“Your readers are citizens” was one of great comments by John Nichols of the Capital Times at last week’s Journalism That Matters: New Pamphleteers/New Reporters conference in Minneapolis. The theme of the conference was “A Passion for Place,” so naturally we had to attend. Placeblogging is something that outside.in not only celebrates but is focused on supporting. We gave a demo of Radar and our upcoming toolkit for bloggers, and talked with participants about how we can better support placebloggers of all sizes. The attendees ran the gamut from hyperlocal bloggers, to not-for-profit organizations like the j-lab and more established companies like YouTube and The Christian Science Monitor. The placeblogs came from all over; from more rural areas like the Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin, and medium-city Milwaukee which was well represented by Urban Milwaukee and The Riverwest Neigborhood Network. Amazing efforts like Pegasus News in Dallas, NewWest, and BarristaNet (one of the earliest placeblogs dating back to 2004) all joined the conversation. The projects and attendees were an amazing group, so instead of going wild naming them all, I’ll simply link to the conference attendee list.
One of the themes of the conference was the way placeblogs not only break and comment on hyperlocal news but how they are community hubs that pull together residents on issues. They create dialog with local government and effect policy changes in their neighborhood. How do you measure this influence in addition to page views? A hard nut to crack. There was an ongoing dialog about tools and platforms. There was a Seattle start-up which gave a demo of what could be a placeblog specific version of the up-to-now more general and popular blogging platforms (like Blogger and WordPress). It is one of several like this that are under development. The more the merrier, of course, especially if they can send geotagged content directly to outside.in. There was a lot of talk about business models and how to sustain efforts. One constant at the conference was that all of the projects need better distribution, tools, and a revenue model, which makes outside.in perfectly positioned to help these efforts and solve some of the issues. Lastly, it was great to talk with YouTube as their new reporter channel will hopefully have a large hyperlocal slant.
As the conference ended there was talk of creating a space to continue the dialog and start a real resource for hyperlocal bloggers; a place to share advice, tools, and stories. When outside.in launches tools later in the summer for placebloggers of all sizes, we will become home to some of this. Right now an interesting place to start is the community that was launched for the conference. Feel free to explore and join even if you didn’t attend the conference.
