Tag Archives: community news

Preston hyperlocal site bids for funding for 2012 community project

Preston hyperlocal news and community site Blog Preston is competing for £5,000 in funding to help it cover 2012’s Preston Guild, a historic city celebration held once every 20 years.

The funding is on offer from the Co-operative’s Start a Revolution competition, which aims to help community groups and charities with projects that will benefit the community, inspire young people, or combat climate change or global poverty.

The competition is split into different regions, with Blog Preston up against a wide variety of bids in the Northern England group. Competition ranges from other media initiatives, including the 7 Waves Community Radio project, which offers training in radio production, script writing, interviewing, sound production and other skills, to projects based on angling, boxing, the arts, and more.

According to Blog Preston founder Ed Walker, the site intends to use the money to “capture the Guild stories, research the history, film events and speak to people who saw the last Guild (or four) and make sure those memories are not lost”.

Our site has a track record of great community coverage, from meetings about saving swimming polls to covering when the EDL came to town to up-to-the-minute updates on the general election. We know how to cover events, and we want to make sure the Preston Guild is covered to the full extent. And who knows, it might inspire those involved in covering it to find out more about their city and the Guild itself.

The competition is open to a public vote until the 29 May. You see more about the Blog Preston bid at this link, or visit the Co-operative competition site for more information and the opportunity to vote.

E&P: Washington Post survey suggests hyperlocal moves are afoot

A survey being circulated by the Washington Post – which includes questions such as “Please rate your level of interest in accessing a community-news oriented website from your mobile device” – seems to indicate that the paper has hyperlocal on the brain, reports Editor & Publisher:

Judging from the questions, these new hyperlocal sites would:

*Feature voices from the community;

*Include reporting from Washington Post reporters;

*Go hard on mobile;

*Offer all kinds of functionality enabling people to network with each other, post all kinds of photos, and so on.

Full story at this link…

The New York Times has several ventures into hyperlocal/community news under its belt, having worked with local NYU students on creating hyperlocal blogs for the Brooklyn and New Jersey last year and launched a new blog for the East Village is September.

paidContent: AOL hyperlocal network Patch plans 400 new sites

paidContent reports today that AOL’s hyperlocal venture Patch could become the biggest new employer of full-time journalists in the US, with plans to add hundreds more sites by the end of the year.

According to the media site, Patch’s president Warren Webster told them the company plans to add 400 new hyperlocal sites to its network of 100 so far, doubling its current advertised state coverage.

Webster says that Patch is selecting towns to expand to based in part on a 59-variable algorithm that takes into account factors like the average household income of a town, how often citizens vote, and how the local public high school ranks; the company is then talking to local residents to ensure that targeted areas have other less quantifiable characteristics like a “vibrant business community” and “walkable Main Street”. Patch hires one professional reporter to cover each community; each “cluster” of sites also has an ad manager who is the “feet in the street” selling ads.

See the full post here…

OJR: An interview with Washington DC’s new local news platform

Following the launch of TBD.com, an online local news platform in Washington DC, the Online Journalism Review has published an interview with Steve Buttry, director of community engagement.

OJR’s Robert Niles asks what the near future holds for the site, which combines the work of two television stations, local journalists, online bloggers and other community sites.

We looked for blogs covering local news, life and issues. We looked for blogs that appeared to provide quality content and post frequently. Washington has lots of outstanding blogs covering national and international affairs that we didn’t invite. We may at some point add a “Washington people” section, but at this point, we have decided not to include any of the many outstanding blogs that are primarily personal. We have some blogs that are mostly about cooking. They have been told that we will be more likely to link to a post that has a sense of place (here’s the recipe that I used to cook the eggplants I got at the Reston Farmers Market) than just a recipe.

See the full post here…

Herald Online: AOL’s hyperlocal network Patch gets charitable to fund community news

Patch, AOL’s growing network of hyperlocal news and information websites in the US, has announced the foundation of a new charitable arm, Patch.org:

Patch.org will partner with community foundations and other organisations to launch Patch sites and bring objective local news and information to communities and neighborhoods around the world that lack adequate news media and online local information resources.

The Patch.org sites will employ a local journalist to produce original news and content, and aggregate material and information created by the community. Any revenue earned by the sites will be invested back into the community they serve, a press release says.

Full release at this link….