James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
Journalism
Thoughts from #JEEcamp 2010
A very enjoyable day spent at JEEcamp 2010 with many clever and interesting people from the world of web journalism. Plenty of blog posts, photos and links can be found via the #JEEcamp hashtag. My highlights of the day are summarised in 4 tweets:- Perfect end to #jeecamp presentations with insight into another local online [...]
The Power of the Placename
At the recent Local Business Summit in Amsterdam I spoke about my work at the BBC on location services and mapping and tried to make the point that, as far as our users/consumers are concerned, the place name is all-powerful when it comes to identifying location. Other means of identifying location (grid references, postcodes, lat/long [...]
The Nuneaton Guide – My new website
After moving from Birmingham to Nuneaton earlier this year I’ve decided to test out a new local website experiment, moving on from BirminghamB29 to launch The Nuneaton Guide. I work with local web content and location services for the BBC (although this website is entirely separate and in no way associated with the BBC) so [...]
Guardian Local due for 2010 launch
The Guardian have announced a move into the provision of local news on the web in 2010 with the launch of Guardian Local in three UK cities.Sarah Hartley, the Guardian local launch editor said: “While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I’ve been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local [...]
The future of local media is, erm, regional?!?
The Future of Local Media conference in Salford took place today, the same day that Ofcom released it’s response to a Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) consultation on delivering TV news in the nations and regions. Ofcom also released a research report on Local and Regional Media in the UK. Thus Stewart Purvis, [...]
Using maps on news websites
Paul Bradshaw posted some thoughts yesterday on the use of maps on news websites, a subject often discussed on this blog. Most recent ‘highlights’ are discussed such as MPs expenses, although Mapumental from MySociety is not listed, nor is my favourite longstanding example of a local news map, the London SE1 News Map. There is [...]
Microsoft to partner with local newspapers for MSN Local News Map
Microsoft, through their MSN Local portal, are hoping to provide local news on a map, in partnership with local newspapers across the UK. Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN, said: “We are hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and tag every piece of information to a map. Hyper-local news online has never been more [...]
Northcliffe Local People media briefing
Northcliffe explain the launch of Local People “a network of websites for people to get together and discuss the issues affecting their communities“.
Birmingham Local Blogs Wire
Following my recent post on Will Perrin’s Talk About Local initiative, Jon Bounds has pushed ahead and created a Birmingham Local Blogs Wire by feeding a selection of blogs about Birmingham through Yahoo! Pipes. You can read all about the thinking behind the Birmingham Blog Wire here. Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) and I spent many an [...]
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 [...]
4iP funds local community website project
Talk About Local is aiming to “empower 3,000 people directly in 150 places across nine English regions with a focus on the most disadvantaged areas.” by offering free advice, training materials and support to anyone who wants give their community a voice online. Run by Will Perrin, the project is starting up in the West [...]
MP Expenses Map
With all of the recent attention focused on UK Mp’s expenses it’s no wonder that a number of maps are appearing to help browse the data. One of my favourites is this one using MS Virtual Earth created by Shoothill.
Local (radio) websites from the BBC
I don’t normally blog about specific BBC projects or work that I’m involved in on the ‘day job‘, you can catch all of that information on the BBC Internet Blog. However, as my recent trips to Canada (photos pending) and Cornwall have left me feeling very out of touch with the online world then what [...]
Guardian allows users to geo-tag content with launch of new Open Platform tool
The Guardian has today launched Open Platform with the hope of freeing up their data and allowing users to build other tools and services using Guardian content. Of particular interest is the work on a crowd-sourced solution to geo-tagging. “Stamen and OpenStreetMap developed a service that they hope will encourage Guardian readers to “geo-tag” the [...]
BBC Trust rejects local video proposals
The BBC Trust confirmed today that it has refused permission for a planned BBC Local Video service after concluding its public value test (PVT) into the proposals. Diane Coyle, BBC Trustee and Chairman of the Strategic Approvals Committee, said: “The Trust is committed to improving regional and local services from the BBC for licence fee [...]
ByeBush
The idea is simple, as are all good ideas.At the moment President Elect Barak Obama takes the presidential oath and becomes President Obama we all do the following:- Take a photo (of anything around us at that moment) Upload it to the web Post a twitter with a link to the image and the tag [...]
UK Location Strategy is published
A new strategy to tackle problems from traffic management to flooding, improved policy formulation and decision making by using better geographical information, was launched by Baroness Andrews today in a report Place Matters: The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom. Full details, including a press release announcing the launch, on the Communities and Local Government [...]
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 [...]
Lessons to learn from the BNP map
Details of over 10,000 members of the UK British National Party appeared in the public domain after a former member supposedly leaked the list online. Links to the data were made highly visible on sites such as Digg.com. Then a Google map mash-up was created – zoom in to find the BNP member in your [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
