Former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves, has started a hyperlocal community blog in Harborne, the district of Birmingham in which he lives, called The Harborne Mile.
He says on the new blog: "I started the blog to learn more about the mechanics of establishing and running ‘hyperlocal’ community blogs, but also because Harborne surprisingly lacked a site as vibrant as others covering other parts of the city.
"The aims are to create a space and then curate news, information and comment with the help of fellow Harbornites, and I hope the blog will feature contributions from as wide a range of voices as possible."
He says on the new blog: "I started the blog to learn more about the mechanics of establishing and running ‘hyperlocal’ community blogs, but also because Harborne surprisingly lacked a site as vibrant as others covering other parts of the city.
"The aims are to create a space and then curate news, information and comment with the help of fellow Harbornites, and I hope the blog will feature contributions from as wide a range of voices as possible."
Via Hannah Waldram on Twitter
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1 comment:
It'll be a labour of love for Marc unless he moves publishing platform.
I'm trying a broadly similar project in North West Sheffield - a community of rather scattered villages and a few posh suburbia postcodes. Automattic (owners of wordpress) confirmed to me that they won't allow ANY type of advertising or money-making activity using wordpress.com software (they also automatically don't allow code such as Adsense, et simile). Automattic are to be applauded for the blogging software they provide and they have a great "community" ethos. They also provide, free, wordpress.org complete blogging platform software to be used for self-hosting and which accepts various plug-ins and code that wordpress.com won't allow.
If Marc wants to make money from the venture, and such a blog certainly does take a lot of time & work if it's to be interesting and relevant, he'll have to self-host or go somewhere like Blogger (where he can get a percentage share of any agreed revenue).
My own attempt is a mere few days old. As I ultimately need to make money, I have to decide just when to jump to a self-hosting model. The current version is basically a "prototype" but the market research and marketing required is tricky as the finished version would have to be a new site (and URL).
Nothing's easy! Good luck to Marc.
ps: The West Seattle Blog is an excellent example of commercially successful community news blogging. Took them a couple of years though ...
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