Jon Clarke launched the UK hyperlocal site Beckenhamtown.us 2 years ago using the social network builder Ning. He sees the site as differing from traditional publishers in offering everyone a free voice, as well as providing a space to play out local debates around issues such as academy schools and parking zones. Here’s the interview in full:

Who were the people behind the blog, and what were their backgrounds before setting it up?

Me, and no one else, I’ve been in digital media at various ad agencies for over 10 years and therefore am au fait with lots of the ways to create and promote a website.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

The main reason was that I thought Beckenham was not well served with a ‘live’ and ‘community’ based website, there just weren’t any for what is quite a neighbourly area for neighbours to talk and share local things.

When did you set up the blog and how did you go about it?

The site was set up in August 2008. I’m not a programmer or web designer so I used the Ning.com community website platform that allows one to cut and paste and move various features around to make a good community site. I then used my knowledge to bring in lots of dynamic content, widgets and RSS feeds to pad out the site and bring it alive.

I wanted to use a co.uk address but it was gone so I plumped instead for a .US address. I thought it best represented who the website was for and about – all of US in Beckenham Town.

What other blogs, bloggers or websites influenced you?

Well I had created www.mediastarz.co.uk, an advertising community website, first, so I was able to bring in ideas from that, but lately HarringayOnline.com has been a lot of help.

How did – and do – you see yourself in relation to a traditional news operation?

My site is independent, it’s owned by me, but its content is the community’s, they create the news, what matters to them they talk about.

More importantly, it opens up the town on the Internet to locals and with the added Twitter feed I run constantly it gives everyone a chance to know what’s going on, have their say and have a voice.

I mix in traditional news coverage on the website and Twitter feed and even sometimes via a satellite page of the site on Facebook. I reach out to locals wherever they are.

So all in all I’m a one stop shop for all reported local media and I hope users would see that and visit the site more because of it. But where I’m still different is that anyone posting has a free voice. It’s not like writing to a local paper only to find your voice, your letter, dismissed to the bin and not published. Local views are all worthy of publishing, that’s what makes a good community.

What have been the key moments in the blog’s development editorially?

Three major moments have been the initial need for locals to know about a Council-proposed Car Parking Zone, that started great debate and at least put across on the site the free access of information which the council did not do.

Secondly, the heavy snow days and disruption to transport had me updating Twitter and the website with school closures and train delays – this brought in 100s of views those days.

Finally the recent debacle of council versus community over academy schools in the borough has brought a huge attention and audience to the website where locals are able to play out the debate and even local councilors have engaged.

The more the site gets local issues out in the open the better.

What sort of traffic do you get and how has that changed over time

The website has grown to 332 members, but daily unique users range from 200-300 a day and lately this has meant around 8000-9000 users over a month. That works out as 35-40k page views, with lots coming into the site via Google searches, Twitter and Facebook and this is only the top of the iceberg as the website is probably only known well around 12 roads in the town. I have yet to doordrop with postcards many many others.

Twitter followers are 850+ and this grows weekly too, even though the followers ebb and flow over the month as I’d expect.

I think the biggest conundrum I have is how to add more key elements to the site and make the best architecture and then the time to make all the action points I’ve scoped out work. I always want locals to know it’s easy to use and they should enjoy coming back to it and able to use it and share it with their friends and families. It’s getting there slowly, but as I know so well the digital landscape changes constantly and I’m updating as fast as I can to keep it the best it can be.

I even just created a mobile page at http://m.wbx.me/beckenham, so iPhone users can have quick updates covering site, Twitter and Facebook all in one place. But, that’s a work in progress and might yet get better still.

I’ve just been casting my eye over the Magazine Production work of two groups of second year students on the journalism degree I teach on. In addition to design and subbing, they were assessed on ‘web strategy’ – in other words, how they approached distribution online.

To give this a little context: early in the module ideas for magazines had to be pitched to the student union for financial backing in a Dragons’ Den-style competition (where among other things they had to address web strategy and business model). One idea per class ‘won’, which the whole class then had to work together to produce.

The winning ideas were: Nu Life – a magazine aimed at international students; and Skint - a money-saving guide with a particular focus on food. This is what they did…

The social network as web hub

Both groups created a Ning social network as the hub of their activity. Nu Life‘s pulled RSS feeds from the magazine blog and from local news services, in addition to having blog posts on the Ning itself, hosting images, originally produced video, an event, and forums.

Skint pulled just one RSS feed – from BBC Entertainment – but also had an on-site blog, images, video, forums and groups. There was an intelligent use of ‘Featured Users’ on the users page as well as the opportunity for users to embed their own ‘badge’ (widget) declaring their membership.

Facebook was used by both groups too – Nu Life‘s attracted 159 members, and included images, discussion and video (this time found on YouTube rather than produced by themselves). The number of members was most likely due to the fact that group creator Isabel Fernandes engaged in discussions in relevant groups elsewhere on the site, and created a Nu Life group on hi5 - a social network popular in Portuguese-speaking countries.

Skint had a clever groups strategy, creating a number of subject-specific Facebook groups such as ‘Travel’, ‘Food’, ‘Sport’ etc. which all had members in addition to the main Skint group, which had 82 members. Why clever? Better search engine optimised and easier to send targeted messages. Kim Gammon also created a group with great viral potential: Skint Magazine: Spot The Drunk (Four Four Two magazine’s Weekend Wonders sister site is a similar community-driven idea)

Skint also used MySpace – only gathering a measly 4 friends.

Apart from Isabel, generally the Facebook strategy seemed to be ‘Send out invites to all my friends’ rather than any coherent attempt to generate discussion and activity, while the Ning strategy seemed to be gather all the distributed content in one place and kick off discussions among themselves. The expectation was that readers would simply come to them. As for going to the reader… No.

Blogging – FAIL

While both magazines used blogs they both did so badly. Skint’s editor’s blog (which didn’t seem to be plugged into the Ning site) had 3 posts, written in a breezy columnist style, with not a single link or tag. The first post’s sign-off: “That’s all from me right now, enjoy your read” summed it up. Translation: “I’ve done my job, now I’m off while you passively consume my content.”

Nu Life’s blog had more posts but was a transparent cut-and-paste shovelware job – to the extent that the formatting from Word made the posts look ugly and inconsistent (tip: learn to use WordPress’ remove formatting button).

There was some attempt at engagement, but this was in the ‘Have Your Say’ vein of “So… what helped YOU decide to study abroad? Share your thoughts here!” Again, no links in posts but at least they had some in the outside column.

Video, photos, music and social bookmarking

A small group of students were asked to explore video for Nu Life – these were posted on the magazine’s Ning-based social network, along with images. Sadly they didn’t appear to cross-post on the likes of Flickr or YouTube, or engage in conversation on those sites.

Skint had their own YouTube channel which not only included their own videos (student Stacey Spencer managed to create 3) but also those that they have ‘favourited’, adding extra value. They also had a Last.fm page, but the creator couldn’t get beyond simply adding his own music (the Ning site creator Adam Stewart had a better idea, embedding tracks such as ‘Money Money Money’… you get the idea). One student had the right idea in creating a poll on fan network Fanpop – but then neglected to mention or link back to the magazine site.

One student created a Flickr account for the magazine. The images were few (and probably copyright-infringing) but importantly, she joined and contributed to a number of Flickr groups such as Supermarket UK and Student Life. Sadly, her contributions had the typical arrogance of journalists: “Battle of the supermarkets is an article that will be featuring in the next issue of Skint magazine! Your photos are really helpful!” Thanks, now what have you done for us lately?

A member of the Nu Life team was assigned social bookmarking and quickly learned that while Delicious had its uses, Digg was much more useful in creating a social experience with the target audience – but rather than create a useful resource for that audience and build it slowly, he ‘friended’ 100 users on one day and bookmarked a handful of sites. A better strategy would have the numbers the other way around. There were 2 Digg accounts for Skint magazine, but neither thought to make any friends.

Don’t advertise – socialise

Clearly, I was disappointed. As I’ve said before, anyone who thinks young people are automatically switched on and into social media underestimates just what a conservative bunch young people are. More than one spoke of how they needed to ‘advertise’ the site more, and indeed some students created flyers and posters that they distributed – not a bad thing, but not an education in online distribution either.

They treated the websites as destinations, not platforms. They focused on creating content, not conversations. And (apart from those named here) they stayed within their own circle of friends rather than reaching out to create new relationships with people and communities online – indeed, the fact that there was a Ning site as well as a Facebook group seemed to allow them to think they were ‘branching out’ by moving/linking from one to the other.

That’s understandable: most took the path of least resistance, holing up and making ‘stuff’; operating within their safety zones and relying on existing production paradigms.

In other words, they’re not doing anything that most of the magazine industry itself isn’t doing at the moment.

The real paradigm shift was this: they were being assessed on their ability to make new friends

What teaching experience does that? It’s no surprise most of them didn’t get it.

Ultimately this was not an ‘online journalism’ module – this was about magazine design and sub-editing (including search engine optimisation), with only two sessions on web strategy (and look at the cover designs above – the design skills were great).

Their critical evaluations suggested that they understood in principle where they had gone wrong – and that’s the point of these exercises: to try something, make mistakes, and work out how to do it better. Most of these people will be starting my Online Journalism classes next week – ten full-on weeks immersed in newsgathering and production online – and I’m looking forward to seeing if they can put that learning into practice. I’ve already changed some of the assessment of that module based on what I learned from this.

In the latest in my series of interviews with the people who deal with online communities as part of their job, I speak to Ning‘s Laura Gluhanich. Laura started at Ning in 2007 as a Community Advocate.  Prior to that, she spent 4 years in restaurant management in her native Michigan.  As acting Manager of Support at Ning, she manages the front line of community feedback regarding the platform.  She spends her time at http://help.ning.com, http://blog.ning.com, and http://twitter.com/lauragatning.

Here are the 3 things she’s learned about community management:

1. Know and treat your community as individuals

Each person on our platform has created a network or belongs to one. Each member of my team is familiar with hundreds of networks and their Network Creators. This familiarity leads to better support because we know a fan network for a band is different from one that is used to collaborate in the classroom, and can respond to their needs better with that knowledge.

2. Be flexible

Community guidelines are there for a reason, and consistency is key to providing a great environment for people to engage. That said, there will always be unique cases where you will need to be creative with a solution that benefits all involved.

3. Show your humanity

The larger your community gets, the less you are looked at and treated as a real person. It is important to provide context and explanation for changes and decisions, and to admit mistakes to your community. Your communications and online presence should reflect your personality.

Just when I thought I’d put the 21st century newsroom to bed, along comes a further brainwave about conceptualising newsgathering in an online environment (the area I covered in part 2: Distributed Journalism). It seems to me that the first stage for any journalist or budding journalist lies along two paths: subscribing to a reliable collection of RSS feeds (and email alerts); and exploring a collection of networks. The first part is passive; the latter, more active. So I’ve called it, tongue-in-cheek, “Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering”. But if that sounds too Woody Allen for you, you could call it “Aggregating-Networking Newsgathering”.

Not quite as catchy, though, is it?

Note: an edited version of this was published in Journalism.co.uk as How to: use RSS and social media for newsgathering

As you can see from the diagram above, each RSS element has a social equivalent. Here’s the detail:

Blog and site feeds/Social RSS readers

This is a basic requirement for any journalist: know the news sources – mainstream and blogs – in your specialist areas, and subscribe to their RSS feed using any of the many RSS readers out there. The result should be a one-stop page that you check into every morning that aggregates any new stories since you last checked. You may want to develop further strategies, such as folders for different areas, or for feeds that you check every day, every week, or less often.

But some RSS readers do more than just allow you to subscribe to feeds – they have social elements. Google Reader, for example, will “recommend” feeds you might be interested in (in a panel on the right of the screen), based on the feeds you already subscribe to (and what their subscribers also read). Bloglines, in addition, allows you to click on any of your feeds and see others who subscribe to that feed – and what other feeds they subscribe to (see image below – although this feature doesn’t appear to be included in their latest beta). Other readers will have similar functions (if they don’t, consider switching reader – you can export your subs across very easily). This is a great way to find new sources of news and information.

Twitter and Twitter tools

Microblogging service Twitter is a particularly up-to-the-minute source of news – again, with RSS feeds you can subscribe to, as well as mobile notifications. Twitter is by nature social – you choose to ‘follow’ someone’s ‘tweets’ (updates); and people choose to follow you. You can see who someone is following, and who is following you. There are also tools like Twubble, which will recommend twitterers based on your friends, and Twits Like Me, which recommends twitterers based on interest. These can lead to useful contacts and sources of news you might not otherwise have come across.

A good way to find Twitterers in your area is to look for links on their blogs and article pages, while Twitter is searchable too. But that’s just the start. You can search Twitter itself for specific people, but if you’re covering a local patch, Twitterlocal allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of tweets within a certain geographical radius, while specialist reporters should subscribe to results of relevant keyword searches using Tweetscan. If you know an event is coming up that is likely to spark protest (e.g. the running of the Olympic torch) then it’s a good idea to set up this feed in advance.

Bookmarking site feeds, networks and tags

Bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and Reddit (plus all of these) are a goldmine of information and leads. As well as being searchable, most offer RSS feeds of individual tags, contributors (anyone who uses the site to bookmark webpages), and networks (collections of contributors). At the very least, a journalist should be subscribing to feeds of keywords in their area (e.g. this is the feed for the tag ‘social bookmarking’), and if possible, prolific bookmarkers interested in the same topics (here is the feed for my bookmarks) or networks of bookmarkers (here’s mine).

But to do the latter, journalists need to use the sites themselves – the more active you are, the more you will get out. Every time you bookmark a webpage, you can see who else has bookmarked it (see image below). You can see who bookmarked it first (and is therefore potentially the quickest source). You can see their comments, and the tags they use. You can see what else they’re bookmarking. And you can add them to your network so you’re kept up to date on what they’re bookmarking generally.

All of this can generate more useful contacts (the bookmarkers), more sources of news, and more understanding of your area.

Facebook feeds/Social networks

Journalism is all about contacts. Social networks are a fantastic way of finding and managing them, whether those are existing contacts, contacts of contacts (which you can now see), or members of relevant interest groups (the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group is one you may consider joining ). You may want to join more than one social network: Facebook is a good catchall, but LinkedIn is good for more professional networking, while there may be specific ‘beat’ networks you can join – such as for doctors. Alternatively, you can create your own using Ning.

One great feature of Facebook is its feeds, which include Friends Status Updates and Friends Posted Items (both in the lower right corner). Again, subscribe.

Google Alerts/’similar pages’

Google’s whole success is built on social media: its rankings are calculated (in part) from how many people link to a site. But it’s worth exploring other features too. Every result from a search, for example, will include a link to ‘similar pages’. This is a great way of refining your search. Similarly, the advanced search feature includes the ability to search for pages that link to a particular website.

Meanwhile, it’s basic journalism practice now to set up email alerts for particular search terms. You can do this through Google Alerts – the default setting is ‘Comprehensive’, but it’s better to use the drop-down menu to select the more specific ‘News’, ‘Groups’ or ‘Blogs’. Alternatively, any search done through Google News or Google Blog Search or Google Groups will give you the option to sign up to email alerts or, for the first two, an RSS feed.

Flickr feeds, tags and clusters

For anyone who needs images or needs to talk to photographers, Flickr allows you to subscribe to feeds by individual photographers, or to particular tags (you’ll find them at the bottom of each page).

But the site’s real strength is its social features. A simple search will bring you simple results – but click on any tag in those results, and you’ll be presented with a tag cluster (see image below). This draws on user behaviour to suggest other tags you might be interested in, as well as omitting irrelevant results. You can click through to results from the cluster, generate another cluster from another tag, or go to results from an individual tag. From there you can rank results based on recency or – another social feature – “most interesting”.

And of course you can see a tag cloud of the most popular tags at the moment – a good way of getting a feel for the zeitgeist.

If you’re more interested in people than pictures, clicking on any photographer’s profile will allow you to see their ‘contacts’ and groups, while you can browse profiles based on interests and other biographical information (you can also search groups and people).

YouTube feeds/related videos

Like Flickr, YouTube is a social beast. Click on any video and you’ll be presented with related videos; click on any user page and you can see who they subscribe to. You can rank results by how users have rated it, or how many times it’s been viewed. And you can click on a video’s tags to browse through content that way. The site also hosts a number of groups under the Community tab.

In addition the site offers numerous feeds – a list of the main ones, plus instructions on how to create feeds for individual users or tags, can be found here.

Technorati feeds, fans and tags

You’ll see the orange RSS icon throughout Technorati – you can subscribe to headlines and ‘rising posts and stories’, and filter by ‘attention’. You can subscribe to results from a particular search, or a specific tag (a motoring correspondent, for instance, might subscribe to search results for “Longbridge plant”, or the tag ‘Ford’). You can even subscribe to blog reactions to a particular site.

Equally impressive are the social features. Search results are presented with recommended tags you might also want to click on; blogs and posts are ranked by ‘authority’ (numbers of reactions); and you can see which Technorati members have declared themselves a ‘fan’ of a blog – then browse through the other blogs they’ve ‘faved’.

And like Flickr, you can get a flavour of “what’s percolating in blogs now”.

LibraryThing feeds and tags

Finally, it’s worth noting the social and RSS features of books community LibraryThing. As well as the traditional author and title fields, the search facility allows you to search by tags, members, groups and talk messages. You can then subscribe to a feed of results for that search, or to a feed for a particular member, group or tag.

It’ll come as no surprise that the site also offers related tags and members whenever any search is made, while the site’s groups offers one way to find leads and contributors.

coComment feeds, groups and tags

coComment is a service which tracks your comments for you, so people can subscribe to a feed of comments you make on other sites, or communicate with you directly. This has obvious applications for journalists – if you find someone in your ‘beat’ who is a good source of leads, you’re going to be interested in their comments, and what they’re commenting on. If they’re a member of coComment, you can subscribe to their feed. If not, a flattering email suggesting they check it out might be required…

Aside from the feeds there are plenty of social elements at coComment – you can browse tags, look at popular ‘conversations’, join groups, or browse commenters themselves.

Some journalists might think it’s too early for coComment to be useful to them – at first glance, most ‘conversations’ appear to be in the technological sphere – but getting in there early and spreading the word could give you a significant advantage as the technology spreads.

All this, however, is only laying the foundations for having your ‘ear to the ground’ – saving yourself time through use of RSS, and generating contacts and engendering serendipity through social media.

No doubt I’ve omitted some RSS and social service-providing sites (for example, other RSS readers, while a social podcasting service must be out there) – and overlooked some tricks on the above sites. I’d love to know your recommendations and tips.

Recently my attention has been drawn to the Dutch news website www.en.nl. Wilbert Baan, interaction designer for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, told me he wants to see “what we can do with news, social networks, wikis and more.

“I think you might like the experiment we are doing,” he wrote.

And bloody hell was he right.

The first thing that strikes you about the site is the bar chart across the top of the page, replacing the traditional masthead. This is a newsriver:

Down the outside column is a list of articles from the past hour:

That’s culture shift number 1.

At the bottom of the page you will find recent images, social bookmark sites, most commented articles from the past 24 hours, most important and most viewed.

Culture shift number 2 is the list of incoming links to this article – something built into the very fabric of blogs (pingback) but so far either anathema to mainstream publishers (“send our readers elsewhere?”), or difficult with current content management systems.

And with one simple move the site demonstrates it’s part of the conversation.

The ‘most important’ list is also worth looking at. How did they decide what was “most important?” I asked.

“We are using around ten variables to decide what’s important news. The variables we’re using right now are pageviews, visits from external websites, unique referrers to an article, comments, votes (4 options) and the press agency urgency variable (3 options; normal, high, very high).

“By showing it next to the most viewed we can easily see how it works and adjust the settings to make it better. It’s not perfect yet, but it already works remarkably well.

“We could extend this even further (tags, edits, tag removals) or skip some. All the variables are connected to points, we can set a default amount of points to a variable and define or redefine the value for the website.

“We also made a tag sniffer at http://www.skitch.com/wilbertbaan/8733/en-tag-sniffing – it scans the text on certain names and auto tags the article.”

Wilbert’s next step is building a community that can contribute to make this website better with ideas or criticism. The newspaper is already conducting a conversation with readers on a NING social network where users can contribute new ideas and discuss the website (in Dutch), but clearly this is just the start.

“For example we could connect a popular social network to the website and use what your network reads to alter the presentation of the news. Or make section pages, or a frontpage?

And all this is possible because of a Holovaty-esque focus on the power of databases.

“The most important object is the database,” he writes on his blog. “We designed the database from a view that almost everything is possible with the data. We store a lot of information that might be valuable in the future. This allows us to experiment freely with the design and think up new features. The database is the most valuable asset of a news organization.”
And this means they can do “Almost everything. We can make mash-ups, feeds, aggregated pages. Hook in to social networks, extend the wiki functionality, and more. Technically everything is possible.”

Keep an eye on this one.

UPDATE: Wilbert writes: “We have added feeds for every tag, latest news and breaking news. We have also added a personal feed that can be created by selecting the tags you like or don’t like. Very rudimentary, but it is a first experiment with personalization (My feed: http://en.nl/en/my_rss.php?editorId=3) and you can take it anywhere you want.

“With these feeds we are encouraging developers to experiment with news sorting and make their own interface or mash-up.”

Read more posts about future newspapers here