The brief: Connecting communities, not THAT Alex McLeish and local TV bidding opens

The latest collection of links on the media and journalism below, including a look at how one poor girl got mistake for another Alex McLeish, local TV under-starters orders and an interesting upcoming event in Manchester.

Connecting communities event

An interesting event taking place up at the BBC in MediaCity about how the mainstream media and community media can co-exist and collaborate. There’s plenty of examples across the UK already but this event brings together academics, community bloggers and journalists/executives from big media companies operating in the local space – plus of course the BBC who are starting to change the way they work with hyperlocal sites. Will be a fascinating day no doubt for those involved in this area. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: Local elections need to be more local, low turnout leads to questions and council live blogs election count

Tonight’s Bank Holiday edition of The Brief is taking a look over the local election results and some of the posts which have come off the back of it.

Why we’re losing the ‘local’ from local elections

A timely post from David Higgerson on how these elections showed a lack of ‘local’. David manages to outline, without sounding like he’s in the League of Gentlemen, why it’s important both local media and political parties make sure local issues are truely at the forefront of local elections rather than it just being a referendum every year on the performance of the government of the day.

I posted in the comments to show the Candidate Focus idea we ran on Blog Preston, the community news site I run for Preston, Lancashire, which sent a list of questions to every candidate to answer. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: Top Facebook tips for journalists, local TV debates and is a scoop still a scoop?

Here’s tonight’s round-up of interesting links and tid-bits from around the media/social media/journalism web, including:

The meaning of competition and whether first is best

A thought provoking piece from Patrick Smith about whether the scoop means anything anymore. I guess it comes down to what you value in journalism, and to me the enterprise scoop is the most important and we should always maintain and find a way to encourage genuinely interesting reporting. Tweeting a press release from the police a micro-second before someone else isn’t as important, as Patrick points out, but slaving away for ages to show up the local MP in Middlesbrough for not being in touch with his local community. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: A hyperlocal special

A special edition of The Brief tonight, featuring a large helping of the best hyperlocal related links after the Talk About Local Unconference over the weekend.

The #TAL12 event brings together those running hyperlocal sites across the UK and those interested in both those running them and the idea. Here’s some of the best blogs about and off the back of the event.

Why WV11: Summing up why people do this

If you look at it from the outside then hyperlocal sites make no sense. They make barely any money, they take up ridiculous amounts of time and put you at risk of pissing people you live near off. But this fantastic post from Steph Jennings really brings it home as to WHY people do it. Her passion, dedication and love for where she lives shine through. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes and thoughts from #TAL12: Hyperlocal matures, funding emerges and BBC gets serious

Attended the fourth Talk About Local Unconference event on Saturday in Birmingham. The event, called #TAL12, is a chance for those involved in hyperlocal/community and interested parties in this area to get together and have a chat and discuss issues, ideas and more.

The sessions ranged from all the funding which seems to have appeared for research, new ideas and more into the hyperlocal blogging arena. Here’s some issues I picked up on as I tried to take in as many sessions as possible:

Hyperlocal is maturing, but there is a difference emerging

I picked up on a mood running throughout the event that there is a shift in terms of hyperlocal sites in the UK. There are those which broadly are concerned with local news reporting and finding some kind of way to make it pay, such as Ventnor Blog, Blog Preston (the site I run) and Saddleworth News. I was in a session about forming a Hyperlocal Alliance and this was focused around forming an association which would be more formal, legal and have a chance to act as a voice of hyperlocal news sites. On the other hand there are the hyperlocal community sites, these may not be WordPress sites but might be Ning’s, Facebook groups and more – but they don’t do ‘news’ as other people define it, they seek to pass on information and allow communities to comment and talk about their area. The difference between these two types of sites is sometimes vast, and then sometimes not very clear as some sites can do both.

What was clear to me is that the Hyperlocal Alliance put forward by Philip John is timely and needs to happen. At first it may not be all formal and proper, a chance for people to share issues they experience and get help from those at the other end of the country – as we’ve been doing recently around community and commenting guidelines on some hyperlocal sites.

Putting my big media hat on (I work for Trinity Mirror, across our regional digital titles) there is a chance that a Hyperlocal Alliance would make it easier for big corporations, publishers and the likes the of the BBC, to engage with hyperlocal news sites and this could lead to better relationships as a whole – rather than on one-to-one levels between local publications and sites. I would urge people to go and have a look at Philip’s post about creating a Hyperlocal Alliance and give it some thought. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: BBC linking out to hyperlocals, the changing face of towns and cities and how to remove Breivik

Here’s a selection of links and tweets I’ve spotted in the last 24 hours, it’s mainly a hyperlocal and regional media flavour to today. Plus the Breivik trial and how one site in Norway is using the web to offer readers something different.

Are our towns and cities too big for a local paper?

Really thought provoking piece by Matthew Engel on the FT about the changing face of the local press, and he hits on something which perhaps away from the job cuts, digital changes and restructures is at the heart of all this. Our towns and cities themselves are changing. People are more transient, and are not in their town/city in the same way. They may commute, they may work part of the week away, and so community to them is something very different. Local publishers jobs are to enable whichever community is there at that time time and being of value to them – whether this is print, online, tablet, mobile or any other device. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: Facebook trends articles + how social media is ‘taking over’ the news

Not too much in today’s brief, as I’ve been up in Birmingham all day working with our the Trinity Mirror Regional teams on their video editing skills – but here’s two links which caught my eye.

Facebook trends articles in news feeds

Anyone who publishes content onto Facebook will know the importance of getting into their fans’ news feeds. Why? Well because simply this is the navigational device for Facebook and the first screen you see when logging into Facebook. A good step forward for publishers though as it looks like Facebook are bringing out trending articles which feature in news feeds – a bit like the way music will show what friends are listening to and how people discussing the same thing e.g. ‘Christmas’ will show in one place. This is a good step forward by Facebook and shows for publishers why it’s even more important to engage with Facebook than ever before, to help drive more traffic. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: Hyperlocal news economics, quick and easy mobile sites + regional press awards

A late one for the brief tonight, but managed to squeeze in a digest of the discussions, posts and tweets I’ve caught today.

Quick mobile sites – easy

A good one if you’re struggling to create a mobile version of your site that makes it look good on iPhone or Android. I’ve noticed on Blog Preston our mobile traffic has been rapidly increasing in terms of device accessed from, but I’ll be damned if we’re going to shell out for a custom mobile site.

The post above highlighted via Adam Singer shows off ‘Go Mobile’. A Google-backed (is everything these days?) tool that allows small businesses to quickly build their own mobile site from scratch with a “friendly” site builder – but note it is only free for a year, then I guess you’ve got to pay. It integrates with Google Analytics and I assume Google AdSense so you can start monetising your mobile traffic and measure it accurately. Read the rest of this entry »

The brief: Flood warnings widget, hyperlocal news funding + news habits

The Brief begins for another week, taking a look at interesting stuff happening in media, journalism and technology. Here’s a round-up of some useful links I’ve been reading over today and the weekend.

Flood warnings, on your website

Nifty idea from the Environment Agency to get their warnings out there, and a great way for news sites to add value to their stories about flooding (if there is any). You can grab and embed code and show the flood risk in your region. A good example of opening up government information to help inform people all over England and Wales, and relatively simple and easy to do. Added to a story about flooding, or flood threats, it’ll help provide up to the minute information for readers. Read the rest of this entry »

When social media, data journalism and football combine

The eyes of the world will definitely be on Wembley this weekend for the FA Cup semi-finals

I’ve sacked off The Brief for tonight and instead I will focus on a superb example from the Liverpool Echo (disclosure: The Echo is one of the sites I work with as Senior Digital Producer with Trinity Mirror Digital) of a really human way to do data journalism. Read the rest of this entry »