Everyone is always on the lookout for the next big thing on the web but over Christmas I reflected on one social network which is standing the test of time, Flickr.

The photo sharing site was launched in 2004 and Yahoo! soon snapped it up in 2005. It allows anyone to upload their photos, add detailed information and share them with the world. In the last 7 years it has grown to claim more than 51 million registered users and in August last year it claimed it hosted more than 6 billion images.

The key thing for me is that Flickr has built a smaller, niche but very engaged network of photographers – accessible to professional, amateur and wannabe professionals.

For me, Flickr is a perfect fit with the growing area of hyperlocal news sites and existing local news sites and 2012 should be the year, eight years after it started, that we re-connect and re-consider how we work with it as journalists and media organisations.

Despite the shift to mobile, multimedia and even more impressive download speeds – it is still words and pictures which drive the web. Just look at the 2011 most shared stories, it is the picture which very much makes the story and I suspect increases the ‘WOW!’ factor and makes people want to share it with their friends.

So how do you improve your Flickr offering, here’s a few examples and ideas;

Create your own group for your location, and keep at it

Some news sites have been constantly working with Flickr over the years, and are still on it doing what they do best – offering Flickr users the chance to reach a bigger audience.

The Liverpool Daily Post is a great example of this (disclosure: I work for Trinity Mirror Regionals, the parent company of the Liverpool Daily Post on their digital team). They have established a fantastic Flickr community where they set a topic every month and then users enter their photos on this theme. The best entries are then displayed on the Post’s website and also in print, with full credit and links back.

Although the paper is shifting to weekly publication, the Flickr group is something they should definitely keep going and make use of (and they will, according to William’s update to the group’s members). It fills pages, builds trust with their community and also produces some absolutely stunning photos of Liverpool.

The key to their success is the effort William, Neil, Jo, Sean and Dan put into the community. You see them liking photos, adding comments and responding to comments in the discussion board – they also take the time to connect with users of the site. This can only benefit the Post and it’s brand online.

Partner with an existing location-based group

I run a community news site – a hyperlocal news site if you must – for the city of Preston, called Blog Preston. When I started up I needed access to lots of photos, and immediately found the Preston flickr group.

I had a dilemma, I could start up another group for Blog Preston and make it clear any photos of the city uploaded would be used on the site or I could work with the existing group to use their photos.

They already had lots of members, photos and a very influential group admin called Tony Worrall. Tony has been one of the big reasons for Blog Preston’s continuing success, he is a one man image bank of Preston and in return for us promoting his Flickr group we are able to have access to a huge stock archive of brilliant photos of the Lancashire city.

You only have to look at these two brilliant images of the sunrise this morning over Brockholes and the city centre to see the benefit of this partnership.

What’s crucial is that any image used has a link back directly to that photo on Flickr, which helps promote the user and the Preston group.

If you’re a community news site I would strongly suggest partnering with an existing group, or if there is one and it is struggling – promote it and offer to get involved in running it.

Create groups around events or themes

As a media organisation we have the power of promotion, our existing promotional channels be it in print or online can be leveraged to get people involved. So I’ve been watching with interest the approach The Guardian is taking with Flickr, as well as having branded groups they’ve been increasingly creating one-off Flickr groups and curations around Bonfire night, The Shard in London and more.

It’s a cool idea, as you give your users a very clear brief for photos and are able to tap into the Flickr community – a very kind and generous one when you play it right – to have access to some absolutely stunning photos to compliment your staff photographers. Sending out a Guardian tog for a day around London to take photos of The Shard from all different locations would be expensive and time intensive, why not ask your readers, who might have half-decent cameras, to do it for you?

It’s never too late…

A lot of local media will have existing Flickr groups and it’s never too late to get them back on track. You’ll be surprised how quickly a dormant Flickr group can be brought back to life.

WalesOnline – my former site – has picked up the baton with their old Flickr group and the brilliant Andrew Wilcox is now guiding it towards a very good place. They will follow the model of offering publication in print, which still holds a lot of kudos for photographers, as a hook, and Wilco (as he’s known) is the perfect man to run the community.

The interesting thing is Wilco is not a journalist, he’s a web developer. But he’s got an interest in photography, a strong Flickr profile and the right, slightly grumpy and Welsh, mannerisms to make the community work. And it also helps that Wales is one hell of a great place to take photos.

Photos drive readers to your site

This week has seen some incredible sunsets across the UK, proper winter red glow sunsets which really have taken people’s breath away. The Manchester Evening News even live blogged and broadcast the sunset in Manchester, using the excuse that it is usually raining. It just showed how you can tap into what everyone on Twitter is talking about but offer up something great in return on your site – and with a strong Flickr group the sunsets can be made even better.

So, in 2012, maybe it’s worth instead of reading about the next big thing or how we’re all doomed, media organisations should plug back into the communities they already have or are already producing very valuable and great photos on their doorsteps. Flickr is local by its very nature, and we as media should be helping to promote and encourage more photos to be taken of local areas and subject areas.

You can find me on Flickr here, and here’s some more interesting reading about Flickr:

The official Flickr Blog | Providing insight into what is coming up on Flickr and spotlight on different photos and challenges

Flickr promises new features in 2012 | The Next Web report about product changes in 2012 for Flickr, and the challenge it faces from Instagram

Top Ten Tips for getting attention on Flickr | Useful guide from Thomas Hawk

What examples have you seen of great Flickr management? What cool ideas have you seen for using Flickr? Let us know in the comments below

Image credit of sunrise over London to pixelthing

Just thought I’d flag up this video from the Media Trust, which gives an overview of Blog Preston.

The site was started by myself in January 2009 as a place for news and information about Preston, after the Preston Citizen (weekly paper) withdrew from the city.

Joseph Stashko is co-editor of the site and gives an insight into what his role involves, how we live blogged the general election, cover stories and much more.

It’s worth a watch to help understand how a community news site goes about operating and how ‘hyperlocal’ is measured by us.

Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.

Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.

I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers.

Sadly, I was also reminded of it by the university where I did my degree as X Factor reject Frankie Cocozza came to perform at the student night club.

Lots of excited youngsters queued to see Mr Cocozza and one young lady decided to ask for her ass to be signed by the man himself. She found herself on the Daily Mail and quickly saw tweets and Facebook messages about the offending incident, and a Facebook photo album, which was completely public, became a hunting ground for people to leave downright abusive comments about some of the people having their photo taken with Cocozza (Interestingly, the photo Daniel Bentley tweeted, which drew nearly 400 comments about a certain girl, has now been removed.

The comments were, as Dave Lee has previously pointed out in his post about YouTube comments, rude, abusive and wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else (see terms and conditions etc). So why do we unleash and let forth a torrent of “what we really think” online?

To me it is all about education. There’s not many who can say they’ve grown up with social media, for my generation (growing up around the turn of the century) it was MSN, AOL, ICQ and chatrooms when we were teens – oh and email. But these tended to be 1-2-1 chats, usually not able for use afterwards unless someone saved the chat and printed it out.

For the generation after it was MySpace, Faceparty and Bebo. But these weren’t discussed in school, there was no how to, we were being trained in Excel, Word and Access. The curriculum was Microsoft and how to “do things” on computers.

Journalists are nearly always early adopters, we worked out how to do things with mobile phones earlier than most, same with the internet and computers. We might not be the best, but we know how to make technology do what we want it to do in very creative ways. And it is the same with social media, around 2009 there was always the complaint that the only person you’ll find on Twitter is a journalist.

But as the population have mainly taught themselves how to use social media, and used it as something akin to a hobby, they perhaps don’t think too carefully about the real-life implications.

The amount of personal information available on Facebook is stunning, and yet these people might be X-Directory because they don’t want their home phone number being found. A quick search can reveal nearly the exact location you live in, who all your family are, your phone number, numerous photos of you (which are often dated and located), and very quickly a back story can be found on who you are.

Twitter acts as an archive of what you say. They aren’t deleted after a certain time, there are thousands of tweets stretching back, with their conversations available so context can be placed.

Journalists have been quick to the party, the number of “and he said on Twitter” stories has been growing. Especially as more and more people with authority or celeb status take to the service to use it as a communication channel. If it happens on Twitter, it will be on the mainstream media websites within hours and in the papers the next morning, and the magazines within a couple of days. The media amplifies the Facebook and Twitter spats, announcements and stupidity to whole new levels.

Before if you did something stupid, your friends knew it and would (most of the time) never let you forget. Now if you’re filmed naked and running into a window on holiday you are that bloke off the YouTube clip, forever and on your CV.

So, why is this so great for journalists? Because it is real. It’s moments we just wouldn’t get to see otherwise, it’s the angry opinions of someone unleashed directly and it’s an insight into what people really think and do. It’s lifting the lid off life itself, and that’s what shifts page views and sells papers.

Until the right education on social media privacy is given at an early age to the masses, this boom time will continue. I guess it will be anything you tweet may be given as evidence, and as we’ve seen with the Facebook riot inciters – it rightly can be.

Image credit to charlessc

Took a trip over to Portcullis House last night for an event titled ‘Parliament and Online Communities’ (part of Parliament Week) – it brought together a mix of people who run independent local news sites in South London, large online communities and messageboards like Mumsnet and interested government open data types.

The question we had to mull over was essentially how can Parliament engage more with online communities, and both make itself more open and also get good quality information from its select committee inquiries on a whole range of different issues.

Parliament faces a big challenge, as outlined by Matt Instone – its head of online engagement – how does it take the mass of information which is being produced by the institution and make it accessible to the general public, and at the same time make people aware of what Parliament is and what it does. And crucially, how it is different from the government.

He was essentially saying, how can Parliament serve a million and one niches?

How can local media, both hyperlocal and big media, engage with Parliament?

We were given an example of how Parliament had started working with an online community – The Student Room – on one of its select committee inquiries into service provision for young people. Sounds dry when you put it like that, but Jamie O’Connell, marketing director for the student site which attracts 4.5m visitors a month, said they had worked with the outreach team at Parliament to clarify the aims of the inquiry.

He described how the chair of the select committee had recorded a video asking people for their opinions, this had been embedded on the site on a special page on the Student Room with four discussion threads underneath all built around the four key questions they wanted answering – such as ‘are the youth services in your area good enough?’.

The inquiry ran for two months, the video was viewed 3,000 times and they had 80 posts on the threads giving all manner of opinions and some very forthright ones. As they discussed this an idea popped up in my head, if you can do this on the Student Room, surely you could do it on local sites?

There’s sites from Greenwich to Preston which have engaged readerships who would relish the opportunity to input directly into inquiry that can make a difference, on a topic they are interested in. Communities tend to be grouped around geographic area or subject area, so I my call to Parliament is come and talk to local sites – where the audiences are – about doing these kinds of consultations.

Parliament should be easier to filter

The second part of the night saw everyone split off into groups to discuss questions around how Parliament could do online better. The general feeling was that there’s lots of interesting information contained within the Parliament website, but its just a nightmare to find – especially if you’re accessing it for the first time with no idea of how it works.

Our group discussed how the Parliament website should be easy to search via location, topic area or date. It should show how related information is grouped together, and for me I said they needed to open up and allow us  to embed video, audio and documents from Parliament in the content we’re producing. If I’m writing a piece about the BAE Systems job cuts and the debate in Parliament, it would be great if I could time stamp the video of the debate and embed it into the content I’ve created about it.

Likewise with documents. We’ve seen when covering council business in Preston for Blog Preston how readers, well some of then, want more detail. So they want to read the full report, and then comment on it. If we were able to take the full reports and embed on our sites this would be a big step forward – rather than just constantly linking to PDFs which then get moved around and don’t exist anymore.

All of this relies on Parliament opening up its information and becoming more accessible, and it needs to create jargon busters to reduce the barriers to entry.

Widening access, but unfairly?

There was a warning made at the end of the event, and a good one too, about how the push for online engagement could leave offline forgotten. There still needs to be real-world consultation done, because there is still a digital divide. While everywhere you look in London there’s a smartphone, you go to more rural areas and you can barely get broadband. Consultations and information should not become the preserve of the digitally savvy, young, urban elite. It should be opened up to one and all, and that’s something Parliament should keep in mind and be working to achieve.

How do you think Parliament can engage better online? If you’re a local blogger or news site, what information would you like to see provided? Would being able to embed video clips or documents relating to your community be of interest? Would you run a consultation in conjunction with Parliament? Let me know in the comments below

Image credit to E01

While the figure of just over 6 million referrals should be applauded, and it’s promising it’s going up, I question what the BBC’s policy is for inserting these links?

Steve Herrman writes on the BBC News Editor’s blog, and discussed at News Rewired last week, about how they are doing and points out the top destinations:

The top destinations for external click-throughs in any month depends largely on what the top stories are for that period, for example in February this year there was news of the street-level crime maps being published (www.police.gov.uk) , ITV footage of an elderly lady confronting armed robbers (www.itv.com) and stories about tickets for the Olympics in 2012 (www.london2012.com). Those sites all showed up high in our list of onward referrals.

I understand the BBC has the auto-generated box at the bottom which links to other – and sometimes random sources – for ‘more on this story’, and like Google News the website which breaks the story doesn’t often get featured here because they aren’t seen as ‘current’.

But how does it decide to credit a news source within a story, when it writes ‘as revealed by The Daily Telegraph’. But what, as with a lot of the more human interest and quirky stories, they’ve started out on page 7 of a local weekly paper? Will the BBC still link to the Daily Mail’s rip-off version or will it seek out the original source to link back to and reward the media organisation who sourced that story in the first place?

It’s a problem we now face in the age of the battle for online supremacy, as soon as a local news source covers a story and it goes ‘viral’ so the feeding frenzy begins and every news site under the sun covers the story, doesn’t provide a link, and the site which actually broke the story is left way down the Google News pecking order.

Is the equivelent of sending an invoice in the online world now going to be sending an invoice for the amount of page impressions missed out on by that hard-working original site? Although Paul Lewis said at News Rewired the age of the scoop is dead, yes he’s technically right, but discovering a story and putting it out there first before anyone else still holds a lot of value.

We need to see more linking, better linking and news organisations making an effort to give credit to the source. The way Google is structured, it will always try and reward the original source – but unless everything links back to that original story, how will Google know how to credit?

I’d be interested in people’s thoughts on this issue. Has the BBC got it right? How can we flag up the origination of content on the web? Give me your views in the comments below

My previous post about the Local TV plans proposed by Jeremy Hunt caused quite a debate and as the plans move forward and Mr Hunt takes his roadshow around the country I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone on the ground who is actually making some of this ‘hyperlocal news’ on a regular basis.

The blog post below is from Richard Jones who runs Saddleworth News, a consistent and quality local news site in Saddleworth (that’s near Manchester for those who aren’t too good on geography). He’s tried doing local news video, in partnership with a local college, so is well placed to analyse what Mr Hunt’s plans really mean for small communities and larger urban areas.

A lot of people seem to be having trouble knowing what to make of Jeremy Hunt and his idea of setting up dozens of new local TV stations around the country.

London-based commentators have been predictably sniffy, querying why the ambitious Culture Secretary, as likely as anyone to become the next Prime Minister, would bother spending so much of his personal political capital on delivering local news to Keighley, Mold and Elgin. Meanwhile, those already involved in the local and regional media appear rather conflicted.

Local TV could mean more jobs and potentially more revenue, two things which have been increasingly hard to come by. But (and there are plenty of buts) how best to deliver local TV? Will we really be able to attract enough advertising? Why does Barnstaple get its own channel but Barnsley and Berwick and Bury don’t? And does anyone in Barnstaple really want to watch Barnstaple TV anyway?

These and other questions and grumbles were raised last week, when Mr Hunt came to Manchester for a second time to speak to local media folks about his proposals.

The government’s current thinking is for new channels in up to 65 locations, put into your telly using existing digital terrestrial technology, with assurances they’ll be guaranteed good places on the electronic programme guide. Licenses will begin to be awarded next year, with the first channels broadcasting in 2013. The channels will lead to improved scrutiny of councils and other public bodies, Mr Hunt said.

They’ll also provide another outlet for small businesses to advertise, and boost the creative industries outside London.

Lurking behind all this, as in just about every sector of the media, is the internet. More specifically in this case IPTV or, in other words, the thing that will put programmes into your TV set using broadband rather than transmitters. Proponents of this approach say that, while superfast broadband isn’t superfast enough yet, it soon will be, and suggest internet telly will leave the digital system looking all rather old-fashioned and expensive. Better then, that argument goes, to invest everything we can in IPTV. Then, one day soon, 65 stations will be superseded by 650, or 6,500. Besides, why would one station for Greater Manchester be enough?

If you’re living in Stockport, a murder in Bury or council scandal in Salford is still not likely to be especially interesting to you. That’s one reason why the existing regional news programmes zip through all their proper news so they can get on with the magazine items, sport and weather. Mr Hunt told the Manchester seminar that IPTV is still too far away.

“We don’t want to wait,” he said, adding that his proposal could be a “transitional phase” and provide a “headstart” for local TV.

However, he acknowledged that in a decade or so, Greater Manchester might well have ten or more local TV channels, delivered via IPTV.

In the meantime, the kind of local video service that I produced over the past year at Saddleworth News, in partnership with media production students from The Oldham College, might be as close as many places get to truly local TV. It was only one bulletin a month, hosted on YouTube, but it was video news about Saddleworth which you could access anytime, something Saddleworth has never had before.

It actually generated enough local interest that I found myself being stopped in the street and asked if I was the bloke off Saddleworth TV. If nothing else, the whole experience demonstrated to me the excitement and power that TV still has. Getting your picture in the paper or going on the radio is one thing, but there is a certain magic about seeing your own village or street on video.

I believe tapping into that appetite for very local TV will be crucial to the success of any operation, and that the on-demand capability and flexibility of IPTV will do a much better job of delivering that than DTT ever can.

Looking ahead, and contrary to all the scepticism, I predict Mr Hunt’s proposals will come into being. His enthusiasm for local TV is clear, and as long as he remains in his job I’ve no doubt he’ll make the project happen. Lots of existing media companies will be involved one way and another, along with new players.

Some channels which learn how to provide distinctive programmes on a tiny budget, probably using the existing facilities of university and college media departments, may succeed. Others, run along too-similar lines to traditional and costly news operations, will probably collapse in spectacular style, owing money all over the place.

Eventually, technology will allow the variety of local services that Mr Hunt wants. But whether his desire to get channels up and running on DTT first proves a help or a messy and expensive hindrance, we’ll have to wait and see.

What do you think? Can local television work? What do you think about Richard’s comments? Let us know your views in the comments below

Normally I imagined work book clubs to be about discussing the latest chick-lit novel over the water cooler or a cup of instant coffee, but to have something stimulating to get my teeth into during the commute home was a welcome challenge.

Creative Disruption is an excellent book, it grabs the digital age head on and dismantles it for all to see. It pulls no punches about how the internet has transformed our lives since the early 1990s and fundamentally changed the way we do a lot of things, most of all, how we do business.

As a journalist, the chapters which focus on the storm some traditional media companies face as their traditional profits erode and revenues evaporate was particularly poignant.

But the best thing about this book is the author’s enthusiasm for the web and that it’s not all doom and gloom. And this is a view I share.

Simon Waldman is clearly a man who ‘gets it’, not just someone who has an iPad and therefore thinks he knows exactly how technology now works because he can spend hours playing Angry Birds and converse with his teenage son about it. This is a guy who knows the goal posts have fundamentally shifted.

The book gives some great examples of corporate reinvention, with companies staying true to their core products and beliefs but learning to use technological change as a force for good inside their businesses. Waldman talks of technology rockstars tearing up the rule book inside companies which have become too comfortable with the way they do business.

Waldman seems to have really done his research and spent a lot of time interviewing the people whose views really matter to put together his book.

It’s an inspiring read and for young journalists and professionals like me it’s inspiring. It makes you realise that behind all the doom and gloom, profit warnings and bloggers taking pot shots that there are business models there – it just needs some real thought, new ideas and a hell of a lot of hard work to make them happen.

Amongst all the riots this week there was the announcement by culture minister Jeremy Hunt of the 65 locations which can bid to have a local television station.

This of course caused the obligatory calls of “unfair” from areas which were not allowed to bid (and there were some pretty large urban areas not allowed to bid), but moving away from the local politicing I’m not sure the idea of local television can really work.

I don’t doubt the local bit, we know there is interest in local affairs, issues and sport. Just look at the passion with which people support their local football teams, get outraged at their local council and turn out to sweep up the mess when riots tear apart their high streets. People do still live and care locally.

My issue is with the television bit. We’re living in a culture where appointment to view television is rapidly declining (apart from for the biggest shows, the likes of X-Factor and live sport). We live in a long tail culture, with shows gaining views increasingly after the time when they have been broadcast. Having a freeview channel spitting local news/history/sports segments out on a regular basis isn’t going to inspire me to tune in – but if something is posted by my friend on Facebook or there’s a buzz about a certain show in the office then I might seek it out.

Gaining these channels a prominent freeview listing number (as Hunt’s document boasts) and some money for the BBC to buy £5m worth of programming is small change for the corporation, what Hunt needs to insist is a prominent showing on the BBC’s iplayer (can they target by location, after all you have to put your postcode in to use the service?), Virgin Media’s OnDemand service and YouTube featured slots.

I think Hunt has missed a trick by not looking online for his solution. TV is bloody expensive, not just the broadcasting but the whole process of making the shows. Online video is considerably cheaper and the barrier to entry is much lower.

I would have liked to have seen Hunt open discussions with social media giants like Facebook and Twitter on how local – I want to call it television, but I’m struggling, so I’m going to call it video instead – can be supported. Facebook asks users to define a location, so these networks have ready-made local audiences sitting there waiting to be captured. When I login on Facebook it automatically knows where I’m browsing from, it knows which geographic areas my friends live and work in, imagine targeted slots on the Facebook news feed saying ‘Your area featured…’ or the ability of Facebook to say ‘Your friends featured on…’ and it goes straight through to watching the video on the ‘local video site’.

Or could Hunt have partnered with existing local online outlets who have proved they have longevity and the imagination and passion to produce engaging local content? I’m looking at the likes of Lichfield Live and Ventnor Blog.

What we don’t want to see come from this local TV project is a repeat of those horrible local news video bulletins a lot of local newspapers tried on their websites in 2005/2006. If these local stations are simply going to read the local paper’s headlines every day, or every week, while sat in a make-shift studio this won’t add anything to the mix. And looking at the budgets they will be operating under – £500,000 a year per station – there’s a strong likelihood this might happen.

This brings up the issue of content. A lot of blog posts have already ridiculed the idea of having TV stations in such small places – David Mitchell rips into the local TV idea in his Observer column and I particularly liked this tweet from Media Wales’ Senedd correspondent Matt Withers with his take on Bangor potentially getting a station:

While this post from welshnewsnot makes light of a Cardiff being one of the cities which can bid, which is highly amusing for anyone who lives or has lived in the city:

Cops and Slappers: Our in-depth documentary series is filmed on location on Saturday nights in the city centre. For those who think local TV will just be a small crew with a handheld video camera running after police chasing drunk women and their aggressive boyfriends as they indulge in low level criminality and disorder, we say watch on.

So, what would work? The other side could be well put together online video packages on particular topics, with well targeted advertising. Discussion based video shows featuring plenty of local people giving their views. Sport has to play a huge role, local sports coverage needs to be top-notch as it would get the highest audience levels.

Perhaps somewhere these new local stations could look for inspiration is student television. These local interest stations have operated for years in many universities, and while they get grant money, they consistently produce high-quality television, cover the big events on their campuses (freshers, elections and grad balls) and provide valuable experience for trainee broadcasters before they attempt the mad scramble into the BBC or ITV. Just take a look at Southampton University Students’ Unions TV station website – it’s all there to watch, right now. The web offering for any local station has to be spot on or it will struggle.

Or look at how Sangat TV came to national prominence during the Birmingham riots – David Higgerson reflects on its unconventional broadcasting style in this post. Sangat showed it’s not about well-polished shows, people just want local and in the heart of the action.

Hunt in his vision document seems convinced there is the commercial market out there for the stations to survive, but this is a market where local newspapers and radio are already going hammer and tongs to secure every £ they can. Add in inexperienced broadcasters and an unproven media and it’s not going to help. Channel M couldn’t work in Manchester, one of the UK’s largest urban areas and with what you’d think would be enough advertising to get somewhere.

So, in summary, Mr Hunt think again about this project. TV may currently be the ‘mass’ medium but its rapidly changing and any station which wants to succeed needs to make sure its online strategy is up to scratch.

You can read the framework for local TV plans in this PDF and let me know your comments and views in the comments below.

Image credit to an_agent

Notice on the article above, the tragic loss of a 16-year-old aspiring model in Neath. It’s one of the most recommended articles this year on WalesOnline.

What is the recommended button there for? The equivalent of a Facebook like? A chance to show you appreciate the story, the author or the subject?

I’ve spotted a trend on WalesOnline, whenever we report the death of a young person – again, the one below is for a teenage boy drowning in a river in Carmarthenshire – we don’t get comments (very rarely) but we do get a lot of recommendations. Constantly in the most recommended lists, knocking rugby stars and political debates down a peg or two. Facebook is for posting the RIP messages and joining groups expressing your sorrow, sharing that grief with your friends, but local media sites are the way to show the wider world (outside of the Facebook login) that the death of a friend/relative is important to the community.

It seems in the case of the death of young people it’s a way of showing you care. It says to us as editors that you think this story is important, you’re showing us it should be high up the news list and it should be featured.

And I’d say, keep recommending, we are paying attention. What we do need to figure out is a way to turn our comments off (for active court proceedings) but keeping the recommendation option on.

Have you noticed this trend to pay tribute by recommending or liking a story on news sites? Let me know in the comments below

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.

Make sure it’s live

Not everything requires a live-blog. Think carefully before unleashing the beast – live coverage is resource intensive, and may not generate as much traffic as you would like. If it’s live, make sure it’s worth it. The kind of events which lend themselves to live coverage are elections, sports matches, protests and some council meetings. The key thing to remember is – once you start, you can’t stop. You must be committed to following the events through. The Guardian April fool was a good example of ‘live-blogging’ being overdone – and indeed the media group have been accused of ‘overdoing’ the live-blogging genre.

Be prepared

If you’re going to live-blog, research your topic. I usually make a spreadsheet or a notepad doc with a load of related links in it. Often live events will have lulls e.g. during election night there was a period with no results. With your list of links at the ready you can drop interesting content related to the event into the coverage to fill the gaps.

Encourage interaction

The comments are the lifeblood of the coverage. Live-blogging sports games is great fan as the banter with the fans is great – even when you’re an Englishmen like me and getting ripped to shreds by Cardiff City fans! But interact with the comments, answer questions, and if you don’t know, at least acknowledge the comments and example why you can’t do it e.g. “I’ll try and find out after the game”. Sometimes the comments will take the live-blog in a new direction.

Make use of all content avenues

It’s not just about text. Live-blogs are a great way to bring in photos (of key moments), audio (with key people) and video (of key moments). On our election blog we had phone interviews with politicians, the odd photo from the counts and links to video we’d shot earlier in the day.

Involve the newsroom

One person tapping away at a keyboard isn’t much fun, and it’s not much fun for the readers. For our election coverage we had correspondents at election counts and pulled in their tweets, for Cardiff City games we’ll pull in some of our football pundits. Readers like to hear a range of views and opinions, and it also makes it a fun experience for more of the newsroom.

The live-blog is the first draft

Often content from the live-blog can be re-published, as a timeline panel in the next day’s paper with when key events happened. Some of the best comments and tweets in the live blog could make a ‘best bits’ article. Reporters can file into the live-blog and then use it to piece together what happened, rehashing versions of their story into the finished article. Don’t forget the live-blog, if you’re using software like CoverItLive can be embedded in related articles with the ‘replay’ action. We’ve found this is really popular in sports stories where readers can replay what happened during the game, and read all the comments.

Recap often

People join live-blogs at different stages. The hardcore will be there from the beginning, but as with TV coverage, people switch on at the middle and end. Make sure you’re regularly recapping on what has happened, this will also help you to get a handle on what has been happening and give you a breather. Live-blogs are intense work!

Use all the gimmicks

On the CoverItLive software you have scoreboards, goalflashes and polls. Use all these to break up the live-blog and keep the audience engaged. Run regular polls on what might happen next, who will score first and towards the end of the event say for example whether the manager should lose their job, or who the man of the match is.

Promote the live-blog early

Some live-blogs need to happen at the flick of a switch, but others are around set events such as sports matches or elections. Ensure the live-blog is well promoted and allow people the chance to register for an email reminder when it’s starting. This will ensure you start with a decent audience.

Live-blogs are an important part of the online journalism offering, and allow traditional print media the chance to feel like broadcasters for a short period – without the faffing about with expensive equipment.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list, so I’d like to know below in the comments your tips for running a live-blog. If you’re a reader of live-blogs, what do you like/dislike about them? What’s the best live-blog you’ve read or been a part in? Do the media over-use them? Let me know all your views in the comments below

Image credit to Sue Richards