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May 27, 2011

Community Newswire makes a return thanks to £1.9m lottery grant

By andrew

The Community Newswire service is being relaunched in July – three months after it was axed as part of the Government’s spending review.

The newswire was launched in 2004 as a joint initiative between the Press Association and the Media Trust, with funding coming from the Home Office’s Active Community Unit.

The scheme allows community and voluntary groups to submit stories to PA, who then forward copy to newsrooms across the UK.

The Media Trust has announced the service will return in July after it received a £1.9m grant from the Big Lottery Fund, which it will use to ‘support citizen journalism and to help communities and charities get their voices heard”.

The grant will also be used to support Media Trust’s online and television platform the Community Channel, which will receive further funding from the Cabinet Office to continue broadcasting on Sky, Virgin and Freeview.

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In a statement, Media Trust chief executive Caroline Diehl said:

The power of voice should be a universal entitlement, and this funding, supported by our amazing network of media volunteers and mentors and our Community Newswire and Community Channel platforms, is a significant step forward in realising that vision.”

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