A journalism union chief has called for public money to be used to fund more local journalists.

David Nicholson, who sits on the National Union of Journalists’ national executive committee, is advocating a new scheme for Wales modelled on the BBC local democracy reporter programme, which employs taxpayer-funded journalists in regional press newsrooms.

David’s suggestion comes after the closure of Newsquest’s Wales-wide title The National Wales in August and fears over “rising costs” in other newsrooms.

He examined the issue in an article for think-tank the Institute of Welsh Affairs.

David, who is the Wales representative on the NUJ national executive committee, wrote: “Perhaps public interest journalism should be viewed as a public service, as essential as bin collections or running water – something a community needs.

“The BBC local democracy reporter scheme reports on local councils with the stories, then gives them to the media industry at no charge.

“This could be used as a model for Wales with public money used to finance local reporters in Wales in areas where there is not a local newspaper. All the stories produced could be placed on a centralised website and freely provided to the industry and for local communities to tap into for news.

“After the years of endless discussion about the ills of the media industry in Wales and its continuing decline, the NUJ hopes the working party will develop much-needed solutions.”

His suggestion comes after Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, praised the hyperlocal journalism sector’s work during the coronavirus pandemic.

In response to a question from Labour’s Hefin David MS last month about support for the hyperlocal sector, he said: “There are two different sums of money that are available through the Welsh Government.

“There is the Welsh Public Interest Journalism Fund. [So far] nine awards have been made from it already and the Caerphilly Observer was one of the beneficiaries of it along with organisations like Llanelli Online and Wrexham.com, all of which were very regular participants in the series of news conferences which were held in the Covid crisis and which did a very good job indeed of keeping their readers informed of those hyperlocal issues.

“There is another sum of £100,000 set aside as a result of the Cooperation Agreement. As Hefin said, there is a group working on the best way that money can be deployed.”