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

Council coverage in Lancashire Evening Post

Picked my local paper to cover as part of Help Me Investigate’s look at how much council reporting there is UK local newspapers. The Lancashire Evening Post covers Preston and the surrounding Lancashire areas. It’s a Johnston Press title and is based at their multimedia/printing/production hub at Broughton, Preston.

I found that there were 35 pages devoted to news on 23/11, 25/11 and 27/11 and of these 6.25 pages were given over to ‘council reporting’.

Like others I’ve been finding there is little reporting of council meetings, more stories are created from council press releases and then a few quotes from councillors. It’s also not clear when these councillors were saying these quotes, although the councillors title and ward are always attached.

The best edition for council reporting was 27/11 when there were lots of small stories in with reports from environment/planning meetings which boosted the coverage for that day. Council reporting rarely got leads, these were reserved for crime and lots of debate about the recent decision to move the National Football Museum away from Preston to Manchester.

Am going to do the Lancashire Evening Post again next week and try to get an edition each day (I couldn’t get hold of a copy on 24/11 as it was sold out at all my local newsagents!).

TNTJ May: Taking the non-journalism route, but keeping your hand in

This post originally appeared on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists as part of their May series about advice for those about to graduate in journalism this year.

It’s a tough market out there at the moment, not just in journalism but in any industry. As a legion of graduates prepare to scrap like never before for jobs with contracting companies, it must feel horrible to have started your studies in 2006 when the economy was stable, optomism was high and journalism was starting out on its adventure into a multimedia future.

Now it’s a different story. I read Kyle Christie’s post with interest, particularly about whether you should take a ‘non-journalism’ job to pay the rent or whether you should risk debt and starvation on a basic trainee salary.

There’s no easy answer. But I wouldn’t rail against anyone who took the non-journalism route, as that’s what I ended up doing.

My first job was actually a journalism job (and a few other things besides). It was running the student media at the University of Central Lancashire Students’ Union and I’d thoroughly recommend the opportunity to any students reading this. If you get the chance to stand for election, or apply for the position as it is in some places, do it. You learn a lot in a short space of time and you learn how to manage a team. You’re the editor, it’s on your head. It’s a great experience and it’s a real experience.

But, as I came to the end of my tenure as editor it was time find a job. I applied, citing my experience, showing my skills, pointing to my excellent degree. But nothing came of it, interviews came and went and I was staring unemployment in the eye. I landed a job where I had been working but on a short-term contract, it was a mix of different roles but ultimately a web-based role. It needed some journalism skills.

The advantage to doing a journalism degree is that you learn so many transferable skills. You learn how to tell stories, create content, edit, it’s not hard to make the jump into some other industries. You have to be organised, confident and a good communicator – and be able to work as part of a team. You’re ticking a lot of person spec boxes in many jobs that require less work/effort and command a better salary than those trainee positions.

But, as Kyle alluded to. You’ve got to keep your hand in. Once I had my reasonable salary and regular hours, I found I had some spare time. I set up a hyper-local blog for where I live. I wrote content, I blagged content from people. I got into my community, put on events, took pictures. Now I have 150 unique visitors a day, on average, and I might be able to apply for some funding.

So, if you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.