This week’s launch of the new Centre for Community Journalism took centre stage at a Cardiff conference which saw key players in the hyperlocal scene come together to discuss enabling and empowering communities.
Set within the university’s journalism school, the new centre is an unusual, possibly unique, mix of practice, research and advice facility for people interested in local publishing and particularly independent set-ups. Read more
Hyperlocal issues are looming large for us this week as we prepare for the Community Journalism Conference in Cardiff tomorrow.
I shall be there and, together with Glyn Mottershead from the uni, will be running a workshop at 10am on How to set up HyperLocal platforms, open source sites and using multi platforms.
If you’re going, I look forward to seeing you there, if you’re not – I will blog from the day here and have also set up this noticeboard, CommunityJournalism.n0tice.com, to capture tweets, pics and whatever else happens to make it easier to follow. The hashtag for the event is #CJC13.
On the subject of community publishing, I have today published the latest installment in the ‘making a hyperlocal’ series which is intended to help people starting out on an independent publishing path.
For that post I asked various experts, ie. people who successfully run publications to offer their top tips for encouraging participation in a new venture.
One of those was Emma Bearman who runs The Culture Vulture in northern England who offered this advice which I’ll also share here:
Starting out?
Just Do it, set up a blog, audioboo, twitter etc, ask for help
Use it as your license to indulge your inquisitive curious mind
If you can’t be the source, be the resource. By which I mean if you aren’t brilliant at writing/editing etc then shine a light on others, curate, connect, be generous
Be in and part of the conversation
Make connections with the local university journalism course heads and tutors that really get it
Be guided by your moral compass
Love what you do. No point if it ceases to interest or delight you. Don’t let your blog be a monkey on your back
Be open, kind and compassionate. (those are my own mantra)
See the bigger picture
Take time to check your facts, don’t be a kneejerker
Try to leave your ego at the door.
Agree? Something more to add? It would be great to hear your top tips too.
The town’s impressive castle
Over the years I’ve been involved in many community publishing ventures of different shapes and sizes – but not on my doorstep.
Recently that’s started to feel a little odd as I know more about the local politics, goings on and issues in many other parts of the UK than I do in my home town.
So I’ve decided to do something about that. The Richmond Noticeboard is in its very early stages – I’ve done a little bit of local reporting, compiled some what’s on information and have been doing some signposting of other people’s online content where I think it will be interesting to local residents. Last week’s flooding saw it become a useful point of reference for road closures and other travel information.
Over the coming weeks, I intend to document its progress and reflect on the decisions taken along the way to build up some resources which could be useful for other people looking to set up similar sites.
Coming as it does at the time of year when I know many journalism students will be getting ready to cover their own patches, I hope it will also be an opportunity to share experiences from other parts of the country.
I’ve published the first in this step-by-step series today at a dedicated section on my personal blog: Making a hyperlocal part one: Why?
Last week we updated our Community Guidelines here on the site.
The snappily named community standards and participation guidelines are a plain English guide to what we feel is acceptable here on Talk About Local. They outline what we expect from you when you engage with us and leave comments and also what you can expect from us in return. Read more
Official Facebook plugin for WordPress
I spotted this yesterday in the WordPress plugin repository, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook/ the official Facebook WordPress plugin.
I’ve not had time to play with it properly but it looks like it takes over the comment management of your WordPress blog and replaces it with the Facebook comment system. Read more