The standard we hold ourselves to
This page describes how Local Community Hero is made. It is here so that you can decide how much weight to give anything else on the site.
Standards
Sourcing, checking, bylines, dates and commercial links, set out so you can judge what you read on Local Community Hero.
This page describes how Local Community Hero is made. It is here so that you can decide how much weight to give anything else on the site.
A draft goes through four hands worth of work. The writer separates what they know from what they assume. The assumptions are either checked against something nameable or deleted. What is left gets written up. Then a second person reads it looking only for overconfidence, which is the failure this subject invites most.
A subject earns a page when somebody has asked about it twice, or when we went looking for the answer ourselves and came back empty handed.
Published means published. We do not bump dates to look active, and an edit only changes the modified date when it changes what the article actually tells you to do.
A minority of outbound links are commercial. None of them have ever changed a sentence that was written before the link existed.
If a partner asks us to remove a criticism, the answer is no, and the request itself may end up mentioned in a future article.
Every article carries the name of the person who wrote it and links to their profile. We do not publish under a house byline, because a house cannot be asked to explain itself.
Ruth Gable, Community stories and profiles writer. Ruth has spent years documenting the work of volunteers, grassroots organisers and unsung local figures across the UK. She believes the most important stories are the ones happening on ordinary streets, and she writes to make sure they are not overlooked.
Lucas Ferrand, Volunteering and local action writer. Lucas writes about what it actually takes to get involved in your community, from first-time volunteering to running sustained local campaigns. He is interested in the practical side of civic life and the small decisions that lead to lasting change.
Beth Calloway, Guides and local inspiration writer. Beth covers the how-to side of community life: setting things up, keeping them going, and knowing when to hand over the reins. She draws on conversations with organisers across different kinds of communities and writes for people who want to act, not just read.
Corrections go to info@localcommunityhero.com. Include the address and the sentence. Anything factual is fixed without argument. Anything that changes what the article recommends gets a dated note underneath, so the change is visible.