I had a very enjoyable time at HyperLocal GovCamp West Midlands in Walsall on 6th October, which brought together local government, community website managers and open data enthusiasts for a one-day unconference. As one of the event organisers Andy Mabbett said, “Sometimes they were even civil to each other!†(Despite some very fruitful, robust discussion.)
A particularly interesting session was the presentation by Stuart Williams, who spoke about creating the local heritage website The Bloxidge Tallygraph using Webs.com, which thanks to his keen interest in photography and community goings-on soon evolved into an all-encompassing neighbourhood site.
It was not just the obvious quality of the content that bowled me over, but the sheer amount of it that Stuart himself generates to create what he describes as ‘an online newspaper’ (he interestingly views ‘blogs’ as being an entirely different beast) that gives in-depth coverage and features on local history, events, businesses, environmental issues, etc. Stuart seems to spend all of his spare time going to community events and venues, talking to local people and researching the area, which he then posts up whilst at home. Knowing how time-consuming generating website content can be and that Stuart has a full-time job at Walsall City Council’s Local History Centre, I found it difficult to fathom how he finds enough hours in the day. Like most successful hyperlocal sites, this is obviously the secret of The Bloxidge Tallygraph’s success – the personal passion and commitment of the website manager driving it forward.
Stuart’s dedication to the website led to an interesting discussion after the session between myself, Michael Grimes and Clare White. Michael expressed some concern over the situation that arises when a person creates a community resource through a personal passion, which then becomes something many people rely upon and have expectations of but is still down to one person to sustain voluntarily. What happens if that person finds they can no longer maintain the website?
I then spoke about some of my experiences in managing Digbeth is Good and how the local community seem to find it useful, which is great. People often email me notices to post up, which I do as soon as I’m able – most people understand that I’m maintaining the website in my spare time and are fine about that. But there have been one or two occassions where people seemed to expect a quicker turnaround than I was able to manage.
Clare then responded with a bit of a brainwave – offering local businesses the option of paying a small fee for a ‘premium service’ on a hyperlocal site, which brings posting their notice to the front of the queue – not necessarily an overly prominent or gushing post, merely to guarantee a quicker turnaround.
I thought it was an interesting idea and one that could possibly help community websites generate a small amount of income from the small to medium sized local businesses that often benefit from the coverage.
Clare’s kindly agreed to let me blog her bright idea so what do we think – is this something that might work to bring some money into maintaining local websites? Not for a huge profit obviously, but maybe in the same way that Rick Waghorn’s Addiply can help hyperlocal sites achieve a ‘not for loss‘ equilibrium?
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Oooh what a good idea. I actually had a situation last week with The Lichfield Blog where a local business had sent through a couple of items for publication. They were about an event they were holding, and charging for.
With the HS2 stuff and the backlog we already had the time simply wasn’t there to get it up as quick as they would have liked and they chased several times. I suggested they could advertise the event in one of our empty ad slots but it would have been good to be able to push a premium publication service.
I am however very wary of having commercial endeavours influence editorial in any way. Obviously the story would be written as normal and appear in the same place on the site, but just that bit quicker (e.g. within 24 hours).
I’d love to hear other’s thoughts and I may well build the functionality into Journal Local if there is demand for it.
Isn’t a premium service just another word for advertising? I think we have to be realistic. If people are paying, chances are they’ll want control on their content. It also adds pressure on those doing the donkey work. Those carrying out the queue jumping will want their message getting out quickly. Are they really going to pay enough to employ someone to do that work (after all, the reason it wasn’t done in the first place was because the volunteers didn’t have time).
If you have an advertising model in place (as many hyperlocals do) then you have the means to put this in place already.
Remember folks, content is king. Create a two-tier editorial system and you’ll regret it.
Er, brainwave? Sorry, don’t like it.
What is effectively being suggested here is the sale of the site’s integrity for money. Why? To whose advantage? Why should the folk with the dosh be able to buy their prominence? Bias and manipulation like that is one of the reasons I blog – because much of the local media – inky and otherwise – is clearly skewed by it’s commercial editorial bias. I’d rather mine were skewed by my personal bias… er, yeah.
I don’t do what I do for cash, and I don’t have any remote concept of how it could be monetised. If I’m too ill, too busy or too bored to blog, I don’t. The output of the Brownhills Blog is on my terms. If people value it, they can write or help with research, ideas or suchlike, but ultimately it’s just an average local blog – wordy, self important, and mostly half read. Which is how it should be.
I appreciate that sites like The Lichfield Blog are about something different, but it’s still just a website. It’s either there, or it’s not. Readers will consume where they can, preferably for free. Folk like Stuart, myself, Chasewaterstuff and Pheaseyviews are just doing it for the love. It’s not a business for any of us and I couldn’t see any model whereupon it could be. Therefore the readers have to accept that it’s sometimes cutting edge (cough) and sometimes ramshackle and tardy. More often the latter than the former.
I continue to be bemused by the desire of some truly revolutionary online journos to reinvent themselves as some version of the offline press. That’s like evolving for extinction, they need to look in the other direction.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been highly amused by a debate between a local webhead and a traditional journo about the difference between bloggers and columnists. It was hilarious, and basically came down to a perception of intangible authority on the part of print journalism.
Best wishes
Bob
Oh and this does of course mean me disagreeing with my esteemed colleague Mr John (above). But one of the reasons I started The Lichfield Blog was to have an editorial platform that wasn’t governed by the same political issues as traditional media (where I’ve come from).
But as with all things hyperlocal, if it works for you that’s great. However, having had ten years of finger burning, it’s not an experience I’m keen to voluntarily create again.
Hi Philip
Agree with you wholeheartedly about such a service not meaning any control over editorial, merely bringing *your site’s* coverage of their story to the top of your ‘to do’ list, as it were – what I meant by ‘not necessarily an overly prominent or gushing post’. 🙂
When we were discussing the idea it was one of the first things to spring to mind – ‘is this veering towards advertorial content?’ Something I personally wouldn’t be happy with on digbeth.org.
But I think it may be a way for those who have put so much time, commitment and passion into creating a successful community website to be rewarded what they’ve built up in some small way – businesses will not pay for such a service from a local site unless they recognise it has value/social capital.
Nicky
Absolutely! That’s why I added “Obviously the story would be written as normal and appear in the same place on the site”
I always worry about perception though – saying you’re a not-for-profit and then charging for stuff raises eyebrows at times. I like to make sure I’m well away from ‘the line’ 😉
We’ll see… discussion at TLB towers has commenced…
That’s a really interesting idea from Clare. I only started my hyperlocal blog for Stone, Staffs, seven weeks ago but I’m certainly run off my feet with it. I haven’t got to the stage yet where local businesses are asking for content to be placed quickly, but I’m sure it will come.
I do agree with Philip, though, and would feel a bit uneasy about my site making any money. I’d much prefer to get some more people involved in my site, to share the load first and foremost, but also to be able to respond quickly if needed. I have one other blogger who posts periodically but I’m looking for more!
Hi Nicky,
It’s kind of you to reference The Bloxidge Tallygraph in your discussion, and it’s nice to know what I’m doing is thought worthy of comment :O)
Yes I do think of “blogs” as different to the Tallygraph, though there are elements of bloggery in the “paper” such as the Edditorial and Bloxwich Comment pages. This is one reason I chose to make it look like an old-fashioned newspaper rather than the cutting edge design I see in many excellent hyperlocal sites.
And I mean nothing against “blogs” in any way – but I do think that the best local/hyperlocal news sites are just that, presenting news and views, not just a single strand of opinion or “rant”.
In that sense, The Lichfield Blog, for example, of which I am a great admirer, is a bit of a misnomer – it’s a top quality news site, the equal of any good local magazine, and not just a soapbox.
As far as The Bloxidge Tallygraph is concerned, it’s just me trying to give something back to the local community. I can’t see me ever making a living from it, and it is a non-profit publication, but there are costs to be covered and I would welcome some sponsorship as long as it doesn’t mean interference with the editorial process.
I find your “premium service” idea interesting, and I can see it working in some circumstances. But since I usually put stories up in a timely fashion I doubt anyone would cough up in my case :O) If anyone needs help in publicising local happenings for the benefit of the community, of course I’ll certainly do my best to help.
On the other hand, advertising is advertising, and I’m not averse to it if it’s done right and a fair price paid. I make a few pennies from my Advertizemints page, which goes towards hosting costs.
Anything more than that, I’d have to see how it would integrate into the Tallygraph, possibly with the addition of a special Sponsors Page and some advertising within the main layout, but I’d certainly be open to the idea.
As to what would happen if I were no longer able to continue with The Bloxidge Tallygraph? Well, I’d cheerfully hand it on to any other mad fool willing to give it a go. And bearing in mind the online editing facilities of webs.com, they’d not need to be a hacker or a programmer to keep it online – they’d just need plenty of time and energy :O)
An interesting and thought-provoking discussion, thanks for getting the ball rolling.
– Stuart
@BrownhillsBob – Don’t be sorry, I thought it was an interesting idea and wanted to see what people thought of it – thanks for your comment! 🙂
@Ross – Perhaps thinking that such a a service could be offered without relinquishing editorial control was a little naive of me, but it was an idea for a solution to a problem some hyperlocals encounter that got me thinking. Glad it’s aroused some discussion though, which will no doubt make me ponder more…
Wonder if there is an opportunity in getting the businesses themselves to publish the notices in a separate ‘spin-off’ section of a local website?
Using RSS you could still pull in the headlines to appear on the main website, and maybe once a week do a round-up piece of these news updates.
Could a WordPress MU set-up be used for this???
Great idea Gary, create some sort of online noticeboard people can post directly onto and write-up highlights from what gets posted up there, much like Bournville Village does with its very real village noticeboard and regular ‘News from the notice boards’ posts:
http://bournvillevillage.com/?p=1319
Hi folks,
An interesting discussion, as we’ve just been through a bit of a debate over the ‘ethics’ of sponsored posts recently.
We have a ‘spin off’ social network at http://www.thegreenerleithsocial.org It was created to accommodate the millions of things like events, job offers, lost cats, requests for piano teachers, and what have you that don’t fit with our main focus on neighbourhood environmental issues.
As it’s a ning social network anyone can add content to it, and sometimes things happen on it that end up being ‘blog worthy’ on our main site. We automagically retweet all the new events posted to it, and these then appear in our ‘latest news’ bit on our main site too. So the two sites are integrated fairly closely.
We were offered money for a sponsored post recently (via an agency) on our main blog at Greener Leith, and after considerable deliberation we took it – but not after a bit of discussion amongst the management committee. We clearly categorised it, and declared it, and so on. We came to the conclusion that if we’re to cover the costs of running both a Squarespace and Ning hosted site (and no if you were starting from scratch you probably wouldn’t do it that way – but that’s another story) then it’s a reasonable step to ‘sometimes’ take advertorial type content. But only if it’s managed carefully, relevant and worth it. For the rates we were offered we could run one sponsored post a quarter and cover all our IT service costs. If we were to do one a month – we would go a long way to covering our very expensive Public Liability Insurance policy which allows us to run bike rides, community clean-ups and other neighbourhood stuff. However, I think one a month is probably too many for our site.
On that basis we think it’s a compromise worth making and we do our best to explain to our readers/members that this means their membership fees can be used for practical neighbourhood improvements in the real world. See:
http://www.greenerleith.org/a-z/a-is-for/advertising.html
Obviously if you’re using a free CMS, and you’re in sole control of your hyperlocal baby, you’ve got virtually no overheads, and only your readers to vaguely answer to – So you don’t have to think about this kind of stuff. But I suppose the point of adding all this was simply to point out that sponsored posts can be a very good source of revenue, if you’re interested in that sort of thing and provided you manage it very, very carefully.