Skip the Scanner – Get Emergency Audio Online
If you’re starting or already running a local news blog, there’s no doubt that a police/fire scanner is one of your must-have tools. Or is it? That may depend on your home/office setup and how you prefer to listen to emergency radio traffic.
You might be able to skip the scanner and listen online via the Radio Reference web site, a portal for all things related to emergency radio communications.
Radio Reference offers links to online feeds of hundreds of emergency radio frequencies across the U.S. and in dozens of other countries, too. You can see what’s available by starting at the site’s Live Audio page. You’ll land on a U.S. map, but there’s a “Country” dropdown on the left for folks elsewhere in the world.
In my home state of Washington, the map shows that live audio is available for most of the highly-populated areas of the state.
By the way, this is the audio source used in the Emergency Radio iPhone app that I wrote about last year here on HLB. So, whether you’re at home or out and about, you can keep up with what’s happening around town and make sure that your blog has the latest news at all times.
Using Ning as a Hyperlocal Home
You may recognize the name Becca Martin from the comments here on Hyperlocal Blogger, but even if you don’t … that’s okay. Becca is the founder of Live Here Oak Park — a hyperlocal community site that uses the Ning platform.
I say “community site” because it’s more than a blog; it has a forum, photo sharing, videos, and much more. It serves many of the same community-based purposes that a blog would, but comes from a slightly different angle.
Becca’s written a guest post on the Ning Blog that explains how she’s using Ning to create this hyperlocal home. If you’re just starting out, you might find that Ning is what you’re looking for more than a blog; if you already have a hyperlocal blog, you might find that a Ning community site could be a strong complement. Either way, it’s recommended reading:
Guest Post: Creating a community for a community
6 Things I’m Struggling With as a Hyperlocal Blogger
(This is a guest post by Mike Ramsey who is the owner of Nifty Marketing, a local SEO company operating out of Burley, Idaho. He writes a monthly column for Search Engine Journal, and in his free time runs GoBurley, a hyperlocal news site for his hometown.)
My name is Mike Ramsey and I started GoBurley.com, a hyperlocal news site for the small town of Burley, Idaho. The site was started back in October 2009, and has actually seen a fair amount of success considering that my hometown has more cows than computers. I started the site because our county only has one local news source (name not mentioned to protect the not-so-innocent) that has caused a lot of issues and contention within our community. So, my goals are to directly compete against this once-a-week print newspaper, give our town an alternate news source, and save it from utter destruction (mellow-drama emphasis added).
Since starting the site, and competing directly against a staffed news company. I have come across six areas that I am having a hard time being consistent in. GoBurley.com is not my full-time job (my guess is most other hyperlocal sites are in the same boat), so I am looking for creative ideas from the hyperlocal community on how to best handle these six issues:
1. Topics, Ideas, and Series to Write On…
Breaking, Sports, City Government are the basics, but what are people doing that is fun, and tends to draw comments and crowds. Has anyone ran a successful series, has a weekly post that people look forward to?
2. How to Get Contributors?
Outside of asking on your blog for people to send in original content, how have you been able to gain contributors who are bringing quality content on a regular basis?
3. Planning Your Content
I have a feeling that many hyperlocal bloggers are not professional editors, journalists, or any other title that deals with news. Is there a “best practice” for when to publish at certain times, and how to plan out a week of content?
4. Advertising Your Site
I am interested to know if anyone has run an advertising campaign that has proved successful at bringing awareness and subscribers to their site?
5. Basic “best practices” for reporting
Considering my non-journalistic background, I am wondering if there are certain key things that you need to do when reporting.
6. How to Monetize your Hyperlocal Site
Are there creative ways that people are able to bring in revenue? Anything from taking donations to charging for subscription?
I know that there are a lot of questions listed here to think about, but I am sure that I am not the only person running into these issues, and hope that we can all benefit by sharing with each other.
[Note from Matt: If you have some thoughts, no matter how big or small, that might help Mike and other readers with the same questions, let me suggest the following ways to reply:
1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Write a blog post about one or more of these questions, publish it on your own blog, and then drop the link in the comments below.
3. Write a blog post about one or more of these questions and have me publish it here on HyperlocalBlogger.com as a Guest Post.
Any of the above will work, so if you have something helpful to say, we're looking forward to it.]
What can Hyperlocal do that Traditional Media can’t?
Catching up again on bookmarks I’ve come across over the past week or three, and here’s a good piece from Alex Gamela about what separate hyperlocal news/sites/blogs from traditional idea. He asks five people in our industry — Adam Westbrook, Adrian Holovaty, Josh Halliday, Rob Powell and William Perrin — for their thoughts about what hyperlocal sites can do, or do better, than mainstream media web sites.
There seems to be a somewhat common theme related to the use of technology and collaboration, but don’t take my word for it; here’s the full article, a good read to start your week.
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