Meet the team
The Bureau Local team – listed alphabetically below – combine years of experience in local, national and international reporting with data journalism and community engagement backgrounds.
Natalie Bloomer
Natalie is a Bureau Local Senior Reporter with a particular interest in social affairs. Before joining the Bureau, she co-founded an independent news service in Northamptonshire, NN Journal, where she worked closely with local communities to report on the issues that mattered to them. She has written for several national media outlets on a range of topics including immigration, homelessness and the welfare system. She has previously collaborated on investigations with the BBC and Channel 4 News.
Gareth Davies
Based in Lancashire, England
Gareth is an award-winning Reporter, who specialises in public interest and investigative journalism. As the chief reporter of the Croydon Advertiser, a weekly newspaper in London, he won 10 awards in five years, including Weekly Reporter of the Year at the Regional Press Awards a record four times.
Since joining the Bureau in 2017, Gareth has focused on the local government funding crisis and its impact on communities. This includes a data-led investigation revealing which local authorities were heading for financial collapse, the public spaces such as libraries and communities centres being sold off and the increasingly risky methods councils have turned to in order to generate extra revenue, including billion pound investments in property.
Gareth grew up reading the Southampton Advertiser the Southern Daily Echo. Having moved to Lancashire, he reads the Blackpool Gazette and Lancashire Post (formerly the Evening Post).
Emiliano Mellino
Based in Portsmouth, England
Emiliano is an award-winning journalist and organiser, specialising in large-scale collaborative investigations. His experience spans everything from union organising to financial journalism, and he has reported from London, Paris, Guatemala … and Portsmouth. Emiliano enjoys reading his local paper, the News, and is a fan of cooperative media startups, including the Bristol Cable, the Ferret and the Manchester Meteor.
