New York Times Offers Class in Hyperlocal Blogging
Interesting: The New York Times is offering an online class in Citizen Journalism: Hyperlocal Blogging and it begins next week.
It’ll be taught by Mary Ann Giordano, the Times’ Deputy Metro Editor who oversaw the paper’s recently shuttered hyperlocal blogs called “The Local,” and also appears to be involved in the Times’ most recent hyperlocal project, a collaboration with NYU students called The Local East Village.
From the course description:
For those who want to start a blog to serve the news and information needs of their community, this course has all the basics. Using the expertise of veteran New York Times journalists, the course will help you decide what sort of community blog you want to build, then show you how to build it. A substantial segment will teach the fundamentals of community journalism and local reporting, including how to find and present information; how to check facts and preserve fairness in coverage; what you need to know about the basics of media ethics. The course will also cover how to find and develop an audience; how to get your blog noticed, and how to get your community (including potential sponsors) involved.
There’ll be weekly live sessions online as well as self-paced material. It starts next Tuesday and runs for five weeks and costs $175. You can read more about the class (and register by October 4) at the link above.
It would be easy to take the low road here and question the Times’ motivation or ask what one of the world’s major newspapers knows about on-the-ground hyperlocal blogging. But I see a lot of value in what that course description says:
“…the fundamentals of community journalism and local reporting, including how to find and present information; how to check facts and preserve fairness in coverage; what you need to know about the basics of media ethics.”
It’s not that difficult to learn to use WordPress, to learn to shoot breaking news photos or videos on an iPhone, and so forth. But real journalism is a craft and, if that’s what the Times is going to teach hyperlocal bloggers, I say “well done.”
Why is Block by Block an Invite-Only Affair?
I’ve just been reading Mel Taylor’s criticism of last week’s Block by Block Community News Summit, along with the responses to that criticism in the comments of his post and, to a lesser degree, from Ben Ilfeld.
Mel watched some of the live streaming from the summit and came away less than impressed with at least one session that he saw. And so the obvious response from organizers has been, basically, that Mel didn’t really experience the summit.
Well, of course he didn’t. Because it’s invitation only.
Why is that, I wonder. It seems odd to me that, in an industry where the conventional wisdom is that hyperlocal news and citizen journalism is an opportunity that’s available to anyone who wants to try, you basically have to be a “someone” to attend (one of?) the industry’s premier educational events. That seems counter-intuitive and contradictory to me.
Perhaps there are excellent reasons for this; I don’t know. But I’d love to. Organizers? Anyone?
(Disclaimer: I must confess that part of my frustration on this topic stems from the fact that I emailed the organizers in early August looking for information and expressing a desire to attend, got a brief reply back that, as I recall, promised more information in a second email … and then never received another email. I understand; we’re all busy. Still doesn’t feel great.)
Postscript: Shortly after posting this, I found this article by Michele McLellan, one of the organizers, discussing the possibility of a future Block by Block conference(s). Attendees have setup various email lists and social networking groups to discuss that possibility. Since I’m not an attendee, I’ll reiterate my suggestion here: Make it open to all. As an “industry,” we need to spread wings as far as possible and reach as many local bloggers and journalists as we can. We need to adopt our own version of Gusteau’s famous advice from Ratatouille and support the idea that “anyone can blog.” And then help them do it.
Do You Have a Print Strategy?
Okay, local bloggers/journalists/webmasters, here are the questions before you:
1.) Do you have a print version of your local news site/blog?
2.) Have you ever considered doing a print version?
3.) Do you think it’s a good or bad idea to also have a print version of your blog?
I’m curious mainly because of this recent article in The Guardian about HU17.net, a hyperlocal site covering Beverley, England. Paul Smith is producing a 28-page, full color print version that is published every Tuesday — about 100 copies, the article says — and is distributed to “bars, barbers, and social clubs.”
Could you see yourself doing something similar? Here’s a quick poll. Don’t know how many replies you guys will give me, but I’m curious to gauge how many are doing this.
Comments are open if you’d like to expand on your vote. If you’re not doing a print version, why not?
Hyperlocal News Roundup
Another big list of links from the last week or so, including a few pieces about the Block by Block conference in Chicago at the end of the week. Was expecting more coverage of that, actually. Maybe it’ll happen during the coming week, since the conference wrapped up on Friday afternoon.
- Getting Hyperlocal Blog Traffic Based On Tragic Events That I Wish I Didn’t Get, Blogger Lens
- School district reverses media policy for bloggers, Lost Remote
- Hyperlocal: What Works, What Doesn’t, newspaperdeathwatch.com
- Journal Register to launch ‘hyperlocal portal’, Lost Remote
- What “engagement” means to TBD.com, rjiblog.org
- Who’s pimping who?, The Hyperlocalist
- Chicago Tribune relaunches TribLocal.com, Lost Remote
- Audience engagement and business sense are essential to success of local news start ups, www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org
- How can hyperlocals and the mainstream media work better together?, Sarah Hartley
- Hyperlocal Fun in the Sun, California Style, Outside.in Blog
- New survey: Community news site users more satisfied compared to their local mainstream news sources, www.rjionline.org
- Gannett Goes Hyperlocal With HighSchoolSports.net, paidContent.org
- We’re here at BxB, Lost Remote
NearSay Curates Hyperlocal News in NYC
NearSay just launched this week with a hyperlocal focus on an already crowded area: New York City. Here’s a look at the home page on this late Friday afternoon:
There are already a ton of hyperlocal blogs and news sites covering New York City, but NearSay says it’s taking a different approach — the curation of news from other sources. In an email this week, co-founder Trevor Sumner described NearSay as
“…a mix of curated neighborhood news (hand-picked by our editors) and prominent user contributions (from community members). We are not an aggregator. We are humans who use aggregators and many other sources to hand-select only the best neighborhood news.”
NearSay hits the ground with 80 contributors and their contributions get ranked to determine the site’s most “influential n-siders.” There’s even an influencer leaderboard that can be sorted by topic and/or neighborhood. Interesting. Not an idea that would fly in smaller cities, I’m afraid (my area doesn’t have enough “influencers” to contribute to such a thing, much less be ranked on a leaderboard), but it could work in the Big Apple and other larger cities.
I do like the idea of curating content, and think there’s a lot of value in that approach especially in crowded areas with a lot of content being produced. So, best of luck to the NearSay team. It’ll be interesting to watch how the site fares.
Reading Blogs: More Mainstream; Blogging: Not So Much
Some interesting stats out this week from eMarketer about the penetration of both blog reading and blog writing in the U.S. In a blog post earlier this week, eMarketer says more than half of all Internet users in the U.S. will read blogs at least once a month this year. Their forecast says that number will hit 60% by 2014.
Blogging, on the other hand, will continue to be the work of the few: eMarketer says about 12% of U.S. Internet users will update a blog at least monthly this year, and only 13.3% by 2014. We’re the minority. Not too surprising, especially with many “regular folks” finding it much easier to maintain a Facebook or Twitter presence and using that for sharing content.
There’s another important distinction to be made, and I’m glad to see it was mentioned in the eMarketer article: Going forward, the distinction between a blog and a web site will be harder to make. It’s already difficult in many cases, and you could argue it’s a completely unneeded distinction. Says eMarketer:
But there is a caveat to this forecast: Over time, blogs will continue to become indistinguishable from other media channels.
I already foresee the day when I need to change the name of this blog you’re reading now. It won’t be Hyperlocal Blogger. It’ll be … something that doesn’t force a distinction on blogging.
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