A hyperlocal news website has joined forces with a weekly newspaper and a radio station for an live election debate with parliamentary candidates.

The Lincolnite website is partnering with the Lincolnshire Echo and BBC Radio Lincolnshire for the Lincoln Debate on Monday (4 May) in which candidates for the Lincoln seat will be quizzed by a live audience.

The partnership between the media organisations will see the debate broadcast live by all three outlets at the same time, with an independent video production team being used by the Echo and The Lincolnite.

For the debate, a live audience of more than 200 people will assemble at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre to ask questions for the candidates battling it out for the marginal Lincoln seat and it will be moderated by radio presenter Melvyn Prior.

The Lincolnite has a dedicated elections page on its website.

The Lincolnite and the Echo will publish live blogs before and during the event, as well as broadcasting it live on their websites.

Daniel Ionescu, managing editor at The Lincolnite, said: “The entire project is a first for our region and it will be interesting to see its impact locally, reaching the combined audiences for the county’s largest media outlets.

“As a native digital publication, with almost half of readers aged under 30 and almost 80pc coming from mobile, we wanted to get people involved at different levels.”

The Lincolnite’s General Election coverage has also seen it carry out video interviews with the MP candidates, asking them the top five questions crowdsourced from readers.

While filming the interviews, they were also live-streamed on Periscope and extra questions received were put to the candidates.

The website is also working with the University of Lincoln and a PhD researcher, who has put together a voting intentions survey and is writing a weekly column about its findings.

The Lincolnite’s general election coverage can be viewed here.