Student and graduate-led local newspaper giving 'the chance for Leicester people to have their stories told' launches

Alongside her PhD studies at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU), Megan Lupton has joined two graduates on the staff of the recently-launched Great Central Gazette (GCG).

The newspaper, founded by Megan and DMU graduates Rhys Everquill and Emma Guy, is run as a co-operative not-for-profit enterprise, which aims to connect with the local community in Leicester to tell their most important stories.

(Left to right) Emma, Rhys and Megan

Members can vote on how the newspaper is run in a bid to give thepower of telling their own stories back to the people.

Megan, Communications Coordinator and Co-Founder at the GCG, said: “We found that larger publications weren’t working as closely with local communities so this is meant to bridge that gap and bring community input into which stories are told.”

Being from Leicestershire, the project is particularly important to Megan. Returning to the city to study her PhD at DMU after living in Essex, she has been able to engage closely with the local community while working at the paper.

“This project has been a year in the making and it’s so exciting to see something so important to us and the community finally launch,” she said.

After starting fundraising in March 2022, the launch of the Great Central Gazette sees months of hard work pay off for the team.

“My background is in writing and marketing, so it’s been really interesting to get an insight into the world of journalism and to see what goes into getting a publication like this off the ground. It’s taken a lot of long hours of work but it’s been really important for us to take our time and grow at a sustainable rate to ensure this is something that lasts,” Megan said.

“We’ve been really open about the fact that we’re a small team who want to do something good for the community, so we’ve been really encouraging of feedback. We have a great board of directors advising us and have managed to launch something we’re really proud of.”

Megan Lupton, Communications Coordinator and Co-Founder at the GCG

What Megan describes as the “litmus test” for the paper has been coverage of the recent local elections, providing the newspaper team with an opportunity to test how it can respond to such an important community event.

Following this success, the team hopes to continue to develop and expand its reach into the community, using its hard-earned resources to ensure its longevity.

As part of this endeavour, Megan, Rhys, and Emma hope to experiment with multimedia.

“Traditional journalism is alive and strong but it’s diversifying, and people are engaging with news in lots of different ways now,” said Megan.

“By creating things like podcasts that are linked to the newspaper, we can provide different avenues for people to engage with what we’re putting out. We can then reach a wider audience who don’t want to sit and read something in print. We hope we can meet people where they want to be in terms of how they want to absorb news and that will ultimately allow us to continue.”