This month, I attended the first Brighton and Hove Community Reporters meet-up event, a new network bringing publishers of community news, local media and bloggers together. The project has been kicked off by three training sponsors, namely SCIP, a Sussex based charity supporting IT learning, Working Together and Friends Centre supported by the Brighton & Hove Learning Partnership.

What is a community reporter you ask? Amy Riley, one of the project leaders, believes anyone can be a community reporter. She said: "Everyone has their own unique perspective on the world and the ability and right to share that viewpoint with others around them."

She also explains how the advancement of domestic technology has made sharing information easier: "People can use their phone to take photos and record video, then plug the cards straight into the computer to upload, or send directly to the web directly from their phone. "Wordpress, social media tools, and other developments have meant it's easier for people to report and share views from the ground up."

This was also the perfect topic to kick off the event, introduced by the guest speaker Judith Townend from www.journalism.co.uk. She presented examples of where news was coming from non-professional sources illustrating how they report an extremely personal view of significant events.

Stories such as the Vestas sit-in on the Isle of Wight, captured by the very local people it was impacting on the Ventnor Blog or the Guardian’s crowd sourcing project to expose the details of as many MP’s expenses as possible.

One of the key things Judith picked up on is the "two way conversation" that is now happening between publishers and readers. Gone are the days of hacks filing their articles and the closest the readership gets to it is black ink on their fingers. Now everyone is a news analyst, you only have to monitor the raging debates happening on the comments section on most major new sites e.g. BBC News’ Have Your Say.

The internet has been a daily part of my life since the mid-1990s, so personally I’m finding this latest progression of ’citizen media’ extremely exciting.

As more households get connected to the internet, parents are a progressively powerful group of information stakeholders. They are reaching out to get fine tuned information for their particular issue and at precisely the moment they need it.

Yes, we all have health visitors and midwives who are there to provide professional support and advice, however there’s two fundamental problems with this one. The first - it does depend on your postcode in Britain the quality of care you’ll receive and I know this from my first hand conversations with other parents The second - your breastfeed counsellor won’t be around at 11pm while crumpled on the sofa in tears because baby won’t latch on (first hand experience).

When I started to feel twinges of pain in my 39th week of pregnancy, I browsed the message boards and found a whole group of women with the same symptoms claiming to be in ‘slow labour’. It was amazing to read about women in labour and sharing their experience in between contractions!

The B&H Community Reporters network has been set up to support this variety of news stakeholders in the city. It was a chance to start a discussion on what we are writing or broadcasting plus share ideas or techniques for publishing our ‘news’.

Michelle Guyatt, who puts together the Bevendean Bulletin and is also a community reporter for the Bevendean area on The Argus website, has been taking part in the taster session course on ‘community reporting’.

She said: "So far i have met some lovely people, had lots of fun, got to know what’s going on in my home town..

"The meeting last week was interesting, there was lots of discussion and ideas that came out."

Judith also stresses: "Collaboration is key, especially for groups with limited resources and time."

The next meet-up is Wednesday 24th March at 7-9pm. Sign up for free here.

Follow the community reporters on Twitter, by searching #communityreporters, or clicking here.