Making the headlines

It was quite a week last week. Normally I’m writing the news but I found myself getting some surprising recognition for what I do (report on stuff, put it on the web and tell people about it).

Paul Bradshaw profiled me and my experiences as part of his ‘New Online Journalists’ series and I got a very complimentary comment from Duncan Higgitt who runs WalesHome about what I’m doing at Media Wales.

Then I was featured on the journalism.co.uk ‘J-List’. People nominate journalists who are out there doing it and innovating. I was chuffed to be featured and it’ll definitely be the only time I’m alongside Ian Hislop! Thanks to whoever nominated me.

The Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blog ring has re-started, so I’ll be imparting some journalism related blogging over there. It’s well worth checking out and seeing what the young minds in journalism are saying.

I’ve also been interviewed recently on the World Update show on the BBC World Service about local journalism and hyperlocal websites, skip to 34 minutes to hear it.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has ever helped me out, trained me, encouraged me and worked with me. Now, back to doing journalism…

Dealing with the deluge

I was recently away from work for a few days, some lieu days needed taking (use them or lose them as they say) and the combination of a Bank Holiday and the chance to visit the girlfriend back up in the North of England was too good a chance to miss.

So, I returned to my desk the other day and found an over-flowing inbox, many missed calls, voicemail messages, twitter messages, an RSS reader full to the brim. I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all.

I’m a pretty organised person, I use Remember The Milk for my tasks, I’m good at responding to emails and phone calls and I’m generally good at not forgetting stuff. But how do journalists deal with the information overload? How can we sift through everything when we come back? Especially when your role is as someone in the community that people want to speak to.

This post from Chris Brogan, ‘Your Blog Is Not Your Job‘ made me think, with the advent of social media and easy communication tools – it seems to be becoming even harder for a journalist to take a break.

What tips have you got for coming back off holiday and dealing with the deluge? How do you sift through everything and decide what to do first?

Image credit to dylanroscover

What happens to your hyperlocal blog if you move away?

That’s the question I posed in a guest post over on Hyperlocalblogger.com. Matt very kindly allowed me to explore the subject as I looked at what I’d done with Blog Preston when I moved away. Here’s an excerpt:

Hyperlocal blogs are all about location and are generally run by people who live in the area they seek to serve. But what happens when you’ve built up a local blog and move away from the area?

I don’t think many of us would stay in an area just to keep up a local blog. We have relationships, job opportunities or other reasons for moving to pastures new. Building up a hyperlocal site takes time and dedication; you build a community around your content and, to a certain extent, yourself, but what if you’re not there?

To read the full post head on over to HyperlocalBlogger.com

Who reads a hyperlocal blog?

Hyperlocal blogs vary enormously in terms of audience numbers. Some such as the Ventnor Blog on the Isle of Wight are long established and attract a huge audience while others are fledgling outfits that may only have readerships in their tens every day.

But getting beyond the Google Analytics is important, especially if anyone who runs a hyperlocal blog is thinking about making some money for it. With Blog Preston, the hyperlocal venture I setup in January 2009 to cover the Lancashire city of Preston, I wanted to find out a bit more about my audience.

We ran a survey and asked people what they thought about the blog, the content and got a big of demographic information from them. Here are the findings:

The age group – they aren’t young

The largest age of people reading Blog Preston was 36-50, with 37.% putting themselves in this category. No one over 51 was in our readership.

Where they lived – they are richer than most

We attract readers from opposite ends of Preston. The two wealthies suburbs, Fulwood and Penwortham featured as the most popular places for our readers to be from. These places are mainly affluent, middle class and have strong broadband penetration. They are also home to lots of ‘community minded’ people who are likely to look beyond the newspaper headlines. We do not attract readers from areas such as Ribbleton and Larches, the more socially deprived areas of the city.

What they liked reading about – events and the arts

It seems there is a big gap in events coverage in Preston, as that’s what people were coming to our site for. To find out what events were on, read reviews and get ideas for what to do in the city. Our coverage of the arts was also popular, covering music, comedy and other arts events that were happening. There was lots of love for our opinion articles, our readers liked to read informed articles from members of the community.

What they wanted more of – more of the same

As above, the things they liked reading about they wanted to see more of. So we know our core audience is happy and wants to see even more done on these areas.

Do we reflect the city in our content? Why yes, we do

This is what I’m most proud of. From starting up Blog Preston on the kitchen table all those months ago, we got 93% of our readers saying our content reflects the city of Preston. If you’re a hyperlocal blog and you’re not doing that you might as well pack up and go home!

Lessons learned

We need to hammer home our advantage on arts, events and opinion coverage and perhaps highlight this content so it’s easier to find for readers. Our success in the more affluent areas of Preston gives hope for attracting advertising but is also a double-edged sword as we should be attracting visitors from all over. To do this we need to cover local events in these areas, get contributors sending in articles and building relationships with people in those communities.

I’d encouraged other hyperlocal blogs to do a readership survey, it’s a great way of finding out whether you’re hitting the right notes with your content and also gets you underneath the website stats.

Have you done readership research for your hyperlocal blog? What did you find? How do you think we can expand our readership with Blog Preston? Any tips in the comments below would be appreciated.

Image credit to BillFromSpokane

Talkin’ bout local: What I’m hoping to get from TAL Unconference 10

The next Talk About Local Unconference is fast approaching and I thought I’d jot down a few things I’m hoping to get from the event.

The general election

How can hyperlocal’s cover the general election? We’re looking at running coverage on Blog Preston but with limited resources and candidates not seeming interested in being interviewed – it’s looking like a different task. How are other hyperlocal blogs planning on covering the event itself? Will they be asking people to volunteer? Or linking up with initiatives like The Guardian & The Straight Choice’s partnership? I’d like to think that local candidates would see local blogs as a great opportunity to get their message out to the community.

The big money question

Is anyone making money? How are they making money? It’s the big question for a lot of people as although the local blog might be a labour of love there needs to be a business model of some sort. Providing good, quality, local, content is time consuming and labour intensive. Will advertisers take local blogs seriously? Let’s hope there’s a few people there who can shed some light.

Taking it to the next level

You’ve got the blog up and running, you’re getting traffic, you’ve got contributors. Where next? How do you find more content? How do you expand? Should you expand or keep to your current level? There’s so many questions for those who run hyperlocal and local blogs and have been running them for a while. Keep it as a hobby, try and make money, invest more time.

Getting offline

Are hyperlocal and local blogs running events? What are they doing offline? Are they organising tweet-ups, bloggers meet-ups and other events that get their community together away from the computer screen. I’d like to think they are but let’s see how many are actually doing it and what tips they’ve got.

That’s just three topics. I’m hoping to meet some interesting people and decided I don’t want to run or help run a session this time, but just participate, take some notes and contribute to the discussions that are happening.

You can read my report from the last Talk About Local Unconference in Stoke-on-Trent in October 2009 – it was a very inspiring event – and I hope this event will be just as good.

Does the web allow us to get to know a place faster?

In early 2010 I moved to Cardiff, Wales. A completely new city, a new country and a new language. Everything was new. My job meant I had to get up to speed on what was happening, know the back story to things and get to know the communities, locations and people that make up the capital of Wales.

This post attempts to explore how the web has changed getting to know about a place. Let’s rewind 20 years and imagine having to do the same thing, uprooting from where you are, trying to find out about somewhere new – what would you have done?

What it would have been like?

The printed word would have been god. I would have got myself a guide book, no doubt filled with useful information but potentially out of date as soon as it’s published. I would have got an A-Z, in fact I own a Cardiff A-Z at the moment and it’s invaluable when I end up getting lost in the mean streets of Ely.

Going on a guided tour of the city, or at least the historical bits of it, would have been a good idea. I might have popped along to the tourist information office, rented books on Cardiff from the library – but nearly everything would have been backwards looking rather than perhaps the here and now.

Of course there would be the local newspapers and these would be able to provide some background information and an insight into current affairs, but to access the archives would have been either a costly (ordering them) or time-intensive exercise (sitting in the local library and reading them).

Very little of this research would be done before arriving in my destination, other than perhaps getting hold of a guidebook and an A-Z. My biggest source of information would be people, through meeting them, asking questions and relying on their memories.

Using the web to get local knowledge faster

Before I even came for a job interview in Cardiff I was able to research it. I was trawling the web for articles about Cardff’s history, looking at Google maps to make sense of where my potential new home would be and looking at flats and houses on property websites. CF10, the dispute over Bute Park and the opening times of the Castle were all at my finger tips. This really is the wonder of the web, accessing all that local information before I even arrived.

However, there were a few extra tools I could use to get that local insight.

The first was Flickr. There is a strong Cardiff group on Flickr and this allowed me to put pictures to places that I was reading about. The best thing about the group is that it often captures unusual places around the city, from interesting angles and this gave me a chance to see a different side to the city. A few times when driving around, or walking along, I’ve sen something and thought “that was on the Cardiff flickr group” and the connection had fizzed in my brain.

Next up was Twitter. It’s like walking into a pub and shouting ‘What’s good to do round here?’ – I did just that via this blog – and got a great response. Now, whenever I have some spare time, or some bored time, I can go and do something. It’s a great list of things to see and do, recommended by local people or people who know their stuff about Cardiff. Not experts, but certainly people who can vouch for things they’ve done and enjoyed. It’s certainly an eclectic mix and it’s a great way of learning what the locals like to do.

Twitter also allows you to make connections with people in the city before you even arrive. These might be informal connections but this makes meeting people easier, and certainly in my case it was great to connect with a few colleagues before even arriving in the office. Opening that conversation with them allowed me to quickly feel at home and crack on with what I needed to do.

Using RSS is a good way of building up your local knowledge. If local blogs or websites offer RSS feeds, subscribe to them. I set up a folder called ‘Cardiff’ in my Google reader and in it I’ve got news feeds from news websites, blogs and loads of other Cardiff websites that keep me abreast of things that are happening in Cardiff. Often I don’t get chance to look at it for a few days, but it’s always great to have a skim through and I’ll pick out two or three good things that I did not know about. The nice thing as well is having a variety of sources, it means I get different viewpoints often on the same issues, helping me to be better informed about issues or things that are happening in the city.

Google maps. Where would we be without it? Lost I reckon. Google maps has been one of the biggest tools I’ve used since moving here. Everything has a postcode and I’ve been able to understand where I am in relation to other parts of the city. I can quickly find routes, find buildings and find things that are near me. It gives me a knowledge of road names, of road numbers and before I even got to Cardiff I had an idea of what was in the North, East, South and West of the city just from Google maps. While an A-Z is handy, Google maps is interactive and allows me to quickly plan my routes.

What else could I be doing?

Some of the offline things I’ve found really useful are:

Visit a local museum. I’m lucky that Cardiff has a rich history but there is nothing like a museum for organising and displaying historical information in an easy to understand way. It gives you a sense of the traditions and values of a place, but gives you an understanding of where the place has come from.

Visit local pubs. The conversations you hear, the notices you see and the characters you meet will soon allow you to get a feel for the city, plus you can get to know the local ales. Never a bad thing.

Join a leisure centre. Even if it’s just for a swim every now and again, or a quick dash in the gym or if you’re more adventurous a spinning class – it will give you the chance to overhear conversations, see local notices (I’ve found Maindy Swimming Pool in Cardiff has a gigantic noticeboard and a huge swathe of leaflets as you come through the front door).

Take a different route home. Instead of hot-footing it, or blasting the accelerator, try going 10 minutes out of the way and take a different route home. You’ll be amazed at what you come across.

Summing up

Above all, there is no substitute for getting off your computer and getting out there. Meeting people, speaking to them and finding out what they think and know is one of the best ways of expanding your knowledge. I’ve heard some great stories already, met more people than I could name and all of that helps you to understand the passions, concerns and interests of the people who live in different communities.

So, the web definitely allows us to accelerate our learning about a place. I have no doubt that in the short time I’ve been in Cardiff I’ve learned a lot more through using the web than I would without it – but is this accelerate knowledge a good thing? Will I just be skimming the surface and not getting enough in-depth knowledge? How long does it take to become a ‘local’?

Creating a blog awards for Wales

We’ve got an idea. We want to create a blog awards for Wales. It’s been done in Manchester with some degree of success and we’d like to bring it to Wales. It appears there was a Welsh Blog Awards in 2007-2008 but the blog for it has disappeared and it’s now just a random collection of mentions on Google. So help us kick-start it again.

The idea

There’s often talk of the ‘blogosphere’ and in Wales this is strong. There’s plenty of blogs out there and we’d like to shine a light on the ones that make a huge impact. For all those people who take their message to the world, blogging about what they are passionate about, featuring and telling stories. That’s what blogging is about. Hopefully the blog awards could reward those people who have built an audience, connected with people and crafted their words. Plus it helps to spread a little traffic around.

The categories

Taking different categories we’d like to see people nominate and be nominated. The categories that Manchester use are:

• Best City & Neighbourhood Blog
• Best Personal Blog
• Best New Blog
• Best Writing on a Blog
• Best Arts & Culture Blog
• Blog of the Year

We’d probably add Best Welsh Language Blog as well.

The method

We’d setup a website. You could nominate yourself or nominate blogs that you read. A panel would then go through the long list, come up with a shortlist. There would then be an event, with all nominees invited, and the winners would be unveiled. I guess you’d have to live or work in Wales to be allowed to enter.

So, what do you think? Can you think of blogs that should be nominated? Who would you like to see on the judging panel? What categories have we missed? Any suggestions you’ve got we’d like to hear them. What should the entry rules be?

This post originally appeared on walesonline

3.2.1 – launch a community website for Cardiff

Three weeks and a little bit into the role as Online Communities Editor with Media Wales and we’ve only gone and launched a community website for Cardiff.

We’re taking a bit of a risk, developing as we go along and hopefully building a community around the yourCardiff website. I’m hoping that by being open during the development stage we get people chipping in, suggesting ideas and feeling like it’s their site too – rather than just being developed some suits in an office.

This does however mean we’ve got a few gaping holes, some bits that say ‘under development’ and no doubt some parts that don’t display properly in Internet Explorer or some obscure browser.

But, it’s a win. We’ve hit the ground running, we’re building from the bottom up and hopefully creating a site that Cardiff can be proud of. It’s about the little things, celebrating what happens in communities (both location and interest wise) across the capital city of Wales.

We’ll no doubt have some fallings out, some disputes and some triumphs but I’m sure it’ll be fun along the way as we try to break our content down into hyper-local chunks – putting news and information into the hands of people in Cardiff. Sounds dangerous, it could be. Sounds ambitious, it is.

We’ll be using social media to help build our community, but it’s also about getting out of the office, out of the media hub and sticking our camera or pen and paper, into different places to find out what’s going on.

As I saw posted on a rather visceral blog post the other week – hyper-local is nothing new. It’s doing what local news organisations do best, tell people what’s going on in their area and community (be that location or subject of interest) but the web just opens up new opportunities and ways of doing that.

And finally, a huge thank you to unclewilco (Andrew Wilcox) for his break-neck development over the last few weeks. There’s much more to come.

Image credit to Auntie P

Places to visit & things to do in Cardiff & South Wales

I’m starting a new job in Cardiff with Media Wales on January 11th. While I have been assured I will be spending many hours in the office/hunting down stories in Cardiff, I am hoping that I will be allowed a few evenings to explore Cardiff and the surrounding area. Here’s my list of places to visit so far, but please comment below or message me on twitter (@ed_walker86) with your suggestions of other places to try. My mission is to visit/do the things on the list by the end of 2010, and most likely post some evidence (photos/videos/links) on this blog.

Cardiff

Have a filthy night out at Metro’s

Dance like a muppet in the Welsh Club (Clwb Ifor Bach)

Watch some bands at the Buffalo Bar (via @evacaiden)

See some art and drink a cocktail at Milgi (via @evacaiden)

Watch a Six Nations rugby match

Watch a Cardiff Blues rugby match

Watch a Glamorgan 20:20 game

Go for a coffee with Glyn Mottershead (via @egrommet and @digidickinson)

Take a photo of the Millennium Stadium from the terrace at the back of my flat at sunrise and sunset

Visit Cardiff Castle and learn about its history

Go for a curry at Mint & Mustard (via @evacaiden)

Complete the Cardiff City Centre pub crawl in one day/evening (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a coffee and cupcake at The Pot Cafe (via @fillefi) – I had a coffee but not a cupcake, had some hummus and pitta bread instead

Take in the view of Llandaff Cathedral and enjoy the prettiness (via @fillefi)

Eat a pizza at Kalla Bella in Llandaff (via @fillefi)

Go shopping in the Arcades and enjoy some cheese at Madame Fromage and sandwich at the New York Deli (via @fillefi)

Take a Sunday stroll around Roath Park (via @fillefi)

Have a picnic in Sophia Gardens (via @cardiffbites)

Get cultured at the Chapter Arts Centre (via @cardiffbites)

Attend a Cardiff Tweetup (via @cardiffbites)

Watch the Cardiff Devils Ice Hockey team (via @cardiffbites)

Go to Cardiff Museum and St Fagans (via @cardiffbites)

Find the cheese market at the Castle and much some lovely cheese (via @becky_rutt)

Have a pint of dark in either Old Arcade, Vulcan or Goat Major pubs (via @uncle_wilco)

Potter round the junk and interesting stuff at Jacob’s Antique Market and have a mug of tea (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a ham bap from Cardiff Indoor Market – and smell the fish (via @uncle_wilco)

Chicken curry (off the bone) and chips in Caroline Street after a night on the SA (via @uncle_wilco)

Feed the ducks at Roath Park lake – or risk a boat ride (via @uncle_wilco)

Have a Clarks pie (cold & warm) (via @uncle_wilco)

Have tea at Waterloo Gardens Tea Room (via @speedupdating)

South Wales

Take a trip to the Gower and sit on a sandy beach and watch some birds

Visit the Big Pit and find out about mining in South Wales

Take a walk down Cosmeston Lakes (via @cardiffbites)

Visit Tenby and go to Oakwood Park (via @cardiffbites)

Visit Caephilly Castle on a wet Sunday and see Tommy Cooper Statue (via @uncle_wilco)

Have fish and chips from Boffy’s “Cod Father of Sole”‘ on Barry Island (via @uncle_wilco)

Wales in general

Buy a welsh hat and wear it on St David’s Day (via @uncle_wilco) – a welsh hat is one of these (I have been reliably informed).

Take an evening/weekend course in Welsh and learn the conversational basics. Any recommendations for where I can do this?

Let me know anything else I should be doing/exploring/seeing/experiencing in Cardiff and South Wales!

Image used in this post is of Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay. Image credit to John Greenaway.

Local bloggers content starter kit

Creating content is one of the toughest bits about running a blog. Waking up, hitting the start button and then realising you’ve got nothing to write about. Here’s a few ways to ensure you’ve always got content flowing through your blog and keeping your finger on the pulse of your local community.

Use RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a great way to get feeds from websites that offer them and this will keep you up to date with websites – without having to keep visiting them! Win. You can use sites like Bloglines or Google Reader

Use email alerts

Don’t rely on RSS. A lot of websites do email newsletters or allow you to subscribe to email updates. You’ve got an email account, so get email alerts dropping into it regularly. They’ll often give you a lead.

Your local paper

They still exist and they generally aren’t going away. Subscribe to the RSS feed of your local newspaper(s) and take a read of this every morning. This will give you a clue as to what is on the agenda at the moment. You will also find they often just do snippets on community stories that you could make much bigger. Take one of their stories and see if it could go further, is there a new angle? Could you do an in-depth interview with someone featured? Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste what the local paper writes as you’ll end up in hot water and you’re not adding value to your blog.

Your local council

They are always doing stuff. Events, taxes, councillors, elections, new projects. Local authorities are busy places and there are lots of people to speak to. Subscribe to the RSS feed if its authored, or email the press office and get on their distribution list for press releases.

Other local blogs

There will be other local bloggers. Someone will be extolling the virtues of your local river, or something like that. Find them and connect with them. Subscribe to their blogs RSS feed. Their two line post might lead to a series of posts for you about a subject, or they might even guest post on your blog. There’s a few ways to find them:

Google Blog Search, put your location in and away you go

Go to blogger.com, find a blogger from your area. Got to their profile and click on the location, it’ll show you all other bloggers in your area.

Once you start finding them. Create a page on your blog as a local blog directory, it’ll be popular.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing website. But it also has groups – put your location into the find a group box and you’ll be amazed at how many people are taking photos of your area. Connect with these people, feature their photos with your posts (always remember to give credit to them for the photos) and you’ll find little snippets and stories.

Youtube

People seem to like making videos. There will be some for where you live. Go to Youtube and put your location into their search box. You’ll be amazed at what you find. Feature the videos on your blog, connect with the users and you’ll get even more. You can even get an RSS feed so you don’t have to keep checking for new videos.

Facebook

It’s the biggest social network – Facebook. There will be lots of people in your area on it. There will be groups about your area. Join them and keep in the loop about what local people are saying. Local campaigns will often have Facebook groups and it’s a great way to connect with people involved in local issues.

Twitter

It’s growing quickly, and don’t forget it’s got a handy little ‘Location’ bit on people’s profiles. Download Twitter Local – and put your location in. Then follow those people, some might follow you back, some might not, but you can see the conversations going on in your area. You can also go to http://search.twitter.com put your location in and get real-time results for what people are saying about your location. You’ll find snippets, follow them up, and you might just be able to create some content.

Theyworkforyou.com

Every area has an MP. Go to TheyWorkForYou and put your postcode in, find out who the MP is and then get an RSS feed or email alert everytime they do something. You’ll be amazed what your MP talks about and either how much or how little they talk. You can also get loads of great information about how they’ve voted on big issues.

Openlylocal.com

A new website – OpenlyLocal – it doesn’t have every local authority but it does have a lot, and it gives you lists of councillors, committee dates, new documents etc. Well worth checking out if you’re short of a meeting to cover and get a story.

Whatdotheyknow.com

A brilliant site. Freedom of Information requests can often lead to some juicy requests. It’s worth registering with WhatDoTheyKnow yourself so you can make FOI requests, but you can find all your local authorities and subscribe to RSS/email updates for when items happen relating to them. You can also get an RSS feed for your whole area. I’d recommend signing up to:

- Local council, local police, local primary care trust, local schools, local colleges, local universities, local county council, local fire service

Fixmystreet.com

Get reports on when stuff is wrong in your local area via FixMyStreet and someone needs to fix it. Get an RSS/email alert for a specific location. Follow it up and you’ll have a wealth of short stories that really are about your local community, everything from pot holes to dog dirt.

Help Me Investigate

A new service, launched in Beta – Help Me Investigate. It’s collaborative reporting, you ask a question and people will help you find the answer. You can also join in national questions and then break that down to your local area.

Getting out there

Nothing is a substitute for getting out there. Go to meetings, go to events, meet people, go to the pub and you’ll see posters, hear conversations and find out about things that are happening in your community. Just make sure you’ve got all the online stuff there so on a slow day, you’ll find there’s always plenty to write about in your local area.

If you find any other good websites for sourcing content, or think we’ve missed any then please let me know and I’ll add them. There will always be new website or tips and tricks for finding content, so this list is by now means exhaustive but get setup with these and you’ll never be short of new posts.

Image credit to miss_blackbutterfly