Time flies when you’re having fun, and it certainly doesn’t seem like a year’s already gone by for the West Leeds Dispatch!
Today marks our first birthday and we wanted to thank all our readers and contributors for your support. I know it’s a cliché, but we couldn’t do it without you!
It’s been an extraordinary first year for the Dispatch.
In that time we’ve launched our first print edition (we still hope to do others in the future), had almost 400,000 page impressions on our website, held community news cafes and been part of a prestigious NESTA audience analytics project to boost our online profile.
We’ve tried to cover local community issues – from floods and traffic problems in Kirkstall to the future of Armley Town Street, housing developments in Pudsey and the future of Bramley Community Centre to name but a few.
Hundreds of you have commented on our articles. Have a guess which subject is by far the most commented? Yep, you’ve guessed it – it’s the cycle superhighway!
Most of all we’re proud to have brought together the talents of local residents, who have contributed to the site. The Dispatch is run on a voluntary basis – nobody gets paid, we do it in our spare time because we love our community.
Get involved
There are still too few of us to cover everything we’d like to, so we’d love to hear from you if you would like to contribute content based around life in West Leeds.
We welcome contributions from everyone. They could be short informal reports from local community groups, organisations and societies you attend, or sports reports from local teams you support or run.
They could be about life on your allotment, or community life in general.
Don’t worry if your writing isn’t great, we can help with that and offer you full support.
If you’re really not confident about writing, your reports could also feature photographs, or even video or audio if you’re really brave!
Email news@westleedsdispatch.com if you’d like to become part of our team.
We hope you can make our second year even better than the first. Thank you for your support!
– JOHN BARON, editor, 5 May 2016
