By Lee Kenny, a Visiting Lecturer in Film and Television at the Faculty of Performance, Media and English at Birmingham City University

It’s hard to engage people in local politics. Unlike the attention-grabbing MPs at Westminster, our Town Hall representatives rarely hit the headlines.

Local justice too is a difficult subject with which to excite the masses. Compared to a Crown Court - with its judge, jury and calls of ‘objection, your Honour’ - the lowly Magistrates’ Court is often also overlooked.

There are however some people who frequent the halls of local justice and democracy on a regular basis. Who spend hours wading through agendas and sifting through court proceedings on our behalf.

They are local news journalists. From Torquay to Tyneside, via Birmingham of course, the local news hack plays a crucial, if not always recognised, role in our society. They are the eyes and ears and often the mouthpiece of their community.

They attend the council planning meetings to report on the approval of the new out-of-town retail parks and scribble pages of court copy to ensure that justice is not only done but seen to be done, as the old adage goes.

As people’s lives become increasing bombarded with distractions, who honestly has the time to ensure that their local authority is held to account, that police spending is well invested and that their local NHS Trust is well run? Not many. And that is why the world needs local reporters; to go to the places you can’t and to report back.

Ironically though, at a time when the role of the local news reporter has never been more important, it has never been under greater threat. Newspaper closures and newsroom mergers mean there are fewer journalists today than there were ten years ago.

Good news for corrupt councillors and dodgy developers, bad news for the rest of us. The answer is simple. Support your local newspaper, because in paying the cover-price you’re actually investing in your community.

It might be tomorrow’s fish and chip paper but it’s today’s news and the stuff in it might affect you more than you think.

By Bob Calver, Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism, Birmingham City University

The recent phone hacking allegations by News of the World reporters highlights that journalists who want to expose wrongdoing should never use illegal or unethical methods to get to the truth. Just because something is possible does not make it acceptable and this is something that students hoping to work in news need to understand in order to adhere to the core values of journalism practice and ethics.

This issue again highlighted the fact that young journalists have to be clear that just because technology made something possible it does not make it acceptable. There are parallels between the hacking debate and other developments in journalism. Mobile ‘phones have made hacking into other people’s messages simple just as other technology has made it easy for anyone to upload allegations and rumour so they are accessible around the world in seconds. The job of journalism educators is to ensure future professionals understand the benefits of any emerging technology but recognise that core principles of accuracy and balance remain paramount.

The Birmingham City University Postgraduate Diploma course in Broadcast Journalism is accredited by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council which insists that journalism standards, law regulation and ethics are an essential part of any course carrying its approval. My colleague, Diane Kemp, who sits on the BJTC’s governing council, said: “It’s important that student journalists learn not just the skills they need to work successfully but also have a complete grasp of their responsibilities. If journalists want to be taken seriously in holding public figures to account they must ensure their own activities are above reproach.

This sentiment is echoed in the National Union of Journalists code of conduct which begins by asserting that journalists should strive to uphold media freedom and the right of the public to be informed but goes on to say material should be obtained by ‘honest, straightforward and open means except in cases of overwhelming public interest’.