This is all Morgan’s fault. Back in the Spring of this year my friend suggested that I’d be an ‘ideal’ member of the editorial team for new Welsh language hyperlocal Pobl Caerdydd which was to be launched at Tafwyl, the capital’s annual celebration of all things Welsh. So without a clue as to what my friend’s definition of ‘ideal’ might be – and vowing to take him to one side for a quiet word – I went along to one of the public meetings at which the nascent hyperlocal was beginning to take shape.

Pobl Caerdydd wasn’t conceived in isolation. Its remit was to be the digital offspring of Y Dinesydd, Wales’ oldest local paper which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year – ap Dinesydd (son of Dinesydd), if you like. The paper’s editorial team had given its blessing to an online ‘version’, but it soon became clear from the myriad ideas swirling around the meeting that Pobl Caerdydd wasn’t so much dutiful son as cooler kid brother, determined to be different, appealing to a younger readership with busier and more diverse working and social lives.

I still wasn’t sure what part I would play in all this. One thing was certain: I had absolutely no idea how to edit a newspaper, let alone a digital one, which would have a presence across three platforms – Facebook and Twitter, as well as the website itself. Would I accept the challenge? The quiet, sensible voice in my head said ‘don’t be daft.’ The loud, impulsive one in my heart screamed ‘What are you waiting for??’

I’m a scriptwriter in my late 40s and, apart from becoming a dad, I haven’t actually done anything new in, well, decades. Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. I did train as a EFL teacher a couple of years ago and I appear to be reasonably employable in that line of work. So the challenge of editing a hyperlocal didn’t seem that crazy. I don’t have any formal journalistic qualifications (though I did once have a letter published in the Daily Mirror when I was at university – does that count?) but as a writer I’m used to staring at my laptop for hours at a time, wondering whether anyone wants to read what I’ve just written.

So I suppose that’s what swung it for me: having an inkling as to what people might like to read – and what they might not. ‘Give the people what they want’ is one way of looking at it, but as far as I’m concerned therein lies predictability. I also believe in offering the Pobl Caerdydd readership what they didn’t know they could have – a provocative piece about city squats, for example, or coverage of a protest outside the Senedd against indeterminate prison sentences – as well as more familiar but equally well-written pieces about the Farmers’ Markets, or Cardiff City’s ups and downs in the Premiership, penned by experienced journalists such as Gwenda Richards.

One thing I’ve had to learn pretty quickly is that every day is a deadline. C4CJ’s Emma Meese sums it up thus: ‘It’s the beast that needs constant feeding.’ Never a truer word was spoken. But I have learnt that not everything has to be a lovingly crafted piece over which long hours have been sweated; sometimes it can fit quickly and neatly into 140 characters or less on Twitter, or be a few words under a striking image on Facebook.

I’d be lying if I said everything was running smoothly: we still need many more people to contribute via Storini (‘the reporter’s notebook in your pocket’), I need to get over my increasing dislike of WordPress, and not every article has been met with the enthusiasm I’d hoped for. I’m still getting to know(fathom?) the Pobl Caerdydd audience’s likes and dislikes, and the editorial learning curve seems to get steeper. Then again, Pobl Caerdydd has been on this earth for less than five months. Trouble is these days you have to learn to crawl, walk, run, jump – and fly – all at the same time. But I’ve loved every single moment of this rollercoaster ride so far. It’s just that I don’t have time to do anything else…

Cardiff’s Welsh-speaking community may moan and groan about this and that, but generally we’re a pretty privileged bunch, living and working in a city which in a recent survey made it comfortably into the Top Ten Best Places to Live in the UK. I think it’s essential that Pobl Caerdydd reflects that sense of confidence and optimism as citizens of Cardiff and as Welsh speakers, but I believe it also has a responsibility on occasion to question, to challenge and provoke, to lift the lid on what’s going on beyond the glitzy bars and fashionable boutiques – after all, we’re all of us Pobl Caerdydd.