Tag Archives: birmingham its not shit

Stop being a snob: 10 ways hyperlocal media is contributing to UK journalism

6 Replies

In a guest post, Damian Radcliffe says that hyperlocal sites are being held back by regional newspaper snobbery, while he gives 10 reasons why hyperlocal should be recognised as a valuable part of local media.

With decade-old sites like the London SE1 community website and OnTheWight being joined by newcomers such as East Grinstead Online and Alt Reading, the hyperlocal sector is an increasingly established part of our local media ecology.

Research suggests that there are 408 active hyperlocal sites in the UK – compared to 1,045 local and regional newspapers (2011 Newspaper Society figures cited by the NUJ) – and hyperlocal media has attracted attention from funders, policy makers and researchers in recent years.

Despite this recognition, there remains a glass ceiling for the sector, particularly in terms of relationships with mainstream media. Continue reading →

Jon Bounds: Why I’m giving up Birmingham: It’s Not Shit

Leave a reply

Some of the products available in the BiNS shop

Jon Bounds is one of Birmingham’s most established and best-known bloggers. In this guest post, cross-posted from his own blog, he explains why he’s auctioning off that site, the reasons he started it in the first place, and the problems with the ‘hyperlocal question’.

I started Birmingham: It’s Not Shit back in the May of 2002, before there were really such things as blogs in the mainstream and the term ‘hyperlocal’ was not even a glint in an irritating theorist’s eye.

Pretty much everything that’s ever been on it, and definitely everything technical was written or created by me. I’ve had a couple of ‘columnists’ for short whiles and a couple of bits of ‘holiday cover’ but that’s all.

The site was flat, hand coded HTML until I learned of PHP and wrote a simple news updating section. Later I discovered that there wasn’t only a name for such things but software out there to do it more prettily and better.

And now it, or sites like it, are either the future of the media or a disappointment to those that thought they should be.

But, it didn’t start because the media was dying, it started because the media was crap: crap at explaining why people connected emotionally with a place that—when looked at objectively—was a bit shit. Crap at self awareness, crap at understanding real life. The media has changed a little, but mostly the contents have just shifted in transit. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal voices: Jon Bounds (Birmingham: It’s Not Shit)

5 Replies

Hyperlocal blog Birmingham: it's not shit

Jon Bounds surely has the claim to the most memorable title of a hyperlocal blog. Birmingham: It’s Not Shit (“Mildly sarcastic since 2002”) is a legend of the local and national blogging scene in which Jon has been a pioneer. In the latest of my ‘Hyperlocal Voices’ series, he describes the history of the site:

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

There was, and to a large extent still is, just me Jon Bounds. Although I’ve now got a couple of ‘columnists’ and feel that there are people around that I can call on to let me have a break.

I’ve an odd background of a Degree in Computer Science and a postgrad (CIty & Guilds) qualification in Journalism (and a brief, not entirely successful time as a freelancer on very poor music publications), but it was really working on internet design books in the late 90s that made me think about “the web” as a method of sharing.

As a kid I’d run fanzines (computer games and later football), but there were real creatives getting to grips with the web at that time and that was exciting.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

The blog part of the site came a couple of years after the site itself — which was originally a much flatter website with funny articles/video and a forum. The idea behind the site came as a direct reaction to the terribly drab view of the city that Marketing Birmingham/the Council put forward for the European City of Culture bid in 2002 — and the fact that all of the local media went unquestioningly with it.

Birmingham wasn’t – and still isn’t – a city of loft living and canalside bars, yet “organisations” only seemed comfortable with that little bit of it. To cover the bits of Brum that real people recognise and care about is still the main thrust of the site. Continue reading →