I’ve got eight students in my Journalism course. They seem receptive to the idea that we can cover Longmont better than any other news source. On Monday, they return with their first story ideas. We spent today examining some hyperlocal sites out there that we might model ours after. If we create our own, that is. At first, I didn’t want to create a website — I wanted to use someone else’s. But then I started fiddling around with some tools and realized how easy it can be.
Of course, there are advantages to participating in larger community projects. Could we submit original work to our site and to another one, though? Could we still participate in sharing news with others in other venues? Would there be copyright problems? Does being a school change the rules at all?
Just thinking my way into the weekend. If you know the answers, or have hunches, feel free to share them.
First Day of (Hyperlocal) Journalism
3 thoughts on “First Day of (Hyperlocal) Journalism”
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Yeah, I never got the “yourhub” idea. Use a blog.
Hello, Bud, this is Lisa Williams from H2otown.info. I really love watching sites like Yourhub.com and Wikinews, but I still chose to have my own weblog.
I chose Drupal as the underlying tool, because it allows me to configure it so that everybody who signs up for an account gets a blog of their own. When they post to their blog, I can choose to promote that post to the front page (or not). Basically, it has built-in editorial workflow and is designed for sites with many content creators. I use WordPress for my personal weblog and I like it a lot. I hear they are coming out with a multiuser version someday, that will be pretty cool.
So that I wouldn’t spend all of my time fiddling around with the backend database, I chose a hosted Drupal provider called Bryght.net. They’re also behind Urbanvancouver.org and the fabulous Blufftontoday.com.
I run a mail list for people interested in local news weblogs to trade tips You can sign up here: Localnewsapalooza. Remember to introduce yourself when you sign up!
Oops, no embedded URLs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/localnewsapalooza/