There is some wonderful hyperlocal stuff going on in the UK.  People are up to all sorts of things on the web – from working out what bands are on, when the quiz night is down the pub, rounding up local news, to fighting campaigns on planning decisions, to city-wide discussions or telling people about the jumble sale at the school, or even tackling local corruption and bad governance.  The net result is empowered, effective people and local communities that define their place online, know what is going on and have a powerful voice.

Lots of people are coming on board to help out – from folk getting on with it themselves to new start ups, bits of government to big newspaper groups.  There are all sorts of approaches – from people out to make a million, to people purely committed to public service, to people doing clever tech things, to people trying to find the future for their media company.

The three of us are involved in very different hyperlocal projects.  We are committed to a wonderful diverse hyperlocal future for the UK.  We want to make sure the energy created as people jostle for position is positive and collaborative, coming together to meet all our aims and more importantly support the a digital future for all.

So where are we going with this? Well we want to know if hyperlocal people in the UK are up for some sort of ‘UK Hyperlocal Alliance’ (working title) dedicated to a positive future for hyperlocal content in the UK.  This isn’t an attempt to form a trade body or a union or a lobby group, just a simple web resource where we can sign up to a simple statement of intent, get in touch with each other and tell our stories.

Let us know by commenting on this post – if we get say 20 people who will go with it, then we shall listen and take things forward.  We shall try to keep things free and simple.  Look forward to hearing from you.

William Perrin – Talk About Local

Dominic Campbell – FutureGov

Kalvir Sandhu – Hophive

The group that owns the Daily Mail has announced that they are going to set up websites in towns that don’t have newspapers.   We shall see if this works – it could be another top down platform without any bottom up engagement from people on the ground.  But the reporting of their plans is only partial so I can’t easily form a judgement.

I was struck though by the entertaining debate that ensued at this post on Hold the Front Page.  People who seem to have a stake in the traditional media weighed in suggesting that the sites will be swamped by waves of libellous trolls.

Insightful comments from people who seem to be connected  to the current local press include

‘The only people who read such illiterate ‘local’ online rubbish are the halfwits who spend the wee small hours writing such tosh and railing against the unfairness of life, instead of going out and getting one’

and

‘These sound more like community websites than anything relating to actual news. Is anyone involved in this going to have any kind of qualification? If not, it’s no different to it being set up by a villager who allows all and sundry to write whatever they want, regardless of its news value. That’s not my understanding of journalism, citizen or otherwise.’

and

‘Wonder how long it is before one of these sites face libel action because those running them are ‘citizen journalists’ who wouldn’t have a clue about defamation law?’

These views might apply to The Mail, only time will tell, but it doesn’t axiomatically have to be that way.  On Kings Cross Environment we have 700 articles and about 500 comments over three years produce by volunteers – we have had about half a dozen comments to block for being abusive or plain mad.  Our content often tackles difficult community issues and is of high quality – we have a good relationship with the Islington Gazette who borrow our stories (but are polite enough to ask first). Yet we don’t have a rolling battle with trolls.

Sites run by community activists, people campaigning to change things in their community have a strong interest not to be full of internet nutters.  If activists sites are perceived to be bonkers then people don’t take the campaigns seriously. Troll abuse is not an issue that local web publishers raise with me – either they don’t attract at as in my case, or they manage it fine.

Tom Steinberg once said that that, on the web;

‘If you don’t want a fight, don’t set up a  boxing ring and invite people in‘.

Good community sites follow this maxim and create a climate in which people don’t get abusive.  Traditional newspaper websites of course don’t – by setting up a story as a ‘controversial issue’, you invite people to have a scrap.