A team of eight journalists has created a local news cooperative to tackle the closure of the traditional media in their South Wales town of Port Talbot, and to continue to provide community's news coverage (hat tip to the Guardian's Roy Greenslade.)

After Trinity Mirror's Port Talbot Guardian, the community radio station and the local council freesheet all closed down, this group of volunteer journalists launched the Port Talbot Magnet, a local news site which carries news sourced by professional journalists and members of the community, as NUJ Freelance bulletin reported.

Port Talbot Magnet is a not-for-profit community based on a cooperative principle: volunteer professional journalists collaborate with citizens who suggest, participate and fund coverage on local news.

It incorporates a 'Pitch-In' scheme, with members of the community contributing by donating money, suggesting ideas, sending pictures and helping to pay professional reporters to carry out the news coverage.

The underlying idea is that news has a price and it's worth it to the community to pay for it as it it adds value to their lives.

Part of the Pitch-In scheme is the "Sponsor a court reporter for a day" project which provides a coverage for a court case for £150 a day.

Rachel Howells, one of the board members, explained that the £150 daily fee for a court reporter is a recognition that "reporting from an ongoing court case is a highly specialised job that requires training and experience", the Guardian reported.

The Port Talbot Magnet's basic idea is similar to Spot.Us, the community-funded news platform based in California that allows citizens to make donations to fund journalistic stories.

Sources: Guardian, NUJ Freelance bulletin