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.

I am not THAT Alex McLeish

An amusing tale of mistaken Twitter identity, as poor @alxmclsh in Glasgow gets a barrage of tweets and some abuse after Aston Villa sacked Alex McLeish. Her tweet telling random guys to stop telling her she’d been fired made me chuckle. But just shows how easily the public can start picking up on something and not checking  a very basic fact.

Local TV bidding opens

The starting gun has been fired for those who are bidding to be the local TV provider for 21 locations across the UK. Will be interesting to see how this pays out, there’s some serious money behind this .

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.
Low turnout = new ideas needed

There’s bound to be plenty of naval gazing from local authorities, councillors and the electoral commission about why turnout for the elections on Thursday was around 30% and a hell of a lot lower in certain wards.

This article misses the mark though, it says “local elections are typically 85% dependant on national politics; such a dislike or distrust of our leading political figures is a significant factor.” – I’m not sure about that figure and where it comes from but following David Higgerson’s post above, it does make me think that’s why local politicians just didn’t bother.

Why was this not a local election fought on local elections? Why were candidates not knocking down doors to say “I fixed those potholes” or “I campaigned to save this school” and “what are your local issues?” rather than relying on the national mood about their party?

The other point from Rob Dale’s article is that candidates should spend more time online, networking, promoting and campaigning. I disagree, candidates should get off Twitter/Facebook and spend their time on the doorsteps, the train stations, in the gyms and in the cafes where people actually are. And then sure, tweet/Facebook update after sharing what they found out. Simply sitting on Twitter saying “I think this” or “vote for me” just won’t work.

A council sharing election information, by live blogging the count in Preston

To finish tonight’s post, a good news story for local councils. I thought Preston City Council’s use of Cover It Live to live blog their election results was excellent, answering questions from residents about the count and breaking the results as they were announced. They were even kind enough to share the embed code with Blog Preston and allow our readers to see it direct. A good bit of forward-thinking communication from the council.

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.
Why hyperlocals should not rule out print

Another interesting post from Damian Radcliffe on the UK’s hyperlocal scene, this time focuses on the potential for hyperlocal to do print. He points out this is nothing new with the likes of the Echo Community Newspaper in the West Midlands has been running since 1979. Radcliffe makes a good point that print and online can co-exist quite happily as Pits n Pots saw when launching a print edition and seeing traffic to its website double.

Useful tips for journalists from the man at Facebook

Ten great starting points for journalists on using Facebook. It’s interesting how Facebook is trying to convince more and more journalists to use Facebook like they would Twitter – and what we know is that there’s a bigger audience on FB than on Twitter so if FB can make sure the tools are there then the chances for engagement, story finding and profile building of journalists is surely far higher?

Will local TV happen? If it does some clues here…

Good round-up post from Suzanne Kavanagh on the local TV debates which were happening up in Liverpool yesterday. I was following the hashtag on and off and there were some interesting speakers, explaining how if Jeremy Hunt survives and Local TV gets off the ground how it can actually work and be sustainable. That’s the key thing, you can pump money into it but it needs to be able to create compelling programming and attract an audience for a long time after that money has run dry. I’ve done a few posts about local TV and where I feel it has gone a bit wrong (i.e. too much TV and not enough web) here.

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.
The Hyperlocal Handbook

Dave Briggs has started up a free wiki which will outline a Hyperlocal Handbook. This will act as an open-source resource for thos people thinking of starting up a hyperlocal site, or already up and running, for how to do it from those already running one.

It will cover topics including how to get people contributing, engaging with local businesses and using social media to promote your site. Well worth contributing to this if you have something to add.

The hyperlocal ‘scene’ in the UK

Loving the title of this blog, Street Fighting Mag, but this post from Damian Radcliffe who authored the excellent Here and Now report giving an overview of the hyperlocal scene in the UK. He highlights how hyperlocal sites are going to need to forge partnerships with existing “big media” to find commercial sustainability.

Hyperlocal Alliance

Following that comment from Radcliffe, there was a good discussion about creating a Hyperlocal Alliance during the Talk About Local event. It’s worth checking out the site and if you run a hyperlocal site requesting an invite.

Hyperlocal bloggers and council press offices

I missed this session, but it sounded like good fun. Dan Slee, a press officer with Walsall council, blogs on what the relationship between a council press office and hyperlocal blogger should be like. It’s a great read and I echo his sentiment and ideas.

What did I miss? Let me know if you’ve seen any hyperlocal/hyperlocal news or #TAL12 write ups that I’ve not linked to here.

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.

The funding issue

There seemed to be a few cheque books floating around at TAL, not the kind of start-up Silicon Valley money but there is definitely a funding stream there for hyperlocal at the moment. From NESTA’s Destination Local programme to Francois Nel’s MADE project funded by Google to help news start-ups, this is a good time to be having good ideas about the hyperlocal news space. It just struck me that back in Stoke in 2009 there were a bunch of people chatting about something new and exciting, three years down the line and there’s people walking around with a heck of a lot of money available to do some exciting and innovative stuff. Who knows what there will be in three years time?

Quantifying hyperlocal

A comment from Dave Harte, who runs the excellent Bourneville Village, about his research into just how much content hyperlocal sites are producing. He’d calculated an output of 750 articles a day produced by hyperlocal sites in the UK at the moment, based on an RSS feed he’d made from all the sites in the Openly Local directory. Let’s say that’s an average of 50 page impressions per post, over a month that’s 1.1 million hyperlocal page impressions. Not ground-breaking, but it shows the audience interest and the potential.

The BBC get serious about hyperlocal

Robin Morley from the BBC gave a presentation about how they plan to engage more with hyperlocal sites. It appears the BBC looking to improve their linking out to hyperlocal sites, and other sites in general, particularly around news stories and within articles – as picked up on in my daily The Brief posts a couple of weeks back. I quizzed him on clear guidance for linking to original articles which form the basis of articles on the BBC, said this is still being worked on but would increasingly happen. No plans for BBC to go more granular in its content in terms of location. The Beeb has a big issue around consistency, and while one region may be great at working with and linking out to local sites another region may not – and the radio arm of one region may be really proactive in its engagement with hyperlocal sites while the online arm may not. This kind of inconsistency is confusing for those who would like to work with the BBC to help provide them with great local content and also don’t mind the odd firehose of traffic back to their own site via the relevant BBC regional article or site listing.

Overall the Unconference was as thought-provoking as ever, and it always makes me reflect when I get on the train that starting Blog Preston is up there with one of the best things I’ve ever done. Because if I hadn’t, I just wouldn’t be having these kinds of conversations.

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.
The BBC regional news sites and linking out

Andy Mabbett blogs about trying to get the BBC to link to his hyperlocal site and it’s positive to see Robin Morley from the BBC Regions looking at trying to increase the corporation’s linking out. It’s always been a bug bear of mine that Blog Preston (disclosure: The hyperlocal site that I founded and run for Preston) isn’t linked to off the BBC Lancashire page and yet another random site in Ormskirk is. It might not be a huge boost in traffic, but it does help with the site’s ranking on Google and visibility to receive this semi-official nod from the BBC. Let’s hope Robin and his team can clarify when the BBC should be linking out.

How my successful hyperlocal improved my job prospects

This cheeky headlined post from Sarah Hartley followed Richard Jones – who runs Saddleworth News – posting on the BBC College of Journalism about his time running a hyperlocal site for Saddleworth. Richard is a top journalist and his Saddleworth site is fantastic, but he couldn’t make it pay. But then his time doing that opened up other doors. I would definitely back this and say I doubt I’d be doing what I’m doing for Trinity Mirror if I hadn’t of started Blog Preston. That cold Sunday afternoon in January over three years ago when I switched on WordPress and started blogging about the city of Preston definitely helped shape where I’ve got to.

Online, you don’t always have to ‘go big’

You often hear editors and news editors say “let’s go big on this” and suddenly 2/3 reporters are working on the same story, there’s video, pictures, timelines, PA coverage and loads more on a huge breaking news story. We make the assumption our readership cares, and no doubt many of them do, but for many readers it is overkill. They just want the basics and to carry on reading about Newcastle United’s attempts to make it into Europe (I’m a Spurs fan, so no, they won’t do it). This Norwegian paper has struck on a potentially brilliant way of doing it, you get to see the rest of the site without the big story getting in the way by hitting a little button on the masthead saying “remove all mention of Anders Behring Breivik”.

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.

Infographic warning: How social media is taking over the news

This infographic is a bit misleading, it’s been shared round a fair bit today but as Kate Day from the Telegraph tweets it misses the point about how traditional journalism often still is the source.

Over 50% of people learned about breaking news via social media rather than official news source, it proudly trumpets. Yes, but from official news sources on Twitter?

It takes the Osama Bin Laden tweet as an example of how Twitter broke the story. But it was through re-tweeting and amplification from traditional news sources and journalists in the US, who had big follower numbers, who verified the story, that it then spread like wildfire.

The end quote on the graphic “Fast doesn’t always mean factual. Even if you use social media as a news source, always double check your facts with a trusted news source” reminds me of a doctor’s warning about trying some drug from Boots. “If symptoms of social media addicition persist, please see your doctor.”

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.
Regional Press Awards shortlist

Congrats to all who made the shortlist, the Society of Editors’ Regional Press Awards includes some great names and titles. Well done to all, particularly looking forward to seeing who scoops the Digital Award. Best of luck to the two Trinity Mirror sites (Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News) who I work with who are shortlisted.

Data journalism – not just pretty maps

Two interesting posts here both around data journalism. Claire Miller posted a quick blog about the Manchester Evening News’ crime series which used data journalism to power a series about crime in the city – taking data and making good stories.

And on cue, journalism student Daniel Bentley produced this map of the planning applications in Preston. Pretty yes, but does it tell you much apart from where the planning applications are? It does highlight the growing trend for data information, be interesting to see if Dan could package this up and flog it to say estate agents, builders, architects or other interested parties in the city.

Hyperlocal news on Google and making a crust

Two interesting hyperlocal posts today, one from Will Perrin spotting that Google News is now indexing hyperlocal sites without them asking in its search results.

And Richard Jones – who ran Saddleworth News – blogs on the BBC College of Journalism site about the pressures of running a local news site. The comments below are very interesting as people debate the economics of hyperlocal sites, and this will no doubt be a theme of the discussion to come at the Talk About Local unconference later this month.

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.

University puts up funding, backed by Google, for news start-ups

Nice to see my old university putting up some funding – via Google – to develop news startups. If you run a hyperlocal news site, or you’re a graduating finishing university, then this fund could be priceless in helping to get your idea off the ground. The key is around finding sustainable business models for news, and Francois Nel, who runs the MADE project which is distributing the funding, specially says “projects could be news and information, hyperlocal news, niche content or issue based.” It must be in the public interest though.

A new Signal: Reporting app for iPhone launched in Middle East

There’s a lot of new apps coming out across multiple devices for sharing content and stories, this one called Signal seems to be a good step forward. It’s only for photographs at the moment, but the cool bit is the Reddit style community voting that lets stories bubble to the surface. So instead of an editorial control it’s an audience control, they will dictate what is the story. It’s being released first in Lebanon, but Signal plans to expand very quickly and in the Arab states it could be an important reporting tool. It’s interesting to see as this technology scales the opportunity for citizen journalism that translates back into content which attracts a readership is growing.

How do you get your news?

An interesting post with an interview an American academic/journalist about how they get their news. Clearly she’s a news junkie and her experience does not reflect the vast majority of the population, what I find interesting is the way her news consumption changes depending on the time of day and time of device. In the morning it’s all about tablet/mobile as she’s on her way somewhere but then deskptop takes over during work and then the evening will be a mixture of the two.

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.

For many data journalism often ends up being pretty maps showing the amount of crime, or deprivation in an area compared to another. I’m not belittling these efforts, and I’m a huge fan of the efforts of Claire Miller, the Guardian Datastore and others, but…

This joyous map was generated by the Echo after it asked its social media followers around the world where they would be watching the game. It’s stunningly simple but a great reminder of just what social media can achieve, to allow you to connect with your audience who are passionate about your area no matter where they are. Going to Wembley is, and always will be, an emotional rollercoaster for any football fan and watching your time, whether it’s on a battered TV set in the Australian outback or from Row E at Wembley itself, is one of the highlights for any footie fan.

It’s also a timely reminder of the global reach and power of English football as Liverpool and Everton prepare to clash at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final.

You can see the map below, which has nearly 2,000 views already. And I have a sneaky suspicion it’d make an awesome graphic to re-publish in print, showing the global support for both sides.

View Liverpool FC and Everton FC fans – where in the world? in a larger map

It brings me back to Alison Gow’s ever more timely piece – featured in yesterday’s The Brief – about disruption in the newsroom, and how this might not be considered ‘great journalism’ traditionally but it is ‘great content’ and allows the Echo to connect with a global readership while giving its local readership something interesting and visual to look at.

Image credit to Martin SFP