143 new likes: How being consistent helped a hyperlocal news site to finally get Facebook

I’ve mentioned a few times that Facebook should be a key source for hyperlocal publishers (if it isn’t already) to the extent that at January’s Community Journalism Conference in Cardiff I argued that practitioners should be ““.

Not everyone agreed with me, in fact few did, but I continue to believe this is a platform which offers great opportunities for engagement (the audience is already there, take up is WAY greater than Twitter) and a nightmare for researchers to data mine  :-)

Ed Walker  from the excellent Blog Preston explains how last month “I decided to get Blog Preston’s Facebook page into shape and see what would happen if I gave it the same amount of love and attention as our Twitter feed.”

The results of this experiment - and the seven lessons Ed learned - are worth reading. []

American News Consumers Have Gained the World but Lost Their Backyards

This piece in  makes the civic case for local journalism:

“Local reporters don’t “just” contribute by getting citizens civically useful information.  A boring newspaper story about financial improprieties at the water district that almost no one reads or cares about can still have a huge impact so long as one of the few readers works in the county prosecutor’s office….

And it repeats an oft stated line that bloggers an citizen journalists won’t pick up the slack.

“It would be nice to think that citizen journalists could simply step into the breach, empowered by the tools the web provides. Perhaps that will occur in future years more than is now the case. But show me a local newspaper that has laid off a significant number of editors and beat reporters, and I’ll show you a city where a lot of institutional knowledge, built at great cost over many years, was suddenly, perhaps irrevocably lost; where even skilled citizen journalists have a hard time filling the breach….”

If this sounds like a negative take on the piece, it’s not meant to be. It doesn’t say anything especially new, but it is a well written read nonetheless. []

 

Ensuring your child stands out from the (hyperlocal) crowd

This should probably start with; “And finally…”

One of my friends in Chiswick once told me that if you shout out the name “Max” in a school playground about 50% of primary school boys will turn around.

Now you can avoid such a social faux pas over at  - ‘the unique baby name guide’ - with their list of Hyperlocal Baby Names: What’s hot where you live? . Answers in the comments section appear from all over the world. []