Loquial – the community news network (Round 6)
Summary
Loquial is an online service that brings the community back into local newspapers and puts journalists back into the community. It allows members of the public to submit content using tools that make that content ‘ready-for-publication’ by local newsrooms.
The service gives the public an opportunity to harness the trusted environment and wide reach of their local news brand to share their news and their content with their communities, but it also provides efficiency for the newsrooms - time saved repurposing and repackaging hyperlocal community content can be reallocated to more in-depth reporting from professional journalists.
The solution
Communities rely on their local news brands to do what they’ve always done best – professional, investigative, insightful reporting as well as representing broad community content. But these are challenging times for local news brands who can’t provide the level of journalistic resource they once did. Loquial aims to provide both efficiency for newsrooms along with continued representation of community content. By creating something that allows readers to get their content online and into the newspaper, but without tying up editorial resources that could be better used elsewhere, this initiative aims to get more journalistic time back into in depth reporting.