Northcliffe launches community sites for local people

Another attempt to provide local communities with a voice online has recently been piloted by Northcliffe Media in South West England.

From journalism.co.uk

Northcliffe and its digital arm Associated Northcliffe Digital have begun the roll-out of its ambitious plans for a network of hyperlocal websites.

The new platforms will be evenly distributed between areas with existing Northcliffe titles and those which are not served.

The sites are intended as platform for the local community and not as a traditional community news site, said Bryan, who said the network would be complimentary to the existing thisis network of regional news sites.

"What we are trying to do is to deliver a network of local sites that are aimed at providing local people in quite small communities a place and a space online to debate local issues," he added.

The sites look nice enough (See Exmouth as an example) and tick all the cliched boxes of current web design... a homepage segmented by round-cornered components, the ability to create a user profile, a twitter/facebook-esque status update, plus the standard newspaper diet of motors, properties, jobs and classifieds.

My concern is that the site already feels very busy and driven editorially by the desires of Northcliffe. There also seems to be very little recognition or attempt to integrate these sites with the existing blogs, websites, profiles of web active people already in the area - surely a key element of getting a foothold in any local community.

If you want to help local people in small communities get involved in their local space on the web then my hunch is that the Talk About Local approach has a better model.

Each website will, I imagine, be focused on solving a very specific local need, in essence doing one thing really, really well.

All this talk of new local websites and no mention of maps, maybe that bubble has started to burst!