Hyperlocal in Poland

Now here is a heartening news story about regional titles going hyperlocal.

It comes from Poland courtesy of Editors weblog and the village of Jano,an 850-person village in north eastern Poland.

a dozen people - mostly teenagers or over 40s - were gathering in a multi-activity meeting hall. They were listening to Igor Hrywna, a journalist at Gazeta Olsztynska, the dominant newspaper in this "Warmia-Mazury voivodship" (Varmia-Masuria). That day he left his base in the regional capital of Olsztyn to meet this group for the third time in one month. With his assistance, they are learning how to contribute to the recently launched hyperlocal website janowo.wm.pl, covering the 3,000 people "gmina" (commune) centered on Janowo, one of the smallest of the region.

Could this model work in the UK? well

Edytor is already managing 35 such hyperlocal websites, as a way to get closer also to small advertisers. In the villages, the biggest companies are often the bakery which employs only eight persons, or the hairdresser with a staff of four. "We want to reach the places where print is not profitable, asking our advertising salespersons to monetize potential markets which have been ignored until now

Inside the M60 -A Manifesto

Hyperlocal is the thing now and for the past couple of months,myself and fellow Manchester journalist Louise Bolotin have been working on the concept of a new hyperlocal project for Manchester.

Going under the title of Inside the M60 will be a local hyperlocal site supplying relevant news and information to the community of Greater Manchester with the expressed purpose of giving a voice to the opinions of the disenfranchised community.

Inside the M60 will fill a niche created by the failures of local journalism, taking advantage of the low entry and running costs of the today’s media platforms and fully utilising the tools of modern journalism.

It will address the issues of concern to the general population of the city, scrutinising the policies of local government and other public and private bodies within the city but also unafraid to tackle even the smallest issues that affect the population of Greater Manchester.

We both firmly believe that as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the country stands on the cusp of dramatic social and economic changes. The causes and consequences of the financial crisis of 2007-08 have yet to be resolved, there are massive social issues to address and our lifestyles need to adapt to the pressing environmental issues threatening the planet.

Next year’s elections will see the country make a choice for the future as distinct as those made in 1945 and 1979.

There will be a focus on community, with whoever wins the next election pledging to initiate community action driving change upwards.

This coincides with the collapse of local journalism as the newspaper industry has failed to respond to the challenges of the internet and the decline of advertising.

As a result of cost-cutting measures, local papers have by nature become more insular, relying more and more on “churnalism” and breaking that crucial relationship with their readership and their customers, the advertisers.

There are, therefore, opportunities for niche journalism projects with a small cost base that take advantage of the low cost of entry and can act as the voice for these communities.

At the same time, there are many communities that have become essentially disenfranchised from their city and society in general. Voting in local and national elections is at an all-time low, reflecting both apathy for the political system (for example, exasperation with this year’s parliamentary expenses scandal) and a consensus that “my vote has little or no effect”.

There exist communities where three generations have effectively slipped out of the work ethic, living on benefits as a matter of course and creating almost an underclass of society that exists in parallel to the economy.

In Manchester, the poorest communities live almost within shouting distance of the bright lights and investment of the city centre and yet have little or nothing in common with it. At the same time, technology has become alien to them and they are in danger of being on the wrong side of an increasing digital divide.

Keep reading this blog for more announcements and ways in which you can take part
 

Obstacles for hyperlocal in Ventnor and Leeds.

As the growing move towards hyperlocal continues,two rather worrying stories emerged yesterday seemingly putting up barriers to journalistic independence.

Down in the Isle of Wight,the husband and wife team of dedicated reporters at the Ventnor blog were prevented from entering a coroners court.

We were told by the coroner’s officer, Richard Leedham, that the coroner, John Matthews, didn’t recognise us as a member of the press (despite VB publishing articles for four and a half years and NUJ membership for longer) and he didn’t want us in “his court.”

Judging from the comments on the blog, 56 so far,this issue is going to run and run.It seems that this dispute centred around controversy around a previous report back in 2008 as the coroner made it clear that they would not be admitted even into the public gallery as public members.

Meanwhile in Leeds,it seems that local councillors no longer want their meetings tweeted.As the council agreed a 2.5 per cent increase in council tax,Guardian Leeds reports that

Lord Mayor Judith Elliott told everyone at the start of the meeting to 'switch off all electrical equipment' and said there should be 'no Tweeting' on social networking site Twitter.

Social media and the government portal

Some interesting comments from Andrea DiMaio who is a member of the Gartner Blog Network who talks about the future of generalist government portals.

He asks whether in the age of social networking they are irrelevant citing one whom he visited saying that

“Should we stop caring about the user interface, which has been sucking so much of our efforts, and rather focus on APIs and build widgets that would be used wherever clients want?”.

Saddleworth hyperlocal site launches

I came across a great new hyperlocal venture in the North West yesterday.

Saddleworth News has been launched by Richard Jones covering a much neglected but exciting and vibrant area of the region.

Richard explains the concept on his site

This is a new website giving news and information about Saddleworth and the surrounding area. It’s for people who live in Saddleworth as well as those who like to visit. To use a trendy piece of jargon, it’s a ‘hyperlocal’ website, which basically means it contains information about what’s going on in a particular local area. Sites like this one are starting all around the UK, as local people fill the void left by cutbacks and closures in the traditional media.

Guardian's first hyperlocal site launches in Leeds

The first of the three Guardian local sites has launched.

Leeds run by local beatblogger John Baron will be followed by Cardiff and Edinburgh in the near future

Digital editor Emily Bell explains all

The local project, although small and highly experimental, has been in the pipeline for some time, and I'm pleased to see the first of our blogs rolling out after a great deal of hard work from the team. There'll be more to tell about the progress of the project as we roll out the other launch cities of Edinburgh and Cardiff, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the blogs develop over time in line with community response and participation.

Northcliffe launches community app

Northcliffe's community of hyper local sites now have an I-Phone app to provide communities with the ability to plug into local news whilst on the move.

The company launched its network of the community websites last summer and now has 70 local websites covering the South and South West of England.

They cover areas with between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants that typically do not have a dedicated local online proposition.

Source-New Media age

Why hyperlocal is nothing new

I have had an epiphany. I've finally grasped how to make money from the internet as a journalist. And do you know what? It was a business model I tried...in 1986.

I bumped into George Dearsley a couple of weeks ago.

We got talking hyperlocal and he reminded me that the concept is far from being a new one telling me about a venture he started in Stockport back in 1986.

He explains more on his blog

My own venture into one man band publishing came after I took redundancy from a national newspaper. Partly inspired, I suppose, by Eddie Shah I bought an Apple Mac and tried to understand the Pagemaker programme. But keen to get started I actually convinced a local printer pal to produce copies of my brainchild The Stockport Sport and Leisure Guide.

TAL#10 coming soon to Leeds

I missed the last event but have already signed up to the hyperlocal event of the year.

Saturday April 17th sees the second hyperlocal un conference taking place.

I will let Mike Rawlins tell you about it

We are delighted that this event will be in partnership with The Guardian’s Local initiative
As in Stoke-on-Trent in October, we will be using the Un-Conference format and we hope to have some of the very best hyperlocal publishers and special guests attending on the day.
After the success of the Pork Pie rounders, arranged by our own Nicky Getgood, there is a rumor that a skool sports day is being planned for one of the sessions, more than that we can’t yet announce, yet….
50 Tickets will be available on EventBrite from 1400 today (8 February) with further tickets being made available after we have ensured that local bloggers in Yorkshire and the North East have got their tickets.

Relevence and proximity in hyperlocal news

I'm heading later today to the future of news discussion down in Birmingham and I note that one of the participants will be Alex Gamela.


Alex is responsible for the HashBrum hyperlocal site has been writing a series of posts about building a hyperlocal website.

Here is his rational behind them

Why are hyperlocal news websites important? Why do people feel inclined to “backyard news”? Precisely. Proximity is the keyword here, and it’s not only a geographical concept, it’s also about the relationships that a hyperlocal blogger/journalist must have with the community (s)he covers. You have to live there, be a part of it, like Will Perrin said. You’ll beat any other local newspaper because of your knowledge, you know the ground better than them, the real problems, because they are your problems too. And since you are there, you can get to the news faster, and stay on them for a longer period of time, without deadline constraints: you have availability. And will the local media send a reporter for every story you find interesting? Not really, no. Your broken streetlight is not an issue for the general audience, but it is for the people who live in that street: granularity, or , it’s the small stuff that counts.

The demise of local newspapers

There is a great piece over at Wales Online by Rob Williams this morning on why journalists should start to fear the growth in hyperlocal news sites.

The arguments will continue between old and new media over the way forwards but this piece is worth a read.

The singular failure of media corporations to respond to the challenge of the internet is the cause of the demise of local newspapers. This, in conjunction with a single-minded drive for profit, has meant they are now publishing a product that is not only out-of-date but often of a poor quality. Newspaper owners have nearly destroyed local reporting by not moving quickly enough to change their business models, and not investing enough in the newspapers prior to that model changing. In the meantime the gap left by the decline of local newspapers has started to be filled by enthusiasts. It is not the enthusiasts’ fault that their projects are now being touted as media which will, depending on the commentator, either save or destroy journalism. They are not to blame. But there is a danger that unless journalists and media organisations start to take grass-roots projects seriously they will again be guilty of responding too late to a paradigm shift in the industry.

Guardian's beatbloggers announced

The first of the Guardian's beat bloggers have been appointed.

Media Guardian has announced that

as part of our experimental Guardian Local initiative. The Local project is a small-scale community approach to local newsgathering, and will focus on the three politically engaged cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds.
Tom Allan, Hannah Waldram and John Baron have been based at the Guardian's offices in Kings Place this week to undergo training and will be starting work on their beats of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds respectively from next week. The Local blogs will be launched during the first half of this year although no dates have been confirmed.

A hyperlocal take on lost animals

A big thanks to Philip John who has brought my attention to what could be a really great idea for hyperlocal sites and services.

Called Animal finders and based in Oxford it uses a Google map to track lost and found pets

Data you want the council to provide

Talk About Local's Will Perrin asked his twitter followers whya sort of infpormation they would like to see their local council provide.

He got a good list back,besides bin collection and bus timetables

1. property development issues – number and type of contracts going out, number and type of bidders, number and type of successful bidders

2. Break down of council agendas for public perusal in easy-to-digest format – encourages interest in meeting items.

3. What assets do they own (especially land)? Useful for everyone from #allotment campaigners to inclusion & employment schemes

4.Cllr attendance records, expenses, committee membership, changing party affiliation etc

5.What crimes have happened locally (not the crime maps they are rubbish)

For all the talk of the journalist as an entrepreneur........

My former tutor at UCLAN,Andy Dickinson was present at the hyperlocal session at News Rewired yesterday and makes some good points on his blog.

I sat in the same session and I left this comment on his site.

For me it sums up the problems for journalism

Some good points Andy and as you know my big concern is the sustainabilty of hyperlocal sites.

For all the talk of the journalist as an entrpreneur,there seemed little appetite yesterday to try and solve the basic problem of how to make money.

Instead it was worrying that the debates descended into arguments about the role of the citizen journalist(which should have been put to bed now) and the role of the BBC (over which we have little or no control).

The likes of Lichfield blog and Josh Halliday’s SR2 are great examples of hyperlocal innovation but to be sustainable they need to find a way of attracting certain and regular revenue streams )I think I am slipping into my former profession here) but it’s an important consideration.

The question I asked in the session about whether hyperlocal could survive on volunteers and dedicated individuals was answered spot on by Philip John (ie no way).

I start to get a bit angry at many of these conferences as a roomful of media people seem to get wrapped up in minute detail whilst failing to address the bigger picture

As Andy says

By the time we got to the ‘close the BBC and local newspapers will thrive’ stage I lost my patience

Andy made the comment which I tweeted

Shall we go back to letting the printers carry swords so that we can succeed by killing off the competition”.

Sustainability is the most important consideration for hyperlocal

Over at Blagetty,Blogetty,Bragitee (love the name by the way) there is a round up of the various predictions about hyperlocal (ht-Sarah Hartley)

I have added mine to the comments

The most important thing to consider is the sustainabilty aspect.
We need in 2010 to discover a business model which will produce profitabilty to fund hyperlocal projects outside of the "let's see if we can get funding model"
Personally I think that it will involve a variety of revenue streams and partnerships as well as sharing of resources.

Hyperlocal-balancing justice with journalism

If hyperlocal becomes the trend of 2010 then one of the issues that it will have to grapple from a journalistic point of view is court reporting.

One of the criticisms of local papers at the moment is that the days of the journalist sitting in court all day are long since gone.

But it can be a minefield and as William Perrin writes

Ante-diluvian court processes combine with the minefield of contempt of court to make it tricky to write about local justice being done. As a local web publisher in an area with a long, tragic history of ASB with a sizable local audience I’d like daily court results and timetables posted to a courts website, preferably with an RSS feed. After all, you can go to the court and watch from the gallery or see the screens.

But he finds fault in this excerpt from a green paper earlier this year from the Ministry of Justice

It is clear that there needs to be a balance between providing communities with information on court outcomes, which is in the public domain, and the need to ensure that such information is not misused. This issue is particularly pertinent because of the power of the internet to collect and make available information from a wide range of sources, and the difficulties of regulating the way in which such information is stored and reused.

Hyerlocal hits India

Editor and Publisher report on the the Siasat Daily

The family-owned newspaper was founded exactly 60 years ago, and presents itself as "the most techno savvy Urdu newspaper" in the country. "Muslims are lagging in jobs, in education. We have to help our readers to feel more powerful, to be self-confident, as the illiteracy rate in our constituency is particularly high," comments news editor Amer Ali Khan

adding that

The most original endeavors, however, are Siasat's numerous extra-journalistic social activities, which encompass education (including computing, cooking classes and exam coaching) to health support, like the "Abid Ali Khan Eye Hospital", based in the old part of Hyderabad City. The publication was several times awarded - by Unesco among other - for its services to the community and in favor of girls education in particular.

How patience in hyperlocal

What's the most important thing in building a local audience......?

Patience according to this report from Mark Briggs who attended last week's interactive local media conference in LA.

Patience is a virtue when building a local audience. Yelp COO Geoff Donaker said it takes 18-36 months for a new Yelp site to reach critical mass with reviews, even with staff “on the street” in every Yelp market. Yelp has nearly doubled its audience in the past year to about 11 million uniques per month.

Ht-Journalism.co.uk

Regionality and diverse revenue streams point to the future

Nieman Labs have just released a report looking at journalism nonprofits and asking whether the model can be sustainable.

It suggests that those focusing on regionality and with more diverse revenue steams stand a better chance of survival

Jim Barnett,as part of his graduate studies in nonprofit management at George Washington University believes he has discovered what may be two critical distinctions in a range of examples

First, the six nonprofits that served geographically defined communities — whether they be cities, states or regions — generally did a better job of diversifying their revenue sources than did those that attempted to speak to a national audience.

and secondly

there appeared to be some correlation between bigger budgets and greater diversity in revenues sources. This pattern suggested to me that there is a happy dynamic at work here — a virtuous cycle in which diversity of revenue helps create institutional heft that in turn attracts additional philanthropy in the form of major individual gifts and foundation grants.