BBC Trust says No to BBC Local Video

The regional and local newspapers of the UK had an early Christmas present today with the announcement from the BBC Trust that it has rejected proposals from the BBC for adding video content to its network of local websites.
(Disclaimer: I am involved in this proposal as part of my day job at the BBC.)

After strong protests from across the UK newspaper industry and local commercial radio operators and ITV Local, the BBC Trust has refused permission for local video "because it would not improve services for the public enough to justify either the investment of licence fee funds or the negative impact on commercial media."

Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said,

"We believe the BBC’s priority should be improving the quality of existing services. The public wants better quality regional television news programmes and more programmes of all kinds produced in and reflecting their areas."

"Our decision today to refuse permission for local video means that local newspapers and other commercial media can invest in their online services in the knowledge that the BBC does not intend to make this new intervention in the market."

The full press release from the BBC Trust is here.

Everyblock experiments with council meeting minutes

Tom Loosemore recently posted about the ability to search video footage from House of Commons debates on theyworkforyou.com, pointing out that:

The accessibility and searchability of the web transforms our ability to hold our elected representatives to account for their actions in Parliament.

Now hyper-local news mapping site Everyblock has launched in two new US cities, Charlotte and Philadelphia, and is testing some interesting new information sources which have the potential to take this accountability another step forward.

Everyblock Charlotte will be providing access to relevant information within city council meeting minutes and Charlotte zoning minutes (NB: Zoning rules regulate how land can be used. Landowners must get city council approval to develop property in ways that do not conform to current zoning classifications.)

Everyblock Philadelphia will be publishing information from the Philadelphia Rules committee (The Rules committee considers matters relating to municipal development and zoning, the city planning commission and housing and redevelopment authorities, among other things.) and Philadelphia Streets and Services agendas.

We're analyzing the text of these meeting minutes/agendas for all locations referenced therein. If the city council or rules committee mentions something near you, you'll see it on your EveryBlock page. This is often highly relevant local information about zoning changes, etc.

Planning applications (or 'zoning changes' in US speak) have always been a great example of ultra-local information that are extremely important to the (usually) small number of people that they affect.

By making this information easily accessible, as well as a host of other related data around local services and civic issues, these sites could well lead the way towards a truly essential, ultra-local service.

Managing large sets of un-structured data, and making them easy to use, searchable and relevant is not an easy task and the location tagging and location based search mechanism will be crucial to the success of the project.

Everyblock Charlotte also includes information on 911 calls to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (maybe the ultimate information resource on crime mapping in your area?) and notice of any new books and DVDs that have been added to your local library.

More information on journalism.co.uk.

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.

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.

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, ..."

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."

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.