Today I find myself buried in Annex 8 of OFCOM's Public Service Broadcasting Review trying to work if there's a future for local news, community and social action on the web.
The wonderful thing about the internet is that OFCOM can publish as much as it likes without worrying about killing lots and lots of trees. The terrible thing about the internet is that OFCOM can publish as much as it likes without worrying about killing lots and lots of trees. You could spend days, weeks down here and never see the light of day.
Anyway, Annex 8 (which I found courtesy of a comment in the OFCOM PSB Blog - an awfully helpful new addition) is a very useful - if somewhat turgid - research report about public service content on the web (by MTM London for OFCOM). There's plenty in it for people who want to know about the provision of stuff for children online, entertainment and health. But the bit I got interested in starts around page 37.
When it comes to local content - particularly community / social action, or news (outside major news organisations) there is, according to the report, precious little out there. There are exceptions of course - hyperlocal independent sites like Urban 75 (for Brixton) - but these are few and far between. 'Local, regional and national sites' the report says, 'tend to have limited ambitions and low production values'.
And then there are the local newspaper sites. Unfortunately many of these are 'heavily templated and homogenous between regions' (p.38). Trinity Mirror is trying to break the mould slightly with its postcode project (e.g. see TS10 Redcar), though it's unclear the extent to which this is a vehicle for news or for classified advertising (though you could argue this is the same for many local print papers).
It's very difficult, in other words, to find successful examples of thriving local community sites (as compared to the US, say) and even harder to find examples of local sites performing the 'watchdog role' of the Fourth Estate (a role that appears conspicuously absent from OFCOMs definition of 'public purposes').
We already know that local broadcast news is in serious trouble (not least because OFCOM tells us it is), but going by this study it'll be quite some time before local community sites can fill the gap.
Monday, April 14, 2008
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There are a couple of pieces that are required, and recently exist to really enable community news sites to exist, and more importantly, be found and shared.
First is the toolset. There have to be easy to use, stable, and common tools that can enable members of the community to easily stand up services to publish local content. Fortunately, blog engines ( e.g. WordPress, MovableType), CMS (Drupal) and Wikis have all become ubiquitous, stable, and very easy to use for non-experts to create community sites.
Second, there is the need for syndication. Building a great site isn't entirely useful if no one can find it. Blogs in general were greatly enhanced by syndicating their content through aggregators, search engines, and ping services. This made it easy for readers to find and follow blogs.
The same is true for localized content, but with a geographic slant. Community sites need to 'tag', or markup their content about the region or site it is discussing. Then aggregators and engines can easily provide tools for users to find, for example "All the news and posts in my city".
To name just a few sites starting to do this: EveryBlock, PlaceBlogger, Outside.in, YourStreet, Mapufacture, Google Local, and even public media sites like KQED - to name a few.
Thanks very much for flagging up this Ofcom document - it's of great interest as I run a site - www.london-se1.co.uk - which fulfils exactly the sort of role you describe.
At the risk of coming over a little rational-choice-ish, I think there is a serious issue of incentives here.
As Clay Shirky's very good new book explains very well, most of the significant new organisational models that are emerging thanks to the internet are not-for-profit (including blogging). The question must always arise - why would you want to do this? He goes on to look at how voluntary collaboration online requires some sort of 'plausible promise' of what might result from it.
What is usually required for a community website to work is either a single individual willing to dedicate their evenings to keeping the thing going, or some shared grievance that unites neighbours, often Nimbyism (go to Stoke Newington: it's full of vibrant community activism oriented around keeping the place exclusively organic and middle class).
Community websites will work in situations where there is already the requisite social infrastructure to make them work (commitment, shared identity, shared grievance). But they won't generate these things in the first place.
The exception would be if mysociety or someone were to create a piece of social software that didn't depend on pre-existing social norms, but could exist to unearth shared goals from a position external to the community itself (rather as marriage counsellors do). However, shared opposition to something (local council, newcomers, change) would still be the most likely source of shared identity.
Neglected to mention the other notable source of collective local goals: children.
Websites which helped parents cooperate re safety, childcare, stress-relief, adult socialising with children present, are a good basis for other types of sociability. Anyway, I am probably only stealing ideas from http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/
@ andrew & will - as you say, many of the tools are there (though not perhaps in a form that best promotes community cohesion / shared news), what's normally missing is motivation. And in particular, sustainable motivation (i.e. flock to a cause then disappear). But isn't part of the answer to that in providing shared information? What I mean by that is, if a local newspaper - for example - built a website with masses of data about local hospitals; created a bunch of software that allowed people to find out useful stuff from the data; and then picked out a few stories as initial headlines (and examples of how to use the data) - wouldn't this be both immensely useful and act as a magnet for discussions about local healthcare?
What's more important is that *first* the newspaper expose the data in standard formats. This addresses that "show up & then disappear" , since at least whatever was created or shared can still remain "in the wild".
But then yes - while I don't think the newspaper should necessarily be *building* tools they should be pulling tools together to help in this. And also encourage others to come and play in the sandbox they've built (by aggregating in external stories, data, etc.)
Martin - yes, it would be worth a go, I agree. The question is how much interest people have in data or, for that matter, in good news stories about public services and local issues.
But putting that to one side, there is another issue: just because a service relates to local issues, I don't see why it necessarily has to be delivered locally. There are a large number of websites - see Steven Johnson's new project, http://outside.in/ - which use geodata to help people discover more about their local community. Is a locally run service going to be able to do anything beyond this?
Will - the big problem with some of the aggregators like Outside.in is that they are just another silo. While they pull in and visualize *US* blogs, they don't share this information back out in any geospatial way.
Two points. Are communities local anymore? I live in London and sleep in Kent.
Second. There is no political or resource question that a 'local' community info resource would answer.
Most UK local govt spending is hypothecated. There's no local law-making. Refuse collection and planning decisions? Not enough to build a community on...
Which is why we'd offer you two points of entry - www.mylocalwriter.com/holburn and www.mylocalwriter.com/ashford. If we work on the basis that the Internet offers an all but insurmountable challenge to the way that we traditionally do our business, we need a fresh sheet of paper to start again. Mine invariably ends up with a load of scribbles on, but hopefully you get the idea...
http://outwithabang.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/the-art-of-elegant-organisation-or-the-scribblings-of-a-loon/
@ adrian - agree that amount people move (me included) coupled with boundary-less web alters our perspective on what local means. But still think it's relevant to people to know what's happening with their local schools, whether their local hospital is about to be closed (ours is) and why they've stuck that daft double roundabout at the end of the road
The BBC is planning links with local sites (which may not be there) and I wonder here http://tinyurl.com/3t8dvc whether it is idealistic to think they might try some co-design, or at least talk to others in the field.
As someone who has been brainstorming this concept for many months, I can tell you that I have come to the conclusion that the problem with local sites is that everyone is trying to impose an "overall world-wide" type solution.
Of course, local means local, different solutions for different places. If one is looking for an overall solution, they won't find it.
My town is so untypical, it's typical. A small beachtown in Costa Rica, there is no place like it on the planet! It has its own strenghts and weaknesses, and definitely unique.
I think the answer your looking for is presenting each local town in a way that captures it own flavor, so locals can identify with it and tourist can fall in love with it.
See:
www.visitcascadia.com (not my site)
www.tamarindo-directory.com (my unfinished site)
So different, but each captures the nature of the town.
I think the future of web sites belongs to those who can mass produce custom web sites!!! And somehow provide economical incentives to locals to keep them going.
Hey guys. I find all this very interesting. I'm actually an owner of a true local community site. I started mid July and so far have 950 visits with an avg of 5.60 pageviews per visit. I do interviews and post event listings. Also users can submit content too. You can check it out at http://www.dicksoncommunity.com.
One thing I've noticed is some of the mention sites, really aren't local sites. They are broad sites categorizing content by city. I hope there is more to local community websites than that.
The reason I'm posting is hoping you all have some more insight about local community sites and give me a few pointers.
There are many companies out there trying to fulfill this empty void. The most successful resource to date, has been blogs, like your own, that speak for the local community. We are launching a site soon, called TownSync, that will be a way for members of a local community to interact with one another. We hope to get feedback from people, like yourself, interested in the local internet.
Good post.
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