Citizen Journalism and the New Ecosystem of Truth-Telling
The Bear examines the new forms of journalism filling the gap left by the collapse of local newspapers and the capture of mainstream media
I am not a journalist.
Not by training, trade or title. I am, at best, a mildly obsessive person with a second-hand MacBook, a fast typing speed and an unfortunate tendency to turn minor political irritations into 2,000-word essays. I'm a commentator, if we're being generous. A man with opinions and a very long commute. The work I do in politics, media, and policy is something I squeeze in around my actual job – scribbled during 06:15 train journeys, typed in lunch breaks, and written in the evenings and weekends.
What I post online owes more to the village gossip than the fourth estate. I read things, get annoyed, and write about it.
This wasn't planned. In July 2023, I opened a Twitter account with a bear theme because I was incredibly frustrated with something that Jacob Rees-Mogg had said at the time (I can't even remember what it was), and I literally just wanted an anonymous way of shouting at him. But somehow, what started as digital primal scream therapy evolved into something that looks suspiciously like... well, this.
And yet, I increasingly find myself being treated like a journalist. I get questions about stories I haven't broken, asked for comment on investigations I didn't do, or accused of "media bias" when I post a thread criticising Reform UK or the Conservatives. My X replies regularly include lines like "typical lefty journalist" or "why aren't you covering [insert entirely unrelated event]?" And on the other side, I get DMs from people sending anonymous tips, or asking if I've seen this councillor's Facebook post, or whether I've heard what's going on in their town.
What I've come to realise – slowly and increasingly uneasily – is that people are behaving like I'm part of the press because the actual press isn't there.
At least not in the way it used to be – and certainly not where it’s most needed.
The Collapse of Local Journalism
Once upon a time, every town had a paper. Several, even. The Yorkshire Post, the Manchester Evening News, the Western Mail – names that meant something. Papers that mattered. Reporters sat through council meetings, dug through court filings, popped by local events with notebooks in hand. They knew who the mayor was – and who the mayor used to be. They spotted questionable contracts because they’d covered the last four planning applications.
Market towns had weeklies. Seaside resorts had local rags. Even villages had parish newsletters with actual reporting. The business model was simple: local advertising paid for local coverage. The corner shop, the estate agent, the car dealership – they all bought ads because everyone read the paper. And everyone read the paper because it told them what was happening.
Then the internet shattered that model.
Classifieds – the financial spine of local papers – moved to Craigslist, then Facebook. Local businesses started using Google ads. Circulation collapsed. The money didn’t follow the readers online, and what followed was a death spiral: fewer ads, fewer reporters, weaker coverage, fewer readers, even fewer ads.
In the past two decades, more than 300 local newspapers have shut down across the UK. That’s not just businesses closing – it’s entire communities losing their main source of local information. The ones left are often ghost papers – owned by hedge funds, staffed by overworked juniors juggling four beats, padded with press releases and SEO-chasing fluff about “27 Things You Didn’t Know About Living in Basildon.”
Coverage has thinned. Stories are shallow. Communities have dropped out of view, creating what researchers call "news deserts" – areas with little or no local news coverage. The reporter who once covered planning meetings now handles court, council, lifestyle features, and more. The deep institutional knowledge – who's connected to whom, which councillor always votes which way – has evaporated.
The collapse of local news has real consequences: lower local election turnout, higher corruption, weaker civic engagement, more conspiracy theories. When no one's watching locally, power festers. And vacuums don't stay empty.
Into that vacuum have stepped some unlikely candidates.
Reform Party UK Exposed: Fact-Checking in Real Time
I recently spoke with the anonymous team behind Reform Party UK Exposed – a group of volunteers whose X account continually challenges and exposes Reform UK's candidates, claims, and contradictions.
Their work is methodical. They trawl through council records, social media posts, archived interviews, and press releases. They cross-reference claims, track inconsistencies, and have become a key source for anyone trying to understand the tactics of Reform UK. Their output has been cited by national journalists. In many cases, their work is stronger than what’s coming out of national newsrooms.
But their motivation runs deeper than simple fact-checking. "We've seen former BNP candidates that would have got through as councillors or even MPs if we hadn't exposed them," they told me. "Tommy Robinson supporters that have got through. We've seen myriad racist and anti-Muslim, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic people stand for Reform UK. Our motivation is to expose and prevent such people from getting into power."
They're also doing something traditional outlets often can't: real-time fact-checking with immediate corrections. When I asked them about their role in the media ecosystem, they were blunt about the landscape they're operating in. "There's a huge gap, local news is suffering from a mixture of funding and ownership by organisations that don't really care about the quality of journalism or challenging power. At national level, we have organisations like GB News who are a genuine mouthpiece to Reform UK, commercial stations such as Sky who are political weathervanes moving to keep themselves relevant. Even the BBC seems to be."
Their response? "Our account is a voice standing up saying NO. So we feel we're part of that voice not just of anti-racism, but of just plain fact hunting."
A perfect example of this work is the trans books controversy in Kent libraries. "We've had to correct journalists too, because of the 'issue a Reform UK press release' culture at local news," they explained. The story started at local level (BBC), taken from a tweet by Linden Kemkaran. As Reform UK Exposed proved, "It was a lie from the start, but local news propagated it and then grew the lie."
Using Kent libraries' own virtual tours, they matched the photos of the supposed trans books in children's sections. Only one library had matching shelves – a welcome section in Herne Bay. It was a Pride Month display, nothing to do with children's sections. Reform Party UK Exposed managed to force corrections from BBC national news, though much of the national media had already parroted the local news lie.
"Part of that was because they liked the agenda slant so didn't care about the truth of the story," they explained. "That's what we are up against."
This is citizen journalism at its best – not just breaking stories but preventing false ones from spreading. And they're doing it without pay, without institutional backing, and often without recognition.
They're not alone in this work. Across the country, other citizen journalists are using different tools to achieve similar results.
Don McGowan: Using Freedom of Information Laws to Expose Political Theatre
Don McGowan, of the No Holds Barred podcast, has turned Freedom of Information requests into a precision weapon against political posturing. His recent investigation into Reform UK's "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) initiative is a textbook example of accountability journalism.
Reform UK’s DOGE was announced with great fanfare by former chair of the party Zia Yusuf, promising that "a team of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors will audit councils' spending." It sounded impressive. Official. Transformative. The kind of thing that would make Elon Musk proud (and probably did, given the borrowed branding).
Don was, to put it mildly, not buying it.
He submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests – legal demands for public bodies to disclose information they hold – to West Northamptonshire, Kent, Durham, Nottinghamshire, and Lancashire councils, asking seven specific questions about DOGE's access to data, GDPR compliance, and formal agreements.
The results were illuminating. Kent Council confirmed that DOGE had "no more access than I do" – meaning they could only view publicly available information. West Northamptonshire's response was even more damning: no formal communications from Reform or DOGE had been received, no data sharing agreements existed, and even if access were granted, DOGE would be legally prohibited from sharing their findings publicly.
"DOGE HAVE NOTHING," Don concluded. "They have less access than Sky News or me in a capacity as a journalist."
His investigation further supported the argument that Reform’s DOGE is toothless political theatre – a policy announcement designed to generate headlines rather than results.
Don's work shows that with the right tools and persistence, citizen journalists can hold power to account just as effectively as traditional outlets. Sometimes more effectively, because they're not constrained by editorial timelines or the need to maintain access to political sources.
The Broader Picture – And the Costs
This kind of work is happening everywhere. Across the UK, citizen journalists are stepping in where traditional local news has vanished. TikTokers doing vox pops. Facebook groups tracking council decisions. X accounts digging into planning applications and developer links. Ordinary people, fuelled by frustration, turning late-night research into public accountability.
But unlike national outlets, they’re not being paid. They don’t have editors or legal teams. There’s no HR department or press watchdog to back them up. When they’re targeted – and they increasingly are – they face it alone.
When it’s good, citizen journalism is very, very good. It can break stories, expose rot, and hold the powerful to account in real time. But the lack of gatekeeping cuts both ways. It also opens the door to bad actors – those who launder conspiracy theories as ‘investigations’, or run coordinated harassment campaigns under the guise of citizen oversight.
Even the well-intentioned face real and immediate risks. I know this because I’ve lived it. When I criticised the burning of migrant effigies at a Northern Ireland bonfire, I received more than four thousand hostile replies in hours. Accusations that I was secretly funded by George Soros. Demands that I “go back where I came from.” Violent threats I won’t repeat. At least three people who genuinely believed I was supporting Hamas by criticising a bonfire. It wasn’t just backlash – it was a coordinated digital swarm.
And I wasn’t even breaking the story. For people like Don or the team behind Reform Party UK Exposed, the danger is greater. They’re exposing extremists, confronting disinformation, challenging powerful interests. Legal threats are routine. Doxxing isn’t hypothetical – it’s names, addresses, family details posted with malicious intent.
And even if you survive all that – how long can you keep going? Burnout is high. Resources are thin. One algorithm change, one platform collapse, and years of work can vanish overnight. The margin for error is microscopic. One poorly-worded sentence, one misstep, and your credibility evaporates.
So yes, it’s brave work. But it’s also fragile. Which raises an increasingly important question:
What would it look like to support this kind of work properly?
Supporting the New Watchdogs
We don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are models and the Bylines Network is one of them.
Through Byline Times, Byline Investigates, and the broader Bylines Network, a new kind of hybrid journalism is emerging: one that merges traditional investigative rigour with the flexibility and urgency of citizen reporting. It creates infrastructure for those who want to tell important stories, but who aren't embedded in legacy institutions. It gives training, legal support, editing, and reach to people who might otherwise be shouting into the void.
I'm a beneficiary of this support myself – through my column in Byline Supplement and my work with the excellent editorial team at East Anglia Bylines. It's proof that the hybrid model can work, combining the independence of citizen journalism with the structure and support of professional outlets.
But there are other models worth exploring. Substack and similar platforms have created direct funding relationships between writers and readers. Ko-fi and Patreon allow for sustained support without the overhead of traditional media. Legal defence funds – like those created for whistle-blowers or investigative journalists – could be adapted for citizen reporters facing litigation or harassment.
The challenges are real and immediate. As Reform Party UK Exposed told me, "The biggest challenge is resource. We're all volunteers, and whilst this allows us to be able to point out that we are not funded, we are independent. But it does mean we are limited in time and reach." They also maintain anonymity because they've had "credible threats, especially from candidates exposed. There's a genuine risk to anyone challenging extremists."
What's needed is infrastructure: training in FOI law, media literacy, and basic journalism ethics. Legal support when they inevitably get threatened. Technical help with data analysis, fact-checking, and digital security. Editorial guidance to help separate legitimate investigation from conspiracy theories. And yes, funding – whether through direct reader support, foundation grants, or new models we haven't invented yet.
There's also untapped potential in collaboration between citizen journalists and remaining professional outlets. Rather than treating citizen reporting as competition or free content to exploit, traditional media could partner with citizen journalists – providing editorial oversight, legal protection, and professional distribution in exchange for local knowledge and investigative leads. This hybrid model could strengthen both forms of reporting while preserving the independence and urgency that makes citizen journalism valuable.
Building the Ecosystem
But collaboration requires recognition and that's where the current system falls short. Traditional outlets often exploit citizen journalism without proper credit. "They love taking 'user generated news' and crediting, but it's highly exploitative," Reform Party UK Exposed told me. "We need organisations with rigour to step up and credit our work – journalism that goes deeper, not just headline-chasing."
What’s emerging instead is a network model. “We need people willing to share information – people who care about this country,” they said. This collaborative approach might prove more sustainable than trying to rebuild traditional media from scratch.
The context matters. Citizen journalism isn’t just plugging a gap. It’s attempting to restore a democratic function we abandoned.
It’s not perfect. A network of citizen reporters, no matter how dedicated, isn’t the same as a full-time local journalist covering every council meeting. But it is a start. It shows that funding, supporting, and platforming non-traditional voices can work without spiralling into chaos or conspiracy.
It also reminds us that if we want better journalism, we have to invest in it. We need to stop treating citizen reporters as novelty acts or stopgaps. They’re part of the ecosystem of truth-telling.
When Reform UK lies about candidate vetting and an anonymous X account debunks it, that matters. When someone uses FOI law to expose political theatre, that matters. These are the new beat reporters. The watchdogs of places Westminster forgot. And they deserve more than admiration. They deserve support.
So no, I’m not a journalist.
But I know whose work I trust. And increasingly, it’s not the ones with press passes – it’s the ones with receipts, timestamps, and the courage to keep showing up.
If you’re one of them: thank you.
If you know one: buy them a coffee. Subscribe to their Substack. Amplify their voice. Defend them when they’re attacked. Because in a world where local news is dying and national media is often too distant or too compromised to hold power to account, they’re all we’ve got.
And they’re enough. For now, they have to be.
But they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
 | A guest post by
|
For what it’s worth…. You would make a great journalist.