Celebrating 50 years of Private Eye at the V&A: A timely reminder of the power of low-tech

A wall of Private Eye front covers. Editor Ian Hislop has picked his favourite one from each year of publication

The Friday Late event celebrated independent publishing, everything from zines, to tumblrs and typography.

The Victoria & Albert Museum threw open its doors until 10pm for amongst other things an analog tumblr, arty readings and the opportunity to create your own magazine. Read the rest of this entry »

Introducing the Regional Focus blog…

Alongside this blog, which deals with general views on journalism, the web and the media, I’ve started a new blog – called Regional Focus.

It’s partly in response to my new role at Trinity Mirror’s digital regional team. I wanted a place to showcase some of the great multimedia reporting which goes on throughout the regions in the UK, so it’ll be a collection of videos, slideshows and other great multimedia that is happening across the UK.

It’s hosted on tumblr and you can view it here, with the latest posts being about the most watched Trinity Mirror Regional videos during the England riots. All feedback is welcomed.

The art of live-blogging

Updated: Paul Bradshaw has blogged a great set of ideas and tips for live blogging, he even referenced this post. Please do check it out for even more ideas.

Last week we live-blogged the Assembly election in Wales and the AV Referendum results in Wales – for nearly 24 hours.

Live-blogging is becoming an accepted part of the online journalism toolkit, with the likes of Andrew Sparrow at The Guardian being recognised for his political live-blogging, sports journalism embracing the concept for updates from matches – in particular in cricket and the Test Match Special Team for the recent Ashes series in Australia, and local media groups committing to provide live coverage of council meetings.

I thought I’d explore in this post what makes a good live-blog and some hints and tips for making a good one. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone want to run a Cardiff city centre blog?

I used to live in the centre of Cardiff, so I set up a blog covering goings on in the centre. I don’t live in the centre anymore, only work there, and I don’t have time to keep the blog going.

So, I’d like to find it a new home. There’s a tumblr account set up, an email address and a twitter feed all sorted. It just needs a loving owner to kick it into life and keep posting.

If you’re interested in taking the blog on email me at edward_walker86@hotmail.co.uk. Thanks!

Update: The lovely Nicola Paterson is going to be taking over the city centre blog. She’s on twitter @miradouglas – so give her a follow.

Image credit to Jon Candy

Tumblr could be the blogging platform for local media

Having a strong set of blogs on a media website is essential these days for being a successful one. It’s ticking those boxes of the ‘converged newsroom’ when you’ve got your reporters blogging alongside the stories they are producing – using their blogs as a way to expand on their areas of expertise. It’s also a good way of a reporter expanding on area they are passionate about.

There are numerous types of different software out there – from in-house solutions to Moveable Type – and each one has its advantages/disadvantages. Some of the biggest barriers I’ve found in discussing blogging with reporters are:

• finding the blogging software clunky to use, which puts them off because they think it’s going to take ages
• they still want to write 300-400 words when sometimes just 50 will do Read the rest of this entry »

Guest posts and how they can help your hyperlocal site

It’s not easy running a local site by yourself, constantly producing reports on the village council or covering the local town’s football club as it battles yet another relegation threat.

However, there’s a quick way to relieve yourself of some of the trials and tribulations and also add a whole raft of different voices to your site and really help live up to the tag “voice of your community”.

Get other people to post on your site. It’s an old trick newspapers have been doing for years, let the local MP sound off about something or give the ex-football manager a column to vent his spleen. Columnists are often why people buy their Sunday paper, and there’s no reason why your local site can’t steal a trick or two. Here’s some tips on recruiting and keeping guest bloggers. Read the rest of this entry »

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