Straight To The Point

Trinity Mirror launches local wiki website

Coming hot on the heels of their Liverpool Echo news map, the Trinity Mirror have launched a wiki site for the North East of England.

The website, www.wiki-north-east.co.uk, is aiming to be "a collaboration of editorial articles and user generated content for and about the people, places and events of the North East."

Read an initial analysis of the site on the Online Journalism Blog.

Labels: content, journalism, websites

Trinity Mirror launch beta local news map

As reported by The Guardian, Trinity Mirror have today announced the launch of a map-based local news service on their Liverpool Echo website.

Chief Executive Sly Bailey said that the service was a follow-up to the development of a series of hyper-local websites across the group.

"As a next step we're launching a map-based news service across our regional sites with our editorial content geo-tagged and pinpointed to postcode level bringing our brands ever closer to our users and this is live in a public beta today on the Liverpool Echo."

A few smaller examples of this approach have been around for a while - most notably the SE1 News Map - but this is the first major news publisher to try this map based approach.

A quick look at the story tags suggests there are 541 geo-tagged stories on the Liverpool site from the last two and a half months - and that presents something of a design and usability challenge to present this volume of content within a single map window on the web.

Update: Journalism.co.uk looks at where the rest of the UK local/regional news providers currently are in the geo-tagging game.

Labels: content, journalism, mapping, websites

Initial conclusions on BBC Local Video proposals

The Ofcom website is today announcing that the BBC Trust's Public Value Assessment (into the BBC's proposals for a new Local Video service) and provisional conclusions will now be published by the 27 November 2008.

Ofcom will submit the Market Impact Assessment to the Trust so that it can be published on the same day.

See my original post on the BBC Local Video Service application and the collated media coverage over the last 5 months.

Labels: bbc, content, journalism

Job title includes 'Hyper-local'!!

Noooooo!!!! I've already mentioned my aversion to the use of 'hyper' and 'ultra' as supposedly valid prefixes to the word local when it comes to defining interactive services or content propositions.

Now for the first time I've just seen the phrase included in a job ad, for a Hyper-local Video Journalist in Las Vegas.

Apparently, suitable candidates must have "an interest in community journalism and a passion for the hyper-local".

If the successful candidate should ever happen to read this post then please, please do let me know how you managed to demonstrate your passion for the hyper-local, as opposed to the rest of us who merely have a passion for local.

Labels: content, journalism

ITV Local adds crime information

More activity from websites looking to improve their coverage of local crime information.

This time it's ITV who are launching a crime section on ITV.com, tying crime data and related news to the eleven regions in the ITV Local network.

ITV is working with the charity Crimestoppers to add crime information to the site in the form of 'most wanted' posters, an archive of crime video reports and a user-generated crime reporting feature - so if you spot anyone vandalising something (or worse) you could post the evidence to the site. (Wouldn't it be better to send it to the police?)

From PaidContent:UK.

Labels: content, crime, itv, itvlocal, journalism, websites

Media coverage of the BBC Local Video PVT

Here is an updating list (thanks to the miracle that is del.icio.us) of links to media coverage of the BBC's application to provide a local video service on bbc.co.uk.

(Disclaimer: I am involved in this application as part of my day job at the BBC.)

The PVT began on 24th June 2008.

Labels: bbc, content, journalism, local, localvideopvt, video, websites

BBC Trust begins public value test into local video proposal

The BBC Trust has today started its public value test (PVT) of the BBC's local video proposal.

(Disclaimer: I am involved in this proposal as part of my day job at the BBC.)

The Trust has published BBC management's application as well as supporting documents, a service description and a full timetable for the PVT.

Details of the public value test (PVT) process can be found here.

Ofcom have also issued a press release on their market impact assessment consultation.

You can read the proposal on the BBC Trust website and any interested party is welcome to submit their thoughts as part of the public consultation - the deadline for responding is 5pm on 22nd July.

Labels: bbc, content, journalism, local, localvideopvt, video, websites

ITV Local has 4 million video views in May

Media Guardian reports that ITV's web video figures rocket.

ITV Local, which offers news, weather and entertainment content to different regions, recorded four million video views in May.

The four ITV regions where video has taken off the most are Meridian, which accounted for 16% of views, Central at15%, Anglia with 11% and London at 11%.

ITV's London region saw the biggest month-on-month growth for May recording a 50% boost in video views.

These numbers in the context of "12 million views of programmes or clips on ITV.com in May" - although it's not clear whether the 4 million to ITV Local are included in the overall 12 million or not.

If this is the case then it would seem a solid endorsement of the value of local content on the web, particularly given that the overall figures for ITV.com are led by such high-profile output as Coronation Street, Britain's Got Talent and Euro 2008 football.

Labels: content, itv, itvlocal, journalism, video, websites

Huffington Post goes local

From Media Guardian article - Huffington Post starts local news push.

The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago.
Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in "dozens of US cities". The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

Maybe it's a reflection of the popular discussion topics in Chicago but I found it interesting, and slightly amusing, that the proposed content is listed as "news, sport, crime, ..."

Labels: huffington, journalism, local, news, post, web, websites

Lessons learned from hyperlocal

While we are on the subject of news becoming 'more local', here's an interesting post from Rob Curley on the experience of running the hyperlocal project LoudounExtra.com, developed by Washington Post Newsweek International.

"...I thought the two biggest problems with LoudounExtra.com were poor integration of the site with washingtonpost.com and not enough outreach into the community … ala basically me speaking with every community group that would have me."

Labels: journalism, local, usa, websites

Northcliffe re-vamps local websites with geo-coding on stories

Northcliffe Media have begun geo-coding stories produced on their "thisis" websites as the group prepares to introduce geographical targeting on the "next generation" of local news websites.

The 10 remodeled sites, including thisiscornwall.co.uk, are part of the plans to re-vamp the 55 existing sites and to add 35 new regional websites under Northcliffe's 'thisis' brand, by September this year.

Unfortunately the localisation functions are not currently visible, but should be available in a few months when there are enough geo-coded stories available to support the service.

This is a shame, and potentially missing a trick, as enabling users to watch the service develop from the ground up might have provided the opportunity for useful feedback on how the stories are being tagged.

Robert Hardie (Northcliffe content strategy director) has highlighted the difficulty in knowing how to tag an individual story with suitable location data - seemingly postcodes in this case - to ensure it is found in the right place by the right people.

In my mind the success of the service will depend on two key areas, neither of which is easy to get right:

1\ How flexible can a journalist be in tagging a story? Can multiple postcodes be associated with the same story if it affects multiple areas? Can a group of postcodes be used to illustrate a story is relevant across a whole region? How much granularity does the postcode tagging allow - postcode area/district/sector/unit?

2\ How will the visual design of the site allow users to access this content? The same questions apply as in the point above, but this time relating to the user. Can I search for stories purely on my street? Or across a wider area? And how will the editorial prioritisation of a big news story be reflected if I am searching by location rather than by size of story or time of publication?

I guess we'll have to wait a couple of months to find out!

From the Press Gazette coverage:-

The new sites' geographical targeting functionality will allow users to enter a postcode to find all the stories on the site that affect them. The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.
“It should only take month or two until we’ve built up that bulk of stories with postcode data attached to them,” said Hardie.
Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging, Hardie said.
He said that while a traffic accident might affect only one location, a story about bed-blocking in hospitals would affect people over a wide area.
“On the one hand it’s opening up a major opportunity for us, but it also means we’re going have to learn new skills and make value judgements about how we tag stories with postcodes,” Hardie said.
“It’s a new skill that we’re going to have to get used to doing very cleverly,” he added.

The story is also on journalism.co.uk and Media Guardian.

Labels: geo-coding, journalism, local, northcliffe, websites