, 2012: 427). Speaking to David Prior at Altrincham Today led to me interviewing Emma Gunby and Martin Johnston; who both ran franchise operations in the Hyperlocal Today media group.
Likewise, contacting Richard Coulter and Emma Cooper, founders of Local Voice Network Ltd, led me to interview Richard Drew, Gary Brindle and Paul Breeden, franchise holders of titles in the group. Interviewing James Hatts of LondonSE1 led to Sean Kelly joint-founder and commercial manager of Chiswick W4, the oldest title of the NeighbourNet group. This interview also precipitated snowball sampling but not in the way first envisaged. I had intended to interview the ChiswickW4 editor, Anne Flaherty, but she did not respond to emails, telephone calls or LinkedIn requests, so eventually the sample took an opportunistic turn and I contacted the editors of three other NeighbourNet sites. Annemarie Flanagan (Ealing Today and ActonW3) and Sue Choularton (WimbledonSW19) were both willing participants. Rachel Howells (Port Talbot Magnet) suggested Michael Casey (Your Thurrock and Your Harlow) who both recommended that I interview Simon Perry of On the Wight. But as well as the
snowballing aspect there was also a degree of opportunistic sampling with Simon. After weeks of trying to contact him by both by email and LinkedIn, I eventually met him at the Hyperlocal representative body: consultation event organised by C4CJ (Scarborough, 2016), a face-to-face request led to an interview a week later.
In terms of this study there was never any intention to assume generalisability, clearly 27 interviewees from 408 active sites (Harte, 2014) is a relatively small sample. Indeed, Rolf Lindner cautions about a vulnerability of Park’s work, which he states was also evident in his journalism, of a: ‘tendency to make rash generalisations from specific observations’ (1996: 43). The intention of this study was to provide an opportunity to understand the working practices of a selection of hyperlocals thus ‘giving voice’ to a small number of operators. I do not claim that the sample is necessarily even
representative of the majority of hyperlocal operations, but it provides relative depth in the study of a small selection. Radcliffe (2012; 2015: 15) warns that due to the dynamic,
‘grassroots’ nature of the sector: ‘there is no such thing as a typical hyperlocal site; and
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no such things as a typical hyperlocal publisher.’ But there is a strength and potential generalisability of the research because of its qualitative depth. The interactive nature of the encounters reveals both the interviewees’ own biography as well as their views on independent publishing and mainstream local news organisations which may coincide with others.