Tees Media: ‘The Three C’s of The Tees’

When The Tees set out its editorial approach in January 2024, it organised the site around three plain words: Community, Culture and Connection.

The three themes were intended to do more than divide a menu. Together they described the kind of local publication The Tees wanted to be: interested in what people were building, creating and sharing across the region.

Community

Community coverage begins close to home. It includes volunteers who keep a group running, neighbours improving a shared space, local events, charities, schools and practical projects that make daily life better.

These stories can be overlooked when news is driven only by crisis or conflict. Reporting them properly means naming the people doing the work, checking the result and explaining how others can take part, rather than treating a good deed as a one-line filler.

Culture

Culture covers the art, music, theatre, writing, film and heritage through which the Tees area understands itself. It makes room for an emerging performer at a small venue as well as a major exhibition, and for industrial history alongside new creative work.

The aim is not simply to announce an event. Useful cultural journalism introduces the people behind it, gives readers enough context to care and records activity that might otherwise disappear when the posters come down.

Connection

Connection looks at the links between people and places. That can mean technology, transport and business networks, but it also includes friendship, travel, shared interests and projects that bring different parts of the Tees area into contact.

It is the theme that asks what happens after an introduction: whether an idea spreads, a partnership lasts or a reader finds a service, group or opportunity they did not know existed.

A positive brief with journalistic standards

Positive news still needs dates, evidence, attribution and proportion. Celebrating the region is most credible when the reporting distinguishes a plan from a finished result and gives readers the original source.

Community, Culture and Connection provided a simple framework for that work. They also reflected the geography of The Tees, where six distinct local areas share a river, an economy and many overlapping stories without losing their own identities.

Archive note: This editorial statement expands and preserves The Tees article originally published on 12 January 2024. The original date and featured image are retained.