Tuesday 29 September 2009

Spice Up Your Earning Prospects Online!

The potential for hyperlocal newsblogs to attract a highly defined audience creates plenty of opportunities for targetted marketing.

Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian that this may offer a good economic model for the future of journalism, but Phil Szomszor is cautious about how this translates across the Atlantic while media consumption habits are limited by technology, although he also thinks those who pioneer the techniques required to make a success online will have a headstart once it does become more viable from an economic perspective.

From my point-of-view the commercial prospects of blog-journalism are still somewhat distant, but I've already started attracting some direct interest from local companies who see value in a targetted audience.

I was recently approached offering a voucher for a free burrito (to be redeemed by September 30th, ie tommorrow) by Mission Mexican Grill to help promote a new food outlet they are opening in Reading's Oracle shopping centre.

It's obviously only a very small example, but worth mentioning nonetheless as it makes it clear that my blog is a platform which can offer opportunities worth exploiting, and by extension the possibilities for new media forms to carve a profitable niche in the market.

Friday 25 September 2009

Housekeeping and the dog which didn't bark in the night

Any readers of this blog may have noticed the slowdown in output on the main page recently. So it's worth giving you loyal few an insight into what's been going on.

Firstly I'll get my excuses in early by explaining that I've been a bit under the (surprisingly sunny) weather - not that that means I've been preferring to top up my tan rather than to neglect my keyboard!

Not in the slightest. No, I've recently discovered a range of blog resources which have uncovered an untapped treasure trove of local blogs. Previously I could only guess at the sheer scale of the online world in Berkshire and environs, but now I've got a handle on it the volume of information and opinion out there it has taken me aback somewhat.

I've suddenly discovered a hidden well of over 1,000 identifiably local blogs to this area, and the number is growing beyond my ability to count!

The prime difficulty in this is in finding an adequate method of collecting all the sources together in a single place.

Then a bigger challenge mounts its' head: how to keep track of everything in order to collate relevant information and then synthesise it into a narrative where each side of the story can be exposed.

So what I've had to do is to take a step back and look at the problem in a different way.

This page was a starting point, in that the action of writing these things down has helped me give order to my thoughts, as it has also given me space to separate them.

The task I've set myself has quickly expanded and it's clear that some major evolutionary-scale changes were required if I was to avoid losing control of it.

While this may not initially be apparent from the main entry path, the lack of activity there should be an indicator that something is up - a matter, not of what is happening, but more one of what should have happened but has not and therefore why not - just like the dog which didn't bark in the night.

So keep your eyes wide open... changes are afoot!

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Editorial policy and ownership machinations

I think it's worth mentioning this post.

Andrew Rawnsley has resigned from his position overseeing PoliticsHome.

Lord Ashcroft (yes, that one - the deputy chairman of the Conservative party and billionaire from Belize who is personally funding their marginal constituency campaign, while failing to declare his tax status and expose the legality of this) has bought a 57.5% stake in a new holding company owning PoliticsHome as part of his stated intention to use the site to create a new online newspaper with a specific 'centre-right' remit.

As Editor-in-Chief of the comment aggregator (and partial inspiration for my amateur local efforts at Reading List), Andrew Rawnsley was responsible for establishing the site's credibility and overseeing the consistency of non-partisanship throughout the content it provided.

It was precisely its' non-partisan nature which made PoliticsHome an invaluable resource and respected point for information gatherers such as myself. So I am particularly unhappy about this development.


Technical resources

But more worrying is what will happen with the data resources and information bank which the organisation's online polling activities was able to develop.

I was happy to regularly take part and provide my views in the PHI5000 surveys because I had confidence that they were not being interpreted through partisan spectacles. But this has changed at the stroke of a pen signing a cheque - I will reserve judgement on them until I receive that first email, so watch this space.


Rawnsley's raw deal?

Rawnsley must be feeling royally screwed over by the co-founder of the site Stephen Shakespeare, who lured him with idealistic noises about no ideological agenda, only to build the site off the back of Rawnsley's journalistic reputation before selling it from under his feet.

The timing of the announcement suggests Rawnsley had a slice of the pie to offload and in the process did pick up some loose change in exchange for getting his fingers burnt. It clearly adds to his CV and wins him bonus points from Conservative opponents, while also freeing up additional time to take on other projects (such as taking on a larger role at The Observer).


It also provides evidence to support the assumed case that e-reputations are becoming increasingly important and online authority increasingly valuable as the online media world proliferates - reinforcing the old truism that it is much easier to destroy than to create!

So let's just put the episode down as an illustrative example of how professional and corporate worlds often work against each other.

And in pointing this out let me use this matter as a means of providing reassurance that my struggle is to provide more balance, rather than less!

-

Update: It appears prominent left-wingers are pre-empting any shift in political balance by voluntarily resigning their positions in solidarity and distancing themselves from association with Ashcroft's organisation.

Additionally, Sunder Katwala asks about the motivation for the purchase.

LibDems Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Lynne Featherstone have also responded by resigning.

Sunday 20 September 2009

Compartmentalisation and Fresh Air

As I started to think about how these questions referred back to what I was doing it with Reading List it started to become apparent to me that lumping all the different types of postings I wanted to write onto one single blog was not the way to go.

With the way my RSS feed was starting to be picked up and syndicated by various other blogs, the result was that I was beginning to recieve criticism from a variety of different angles.

Firstly I recieved some feedback from a regular visitor that announcements of what was on my mind was interrupting the flow of news and general interest stories; secondly this was forcing me to maintain a high-wire act, balancing between objectivity and subjectivity, which was increasingly unsustainable as readers began trying to identify a political bias in my writing in an attempt to discredit my efforts. And then there were those readers who were noticably put off by my unhealthily inconsistent aggressive-defensive stance.

It is certainly an enlightening experience to enter a competitive realm and discover how new entrants are viewed with suspicion by those in dominant market positions - and it made me quickly wake up to the need to address the weaknesses in my approach.

In both the local media and political marketplaces I soon became treated like an uninvited guest who arrives late to spoil the established cosy party by stealing a slice of the cake. Some unlikely alliances were forged in an attempt to squeeze me out, but I've been reassured by the loyalty of those friends I've made online that I can take my place at the table - even though it requires me to sharpen my mind and my elbows to carve out my niche.

So this blog page is part of my response. Hopefully it will enable me to 'secularise' my identity from my blogging, prevent me from doing too many things at once and thereby help me improve the quality of my writing.

There's an image which keeps coming to the front of my mind about an old-fashioned compartment in a train - the kind you can see in black-and-white films when smoking was still permitted - all claustrophobic with stale air and no space to move or breathe freely.

It feels like I've just opened the window and let some fresh air in!

Earlier Editorials

First off I'll link to my earlier considered commentaries.

The Ususal Suspects

Isn't It Amazing...


Good For Readers, Good For Reading!

House Rules For Commenting

How Free Is Your Media?

Some New Additions

Commentary or Reportage?

Saturday 19 September 2009

Welcome to the Editor's Page!

As Reading List continues to grow it's become necessary to create a space where I can write a bit about what's going on behind the scenes, and this is it!

You'll soon start to see what I'm talking about!

Reading List