Online course newspapers, combined with relatively large newsrooms, mean journalism courses now have the resources to cover local events in some detail.

Both Whitireia and Wintec covered the local body elections this year – Wintec taking a “bottom up” approach over a period of weeks and asking voters what they hoped to see change in their neighbourhood, before putting these to candidates.

Whitireia also published pre-election coverage, and covered the election results on the day, producing good coverage over a weekend. The exercise has good educational outcomes in the core areas of interviewing, news writing and photography as well as extending knowledge of local government.