Category: Citizen Journalism

What the government should do about hyperlocal news

Prominent voices in the hyperlocal debate gathered at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport today to talk about the changing landscape of news and media and, if anything, what the government should do.

Arranged by Minister for Creative Industries Siôn Simon, and chaired by CEO of GroundReport Rachel Sterne and founder of Talk About Local William Perrin, the conference – called C&binet Seminar – was a collision of talking heads about their experiences and thoughts on the state of local and national news and their plans or predictions for the future of journalism. Those in attendance included Editor-in-chief of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger, Editor of Citizen Journalism at The Huffington Post Matthew Palevsky and Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham City University’s MA in Online Journalism (see a full list of attendees below).

Sessions focused on a number of areas in the debate, introduced with a presentation from those with particular knowledge of a field, and were followed by passionate discussions with attendees drawing on their own research and experiences. Read more

Relationships between local bloggers and local councils

One of the heated debates which took place at the Talk About Local un-conference ’09 – a day designed to bring together hyper-local bloggers from across the country to discuss common issues, problems, share ideas and talk about the future – was how council press officers treat local bloggers.

For example, in Sarah Hartley’s recent article for the Guardian, Stoke Council’s head of PR and communications, Dan Barton, said bloggers were excluded from press breifings and the press table in the council chamber. He said:

Opinion should be encouraged but we do draw a distinction between what is news otherwise we are in danger of de-valuing the role of journalists.

Read more

Paid for newspaper content, blogs and search.

Tom Harris, MP is musing about how newspapers charging for online content will effect bloggers:

a staple of political blogging is the external link to a news site. Guido has his “Seen Elsewhere” widget and almost all of the PoliticsHome homepage is links to features and news articles in the dailies.

What happens after all these newspapers start restricting access to paying customers? Will bloggers have to assume their readers are subscribers to the external sites we link to? Those who regularly include links in their Twitter feeds, or who regularly follow such links, will face the same problem. As will those who rely on Google Media Alerts to flag up news articles on specific subjects.

Tom’s thinking of this as a potential problems for the bloggers.  However his last sentence above shows how much of a problem it is for the newspapers.  If the system they use makes people  reluctant to link to their website, then surely the newspapers site will be less likely to show up in search.

Other newspapers writing freely and openly about the subject will get the links, as will other blogs, as will people like politicians who’ll be saying their own things on their own sites.  The New York Time’s David Carr hinted that people will be bookmarking new news sites, but the links problem is surely even more fundamental. It is the start of a spiral of decline, isn’t it?

Of course Murdoch and his team may have had a uniquely brilliant new thought about this and the paid for content problem.  A cunningly brilliant  idea that hasn’t yet occurred to the tens of  thousands of people who’ve been worrying about this for many, many years.

If they have then that is content I would pay to read. Once.

Birmingham Photospace – who's portrait would you like to see?

Birmingham Photospace
Birmingham Photospace

Jon Bounds (in his inimitable way) has spotted this post on the Birmingham Photospace blog.  It echoes something I’ve thought about doing with the Grassroots Channel Podcast, but have to act on.  This is what the snappers hope for:

Say Liz comes in to have her portrait taken.  Once she’s had her image taken, she’ll be invited to suggest how she may like Matt (who is next in line) to pose. (She may ask him to smile, to frown, to stand or slouch, to display the object he bought earlier from Artsfest. She’s limited only by her imagination (and the laws of decency!))  The photographer will take a few frames, and then Liz will get to choose which one she would like to exhibit.

Not quite as crowdsourced, but I’ve always fancied doing an interview with a Birmingham active citizen and at the end asking them who I should talk to next – then following their nose to the next wonderful person.  Perhaps a photographer would like to share the project with me?   I’ve done a few of my own.

Neville Davis of the Sparkbrook Neighbourhood Forum
Neville Davis of the Sparkbrook Neighbourhood Forum

Perhaps you can teach me to be better with the camera and I can help you schuusch up your audio stuff?  If you think it’s a good idea please nag me below .

Update:

Besides the comments below we also have this, from Matt Murtagh (who is very good at taking pictures):

I’d be interested in that, the artstfest thing is kinda my idea…

Thanks, Matt.