A hyperlocal website has created a ‘good news’ channel for readers with the aim of highlighting the positive stories about its patch.

The Bedford Independent is now tagging all stories with a ‘positive angle’ in a bid to show that “the news isn’t always negative.”

The site has now tagged 2,556 of its articles as ‘good news’ – just under a third of all the content on the platform – with a ‘good news only’ tab linking to all the tagged stories now appearing on the homepage menu.

The team at the Independent decided to create the filter after comments on social media suggested local news was only ever negative.

Co-editor Paul Hutchinson said: “Being as close to our content as we are, we know we write a large amount of positive news stories, but appreciate some readers may not see everything we write.

“So, we started to mark appropriate articles with a ‘good news’ tag, so we could easily see if some readers were right. Is local news mostly negative?”

“Thankfully, it was found that content published by the Bedford Independent is overwhelmingly positive, with 2,556 articles now tagged as good news.”

“It’s clear that Bedford Borough really does have lots of positive news to report on from across our towns, villages and communities, and we’ll continue to do that.”

The Independent was launched in November 2019 by Paul together with Erica Roffe and Julia Course. It now averages 130,000 unique users a month.

Paul told HTFP: “Amongst the stories of crime and local politics, there is plenty of room for positive public interest news across all publications, regardless of size, so readers of local news can see the positive things happening on their doorstep.

“While this filter doesn’t mean we’ll shy away from stories that are important to help foster change and accountability, it gives Bedford Independent readers a chance to remind themselves that it isn’t always doom and gloom in local news.

“We hope other publications get on board and consider doing something similar so their readers can see that their local news has pride in their patch.”