Comments on: Looking the wrong way down the telescope http://www.andydickinson.net/2009/09/18/looking-the-wrong-way-down-the-telescope/ online and digital journalism, newspaper video and digital media Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:01:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 By: Friday link « The Cutmedia.com blog http://www.andydickinson.net/2009/09/18/looking-the-wrong-way-down-the-telescope/comment-page-1/#comment-8724 Friday link « The Cutmedia.com blog Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:42:20 +0000 http://www.andydickinson.net/?p=1644#comment-8724 [...] Looking the wrong way down the telescope (andydickinson.net) [...] [...] Looking the wrong way down the telescope (andydickinson.net) [...]

]]> By: Ed Walker http://www.andydickinson.net/2009/09/18/looking-the-wrong-way-down-the-telescope/comment-page-1/#comment-8077 Ed Walker Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:36:54 +0000 http://www.andydickinson.net/?p=1644#comment-8077 I think the key thing is the 'definition' of what news is. If you stick to the narrow pre-defined definition then an online hyper-local site will struggle, but if it includes basic stuff like community events, photos, videos, parish notices and stuff like that then it becomes viable. It depends how local you want hyper-local to go. I think that to be profitable it needs to be a reasonable size town so there is enough advertising and stuff going on to sustain it. What I've been doing with Blog Preston (shameless plug! http://www.blogpreston.co.uk) shows that you can have a vibrant online community journalism based site, with some meaty hard stuff and some more PR/events driven stuff thrown in to the mix. There definitely is a market for quality local content. Below this top level of town/city blogs you will always get the more 'parish news' style blogs which still have a big role to play in highlighting local issues and getting people involved - in a way that the old A4 newsletter once a quarter used to and probably still does in a lot of UK towns/villages. I think the key thing is the ‘definition’ of what news is. If you stick to the narrow pre-defined definition then an online hyper-local site will struggle, but if it includes basic stuff like community events, photos, videos, parish notices and stuff like that then it becomes viable.

It depends how local you want hyper-local to go. I think that to be profitable it needs to be a reasonable size town so there is enough advertising and stuff going on to sustain it.

What I’ve been doing with Blog Preston (shameless plug! http://www.blogpreston.co.uk) shows that you can have a vibrant online community journalism based site, with some meaty hard stuff and some more PR/events driven stuff thrown in to the mix. There definitely is a market for quality local content.

Below this top level of town/city blogs you will always get the more ‘parish news’ style blogs which still have a big role to play in highlighting local issues and getting people involved – in a way that the old A4 newsletter once a quarter used to and probably still does in a lot of UK towns/villages.

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