Barking and Dagenham Star will carry Local Democracy Reporting Service content produced by our reporter Nick Clark
Social Spider Community News can today (Wednesday 4th) announce the launch of our latest news website, covering the London borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Barking and Dagenham Star becomes our sixth borough-wide publication, joining Waltham Forest Echo (launched 2014), Haringey Community Press (originally launched as Tottenham Community Press in 2016), Enfield Dispatch (launched 2018), Barnet Post (launched 2021), and Newham Voices (launched independently in 2020 but published by Social Spider since 2023).
The idea for our latest publication arose following the award of our third contract under the BBC’s Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) scheme last year, when we were awarded the contract to cover Newham, Tower Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham in East London and hired our new reporter Nick Clark for the role.
Although all LDRS content is provided for free to the BBC’s LDRS partners – effectively as a publicly-funded newswire service – we soon realised that many of Nick’s stories about Barking and Dagenham were going unpublished.
Initially the Star will primarily be a vehicle for Nick’s LDRS stories, alongside a small number of simple local news stores. This will ensure that LDR content is freely available to the residents of Barking and Dagenham in the run up to May’s local elections.
We hope to develop the Star gradually from this starting point to provide more local journalism for Barking and Dagenham as resources allow.
James Cracknell, editor-in-chief of Social Spider, explains: “After winning our latest LDRS contract, we were frustrated to find that many of the excellent stories Nick spends his time on in Barking and Dagenham were being wasted.
“The BBC awarded our latest contract thanks to our existing publication in Newham and our close relationship with Social Streets CIC, publisher of Tower Hamlets Slice. But without our own publication in Barking and Dagenham we were unable to guarantee that Nick’s stories would be published, sometimes causing confusion and frustration with the people he speaks to as part of his day-to-day reporting.
“Although we do not have the resources to invest in expanding our editorial team at the current time, we felt that launching a very low-cost news website for Barking and Dagenham was worth the time and effort, and we hope residents of the borough will enjoy being able to access all of Nick’s local democracy reporting from now on.”
David Floyd, director of Social Spider CIC, adds: “It’s really exciting to be at the first stage of bringing high quality independent journalism to another London borough. Although we’re starting small, we’re looking forward to building the Star to be an important source of local news in Barking and Dagenham.”
Barking and Dagenham Star is available to read now:
Visit barkingstar.co.uk
