Tag Archives: Hyperlocal

Hyperlocal voices: James Rudd, Towcester News

Hyperlocal voices: Towcester News

James Rudd launched his website covering “Towcester and the villages of NN12” after conducting research for a newspaper group. “Their mentality was one of territory and regions,” he explains, and they didn’t listen to his suggestion of a hyperlocal focus – so he went ahead and launched it independently. This is the latest in a series of interviews with hyperlocal publishers.

Who were the people behind the blog, and what were their backgrounds?

I originally worked in the family business of free distribution newspapers in the late 70s early 80s (after that years in the media side of the pre press world mostly working on magazines and catalogues), so the concept was quite clear in my mind.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

I did some research for a newspaper group on the internet and discovered that their mentality was one of territory and regions. This, however, only suited national and large local companies for advertising. I suggested that they produce hyperlocal websites providing advertising opportunities and content in smaller areas. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal voices: Warren Free, Tamworth Blog

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Hyperlocal blog: Tamworth Blog

In the latest in the hyperlocal voices series, Tamworth Blog‘s Warren Free talks about how the same frustration with lack of timely local coverage – and the example set by the nearby Lichfield Blog – led him to start publishing last year.

Who were the people behind the blog, and what were their backgrounds?

I started up the blog after seeing what was happening around the Midlands, primarily in Lichfield and saw the concept would give us something in Tamworth where we could communicate the news as it happened. At the time I was working from home, so in Tamworth the majority of the time.

My background though isn’t one which is littered with journalism experience. My only brush with journalism was during my GCSE’s where I studied Media Studies: we took part in a national newspaper competition, where we came in the top 20. That’s kind of where I left it, until Tamworth Blog was set up in 2009.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

I saw what was happening in Lichfield and suffered the same frustration: local news in Tamworth wasn’t accessible unless you purchased the weekly newspaper. Great if you wanted to find out what happened on Saturday a week later. So I endeavoured to try to provide this service to people in Tamworth. Continue reading →

‘Making it findable’ – the creed of the hyperlocal blogger

Hyperlocal voices: Adirondack Almanack / John Warren

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hyperlocal voices - Adirondack Almanack, John Warren

Following a nomination via the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group, this Hyperlocal Voices looks at a US blog: the Adirondack Almanack, which covers the rural Adirondack region of upstate New York.

Launched in 2005 out of frustration with the lack of coverage from the mainstream media, the site now boasts 20 contributors, “mostly veteran local writers, journalists, and editors and includes media professionals from local radio, magazines, and newspapers,” says founder John Warren. Here’s the full interview with John:

What made you decide to set up the blog?

The Adirondacks is home to the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States (it’s also the largest National Historic Landmark). The park is over 6 million acres in size (that makes it bigger than Vermont, or Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks combined).

However, about half the land is publicly owned and the rest privately owned, including several villages. That mix of public and private land makes the Park a unique area and fodder for some heated discussions over sustainable development, wilderness, environmental and outdoor recreation issues. I felt strongly that local news media was not fully representing the variety of perspectives on these important issues – many of which are important in other parts of the country as well. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal voices: Jon Clarke (Beckenhamtown.us)

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. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal Voices: Julia Larden (Acocks Green Focus Group)

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Hyperlocal voices - Acocks Green Focus Group blog

Today’s Hyperlocal Voices interview is with Julia Larden, chair of the Acocks Green Focus Group blog, which campaigns to make Acocks Green a “better place to live, work and shop”. The group was established in 2004 and the blog followed in 2007. “We are less likely to get confused or get our facts slightly muddled” than professional journalists, says Julia. Here’s the full interview:

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

That’s a bit complicated. Originally the blog was set up, more as a straight website, by a member who has long since left the area. It was not working very well at that time, and the ex-member was also asking for quite a lot of money to carry it on. I don’t think the member had any particular background in IT – he was in education, although he has set up a few small websites of his own. I had done some work for it, written some materials and supplied some photographs. My son, who runs a small software company, agreed to take the whole thing into his care for a bit.

Things lay dormant and then, when my son had time he simply picked the content up and plonked the whole thing into a WordPress blog – one of the slightly posher ones that you have to pay a bit for, but he has some sort of contract and can get quite a few of these blogs, so the group just pays him a very nominal sum each year.

It then sat there for a bit longer with not very much happening except the occasional comment, and then several members pointed out that it was a valuable resource which we were not using properly.

One of the members had web experience (running her own online teaching company) and started to make it into a far more interesting blog, asking for more materials, creating new pages and adding in bits and pieces and an opinion survey of the area – as a launch gimmick. (We have kept that – it still gets a lot of interest – more since I shifted it to another page, for some reason.) Continue reading →

Hyperlocal Voices: Robin Byles (Sheffieldblog.com and Crosspool.info)

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

I set the blog up on my own. I studied Media and Communications at UCE [now Birmingham City University], moved to London where I worked at the BBC for 8 years as a web editor and have now moved back north where I’m a digital editor for the University of Sheffield.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

A mixture of things really. I had seen one or two local blogs and knew that there wasn’t a major one covering my home town of Sheffield, so quite fancied setting something up.

I think living away from the area had given me a yearning for local news but not just the traditional stuff that I could read in the local paper or local news website.

I was also interested in the stories that people were talking about that didn’t always make the normal news outlets. This interesting stuff was out there on the internet and I liked the idea of being able to collate all this content and promote it from one place – a non-automated aggregator, I suppose.

I’m very fond of my home city and the pending move back home seemed like a good excuse to get something up and running.

I was also on the lookout for jobs at the time and knew that the more varied stuff that my CV had on it – in particular a place where I could do a bit of writing – the more it would help me find work. So part of the motivation was also a professional one. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal Voices: Philip John (The Lichfield Blog)

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In another Hyperlocal Voices post, Philip John talks about how The Lichfield Blog was launched to address a gap in local news reporting. In less than 2 years it has taken on a less opinionated tone and more “proper reporting”, picking up national recognition and covering its costs along the way.

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

Ross Hawkes founded the blog in January. Ross is a senior lecturer in journalism at Staffs Uni and previously worked at BPM. He started his journalistic career at the now defunct Lichfield Post. There’s also Nick, a semi-professional photographer who helps out with the creative side of things and I look after the techy side of the web site as looking after WordPress is where I specialise. We also have a good group of contributors and a couple of advisors, many of whom are either current or former journalists at local newspapers.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

Ross’ wife heard sirens going past their house one day and was curious as to where they were going. Ross realised no-one was reporting those kind of low-level goings on and that with the beat reporter disappearing there was a gap for community-focused news. Continue reading →

Hyperlocal voices: Kate Feld (Manchizzle)

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Kate Feld is a US citizen who launched the Manchester blog Manchizzle in 2005 and founded the Manchester Blog Awards shortly after. Her perspective on blogging is informed by her background as a journalist, she says, but with a few key differences. The full interview – part of the hyperlocal voices series – follows:

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

Me, Kate Feld. My background is in newspapers. I worked as a reporter on local and regional papers in my native USA (local beat, city hall, some investigative) then eventually worked for the AP on the national desk in New York.

I moved to the Manchester area in Dec 2003 to live with my boyfriend, who I eventually married. I intended to continue to try to do local/investigative reporting but very quickly realised there was no way for me to continue in news here. So I switched to writing about culture.

In 2004 I was the editor of a startup culture and listings magazine in the city, and when that went bust I had time on my hands and a lot about Manchester I wanted to write. So I started the blog. It was my second blog, having experimented with blogging when I was in journalism school at Columbia in NYC in 2002-03. Continue reading →

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

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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 →