Hyperlocal news and community site the Lichfield Blog has been renamed Lichfield Live.
Writing on the Lichfield Community Media blog today, director Philip John says that he had previously blocked the name change, concerned that it was “too risky, potentially losing the reputation we had built up”.
But it became “hard to escape the fact that having ‘blog’ in our name was causing problems with how we were perceived”, he says.
Philip explains some of the other reasons behind the name change:
“Lichfield Live” is more suitable for several reasons;
- It sounds new. We’re very much a “new media” operation.
- It sounds timely. We’ve built a reputation for being first to have the news about what’s going on in Lichfield.
- It fits with what’s on. Our most popular section is “What’s On” and nicely ties into events.
The Lichfield Blog isn’t dead though, it’ll carry on as a place for comment and opinion pieces from columnists “who live in, work in or represent Lichfield”. A new site is also due, which will cover the Burntwood & Chasetown region.
The WordPress theme they are using needs a bit of extra tweaking to get rid of the ‘blog stigma’. For example, the author info inside an article at top right uses the ‘post’ terminology and also says ‘This author has X posts on this blog’.