Community News Spotlights
Midlands 103 is launching a major new journalism initiative that will bring in-depth current affairs programming directly to towns and villages across the Midlands that are often overlooked in mainstream media coverage.
Community News Spotlights will see the Midlands Today team broadcast from communities throughout Laois, Offaly and Westmeath over the next 12 months, focusing on the issues, concerns and stories shaping everyday life in rural Ireland.
The project is designed to strengthen trusted, independent local journalism by giving a platform to voices that are rarely heard in sustained public debate.
Rather than focusing solely on headline events, the series aims to explore the realities facing local communities, including access to services, farming and climate policy, transport, rural enterprise, immigration and integration, energy and community sustainability.
As part of the initiative, a member of each featured community will co-host the programme, helping to shape discussions and ensuring a genuinely local perspective throughout the broadcasts.
Midlands 103 Managing Director Will Faulkner says the project reflects the station’s commitment to public interest journalism across the region.
"Too often, smaller towns and rural communities only receive media attention during moments of crisis or controversy. This project is about listening to communities, understanding their experiences and giving people the opportunity to tell their own stories through trusted, regulated journalism"
Over the course of the year, Midlands 103 will produce 30 special broadcasts from locations across the region, balancing the demands of the news cycle while ensuring meaningful engagement with communities.
The series will also place a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion, with contributors reflecting the broad range of voices that make up modern Ireland, including young people, older residents, women leaders and members of ethnic minority communities.
