Sarah Hartley

A personal pick of the past twelve months;

January: Entertainment blog Manchester Confidential launched a new website – behind a paywall.
The doomed venture was dropped a few months later when it became clear that insufficient numbers of subscribers were willing to pay.

February: OK, not properly Manchester but it’s impact has been felt further afield.Hard to believe that Saddleworth News has only been in existence since February with its detailed coverage of the Phil Woolas case later in the year and the launch of the web-TV channel it’s quickly become part of the media landscape.

March: Concentrating on all things Manchester, InsidetheM60 launched just a month later with the general election soon raising its profile into an everyday experience for news hungry Mancunians.

April: The Manchester Egg found fame on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog. after being hawked round many a bar.

May: Elections, elections, elections. What more can I say – the blogosphere went into overdrive, plus Marketing Manchester released this funky map of Manchester’s digital scene. Sadly the link for this blog is still incorrect but even so, a great interactive.

June: The MEN’s most prolific blogger, David Ottewell stirred up a controversy which even went international with his  comments about hyperlocal blogs at a time when the movement towards local news publishing continued to gain confidence across the UK.

July: Bloggers aplenty were rewarded with Manchester hosting the Wordcamp UK unconference in the city.

August: Mixing food with micro-blogging, GastroClub_Manchester burst onto the scene with exotic menus and displays of gastronomy. My only regret is not having yet been able to make one of the events…..there’s a New Year’s Resolution to be made if ever there was one.

September: Could it really be the case that there wasn’t much blogging in September? It seemed so to me but please feel free to put me right on this point…….to make up for it, I’m going to cheat and get a mention in for Beards of Manchester. This crowdsourced charity calender actually launched in October – and it’s in the shops now!

October: The year’s most unlikely social media success came from the police. Greater Manchester Police’s innovative use of Twitter proved to be controversial in some quarters but I think ultimately brought a greater understanding of police work in the city.

November: Manchester’s intrepid frog bloggers made it to Costa Rica to bring a series of posts from a sloth sanctuary. It’s all true – come on, I couldn’t make it up!

December: Good to see Manchester-based blogger, photographer and multimedia journalist Ciara Leeming get recognition for her work being featured on the BBC News viewfinder blog.

Those listed are just my one pick per month personal favourites – I could have continued with plenty more examples such as the the fifth annual Manchester Blog Awards held in October. (Well done to both
LoveLevenshulme and Fat Roland On Electronica on both being named as blog of the year. Full list of winners here.)

All that remains for this year is to wish all those who read and contribute to this blog a very Happy New Year!
Thanks especially due to guest bloggers David Hartley, Peter Barton and the ever-present Adrian Slatcher for their support throughout the year.

If you’d like to contribute to keeping the traffic flowing on The Mancunian Way by blogging on an occasional, or regular, basis in 2011, please get in touch either via the comments below or by email to SarahMancunianWay at Googlemail.com.

• Amy Webb: The IPv4 problem, geofencing, and lots of hyperlocal » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism
  Lots of new hyperlocal initiatives will launch before summer 2011 by a vast number of traditional media organizations. Millions and millions of dollars will be spent recreating templated sites based on zip code or geography alone.
  (tags: hyperlocal local-news)
• Content partnerships do not work – SeanBlanda.com -
  Big sites and small sites simply don’t need one another to survive. For a few reasons:

  Pageviews vs Engagement – Most niche sites like the idea and prestige of being published a more established player, but the partnership often does little to help keep the small site sustainable. In Technically Philly’s case, we like seeing traffic numbers grow but we know that a small but dedicated fan base is what keeps us afloat. The drive-by reader may make our Google Analytics spike, but it doesn’t help fill seats when we host a paid event. Conversely, larger sites need traffic to sell more CPM-based advertising.

  (tags: hyperlocal advertising network collaboration)

• Sorry RSS readers – blame thieving MyVillage idiots « 853
  All of which means I need to have a think about copyright and other issues – the great thing about the internet is the sharing of content and ideas, but when a commercial concern like MyVillage is nicking text and photos from local operators, and then running ads for multinationals alongside that content, then that ruins things. Truncating the RSS feed hasn’t stopped MyVillage, but it means they see less and they don’t seem to be able to use images from the site either. It’s not as if I get much traffic from them anyway – less than 1% of the page views for this site come from their piss-poor pages.

  I blog for many reasons, but propping up other people’s business plans isn’t among them.

  (tags: hyperlocal aggregation copylifting copyright)
• Yelp Comes to the iPad, Featuring Photos, Better Browsing
  You can, of course, still search for local businesses and view the results as a list or on a map. But the iPad app adds the option to view the results as a grid of photos. As the success of the food recommendation service Foodspotting has shown, photos – particularly at restaurants – can be a huge factor in making a decision on where to go, and by featuring the photos perhaps both users and businesses will feel more compelled to share more pictures on Yelp.
  (tags: hyperlocal ipad)

• Content Partnerships: Charlottesville Tomorrow and The Daily Progress – Block by Block Practitioners' Blog
  (tags: hyperlocal networked partnership collaboration)
• Goodbye mainstream media. It’s been fun. « Adam Westbrook
  Speaking after the preview of his documentary, John Pilger put his faith in new independent journalists, free from the legacy costs and attitudes of the big news machine and authority itself. He echoed ideas you will have read on this blog before: the internet has made it faster, cheaper and easier to create and publish content – and that gives these independent reporters a new platform and a new advantage.
  (tags: journalism blogs ethics media future)

• In Torrington, Conn., a Brave Foray Into New Media Territory – NYTimes.com
  At the new offices of The Register Citizen in this faded old mill town, there’s a sign out front welcoming residents to come in for coffee and muffins at the Newsroom Café — sort of Starbucks meets “Lou Grant.” Mimeographed fliers reading “Public Welcome!” invite people to walk in and participate in the 4 p.m. story conference. Residents are free to stroll through the newsroom as reporters peck out stories.
  (tags: newscafe newshub beatblogging hyperlocal journalism)
• Newsrewired: Why news needs game mechanics and journalists should stop telling stories | TheMediaBriefing
  Why not try something completely different, says Trippenbach, like "non-narrative forms of media that are much much more effective"?

  "Stories are very good at relating events, whereas it's extremely important to understand systems. And the best way to learn how a system works is by interacting with it, by playing with it."

  (tags: gaming storytelling narrative journalism,)
• How To Get More Granular With Hyperlocal And Vertical Site Listings
  To get a better understanding, we ran an analysis of 3 million SMB’s in multiple verticals and locations, and used that data to look at just the vertical sites and just the local sites – and found some interesting things.
  (tags: advertising hyperlocal local SEO)
• Why the death of syndication is great news for hyperlocal and niche sites
  this is great news for small publishers, such as hyperlocal news or niche sites. You can be a part of that single Web page of Internet news. Concentrate on the original content instead of copying; create the one copy only you or your organization can create. If you don't believe me, listen to Gawker's Nick Denton: scoop generates audience, which in turn generates advertising.
  (tags: hyperlocal syndication media rss feeds journalism onlinejournalism)
• news:rewired, 16 December 2010, Microsoft UK, London » Blog Archive » Community editors should be an integral part of the newsroom, says Media Wales’ Ed Walker
  list of things to avoid when building communities:

  * Not having a clear objective – if you have clarity on your purpose, the people in that community have a reason to be there.
  * Avoid fixation on numbers – social media a source of referrals but don’t chase numbers at the expense of saturation.
  * Don’t broadcast at your community – to quote Clay Shirky, it’s about creating an environment for supporting people.
  * Forget the idea that it’s all about the technology – it’s about the people. Understand who are the authoritative people in your market. People like something to do and respond to openness.
  * Avoid not being a part of it yourself.

  (tags: community newsrw)
• News:rewired live blog | Wannabe Hacks
  @Storify experiment in covering the day.
  (tags: storify newsrw newsrewired conference)

• The seven deadly sins of journalism companies | yelvington.com
  We don't need to reconstruct our sales forces, create smart incentives for digital sales, take the risky path, practice interactive journalism, try something new. I can't count the times I've been told "we're doing pretty well." That continued right up to the moment the economy collapsed.
  (tags: newspapers digital journalism)

• Interview with Josh Resnik, head of Gannett Digital Network
  At the Digiday:On Media conference this week in New York, I caught up with Josh Resnik, vice president and general manager of the Gannett Digital Network, to discuss how the company monetizes and scales hyperlocal coverage, while competing with new hyperlocal models like AOL's Patch.
  (tags: hyperlocal video revenue)

• The Data Digest: Who Uses Location-Based Services? | Forrester Blogs
  With the current uptake of these services, most organization have to realize that they can't run location-based campaigns and expect to reach a large audience. However, cutting-edge, male-targeted companies can test LBSNs now. Gaming or consumer electronics companies are good examples of companies that should start experimenting with LBSNs now.
  (tags: socialmedia geo-location location)
• gr8governance: Its Your Council- Join In
  Not being in Huddersfield meant that we were unable to webcast the meeting. This was a real shame as there had been an interest developing amongst residents and staff in terms of what happened at our council meetings – people were tuning in to watch!! As I sat waiting for the Mayor and Chief Executive to enter and for the formal proceedings to begin I routinely checked my Twitter account on my phone. That was the lightning bolt moment – I'm here, my phone's fully charged, I have a full signal. For the next four hours I tweeted the meeting (using the #kirkcouncil tag), providing commentary as best I could and kept linking to papers and reports on the council web site as councillors discussed the items. As the meeting progressed there was a steady growth of interest as my tweets were retweeted and comments and views began to add to the conversation. Not a big deal really, or so I thought.
  (tags: council video webcast live reporting beatblogging)

• Making council meetings more transparent: legal issues? | media law & ethics
  1) Green councillor Jason Kitcat successfully appealed a local authority decision to suspend him from Brighton & Hove City Council, after he uploaded clips of council meetings onto YouTube (taken from the council’s own public livestream). Kitcat’s tribunal notes can be found here. A report in local paper, the Argus, can be found here.
  (tags: council hyperlocal meetings video recording live webacse beatblogging)
• Videoing council meetings revisited: the limits of openness in a transparent council « countculture
  Interestingly, when asked why videoing was not allowed, they claimed ‘Data Protection’, the catch-all excuse for any public body that doesn’t want to publish, or open up, something. Of course, this is nonsense in the context of a public meeting, and where all those being filmed were public figures who were carrying out a civic responsibility.
  (tags: hyperlocal filming council transparency beatblogging)
• Yahoo announces its hyperlocal search site is moving to mobile | Brafton | Custom News Marketing
  Yahoo says it is combining its powerful geo-informatics tools and content platforms so consumers can "save cash while [they] support local businesses." For marketers, this is just another of many indications that it's increasingly important to create locally targeted content and ad campaigns that can catch clicks and local commerce – for Yahoo and other major sites.
  (tags: local mobile yahoo search)
• Patch Blog
  Momentum is the name of the game at Patch right now. While we expand quickly, our primary goal is to serve the residents of each individual Patch community with the most important information they need to live better, more informed lives. Patch local editors and writers are embedded in all aspects of their communities, from government to schools, businesses to events.
  (tags: hyperlocal patch local beatblogging)

• All I want for Christmas is a Localism Bill | Blog | Local Government Chronicle
  There has also, I’m told, been an issue with a lack of cross-Whitehall consultation, with one Whitehall source saying that DCLG ministers had thrown “an unnecessary clock of secrecy around the bill”.
  (tags: localism bill serecy government local)
• News Foo Camp: Not fully open, but certainly not secret « The Buttry Diary
  I have blogged critically about secrecy at news-industry gatherings, but that criticism simply doesn’t apply here. The discouragement of tweets was an encouragement to engage in the discussion, not an enforcement of secrecy. I understood that we were free to tweet occasionally and to blog and tweet our impressions and key takeaways. An event with a hashtag and hundreds of tweets is no secret. I have blogged about News Foo, as have David Cohn and Alex Hillman (please add your link in the comments if you’ve blogged about it). Social media accounts were so plentiful that Mo Krochmal, who didn’t attend, see curated a strong account using Storify.
  (tags: newsfoo blogging secrecy openness)
• Groupon ties with JiWire to go hyperlocal | News | New Media Age
  Groupon has partnered with location-based ad sales house and platform JiWire to offer hyperlocal deals on a national scale in the US, before extending to the UK.

  The group-buying discount service is extending its deals to a neighbourhood level, based on a shopper’s location.

  (tags: advertising hyperlocal)
• myNewsBiz: a great new opportunity for UK journalism students « Adam Westbrook
  We’re inviting journalism students from any UK university to come up with ideas for new news businesses – whether it’s a platform, a product or a service. We’re putting together a panel of industry judges and the business idea they like the most will win £1000 in cold hard cash to turn it into reality.
  (tags: futureofnews journalism students)
• The Journal Register community newsroom experiment
  It is hard to come up with a better metaphor for the changing of the times in newspaper publishing. The new 13,000-square-foot space, which includes a community reading room, free WiFi with workspaces for community bloggers, and a newsroom cafe, reflects the publisher's audience-driven strategy.

  The community newsroom is also — and not just symbolically– the collapsing of the wall that has traditionally separated a publication and its readers.

  (tags: hyperlocal journalism community communitynewshub newscafe)