Category Archives: Citizen Journalism

Connecting with constituents using social media #BTV #VT

Posted on Sunday, July 3, 2011 by • 5 comments

Tyler Machado covered the local Social Media Day for Seven Days recently.  Congratulations to the many professional communicators recognized for their use of social media.  In part…

The day’s schedule included a fun panel discussion about how politicians use social media, with two politico Tweeters Burlington City Councilor Ed Adrian and State Rep./possible-mayoral-hopeful Jason Lorber and blogger-turned-State Senator Philip Baruth. Although Adrian’s a frequent Twitter user he’s been known to spar with fellow Tweeting city councilor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak at the same time they’re presumably debating in real life at council meetings he said that the social network that he finds most useful to connect with his constituents is actually neighborhood email service Front Porch Forum.

Councilor Adrian is not alone.  About 400 local public officials across 60 Vermont towns use FPF to connect with their constituents.  Unlike some social media, FPF reaches far beyond the usual suspects.  E.g., more than half of Burlington households participate in their FPF neighborhood forums, so elected leaders can reach a broad swath of the tax payers.

UPDATE:  Terri Hallenbeck weighed in too on her vt.Buzz blog.

Local Online News in #VT

Posted on Monday, June 13, 2011 by • No comments yet

Champlain College Publishing Initiative ran an interesting piece about local online news recently.  Writer Melinda Grey ends with…

As a foretaste of things to come, check out this remarkable link. It’s an item that was recently posted on our Front Porch Forum (speaking of hyperlocal) after yet another day of heavy rain and flooding in Burlington.

Is this the future of local news? And does this suggest that Front Porch Forum may be one model for the hyperlocal news medium of the future?

Her colleague Tim Brookes added…

… events have shown how prophetic Melinda’s observations were. One of the photos of the Booth Street flood we recommended (originally posted as a link on Front Porch Forum) showed up on the front cover of this week’s Seven Days.

This raises some fascinating questions. If a newsweekly picks up a photo from Front Porch Forum, doesn’t that identify the original item as being news, and thus, by implication, identify Front Porch Forum as a hyperlocal online news entity, at least in part? Does this imply that the world is full of sources of what might be called “raw” news, in the sense that reality TV uses security camera feeds as raw footage? It also suggests that this kind of reader-driven content is the print medium’s equivalent of “open source” material–but only up to a point…

Indeed, this kind of thing happens with Front Porch Forum nearly every week. A local citizen posts something on FPF to share with nearby neighbors and then one or more traditional media outlets pick it up and builds a story. We appreciate when the news outlets give proper attribution so their audience knows where they got the lead… but that occurs less than half the time.

As a 2010 Knight News Challenge award winner, FPF is increasingly seen as a new part of the local news and community conversation ecosystem… a quickly evolving environment.

Front Porch Forum open to #VT expansion

Posted on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by • No comments yet

Several sponsors have stepped forward to bring Front Porch Forum to their Vermont communities.  These include a local chamber of commerce, a town, a college, a telecom, a family foundation, and a consortium of agencies and nonprofits.

WCAX asked me today if FPF was open to further expansion in Vermont, beyond our current 60 towns.  Short answer… yes!

If you’d like to see FPF come to your town, join our waitlist.  Additionally, if you’d like to help make it happen, contact us with ideas about funding sources and local boosters.

Columbia Journalism Review covers 2 #VT websites

Posted on Monday, March 28, 2011 by • No comments yet

VTDigger.org and Front Porch Forum were written up by the Columbia Journalism Review recently.  Good stuff.  Congratulations to VTDigger.  The piece starts…

As the name suggests, VTDigger aims to provide deep coverage of local issues in the Green Mountain State. “I wanted to follow stories in-depth,” explains Anne Galloway, the publication’s editor-in-chief. “Not all of our stories are investigative; but we want them all to go deep.”…

And about FPF…

Vermont-based social networking site Front Porch Forum has earned an intense regional following, partly thanks to its success as a venue for hyperlocal citizen journalism…

I believe FPF and VTDigger will be on a panel together May 12, 2011 at the annual VBSR spring conference.  Come join the discussion with us.

EveryBlock Going Social

Posted on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by • 1 comment

Congratulations to fellow Knight News Challenge winner EveryBlock on the rollout today of their impressively revamped web service.  Per Mashable…

EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news site acquired by msnbc.com in August 2009, unveiled a new version Monday designed to encourage conversation and collaboration among neighbors.

“We’re shifting from a one-way newsfeed to more of a community-empowered website,” says EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty. “Instead of going to the site to passively consume information, we’re going to offer a platform for posting messages to your neighbors, to discover who lives near you.”

In addition to the neighborhood-specific news, business reviews, crime reports and real estate listings the site delivered previously, a slew of new features encourages users to share and discuss local news, meet one another and coordinate neighborhood activities. Users will be able to create profiles, post about events and other topics of interest, as well as find neighbors who “follow” the same places to connect with those with similar tastes. (Soon, Holovaty says, the site hopes to integrate Foursquare’s API, but for now it will show neighbors who follow the same places on EveryBlock.)

Adrian and his team are doing great work.  He goes on to say…

“The web doesn’t yet offer an easy and effective way for people to post messages to their neighbors,” Holovaty explains. “Other social media tools are focused on people you already know — professional colleagues, friends, family. But how many people become Facebook friends with their neighbors?” he asks.

Front Porch Forum plays this role in our many Vermont pilot communities, and various blogs and e-lists do the same in hundreds of various neighborhoods across North America.  The first proof of social media, of course, is adoption… do people use it?  We’ll have to wait and see how EveryBlock fares on that front.  The second proof — can they make it pay? — well, I imagine Everyblock has more breathing room with deep-pocketed MSNBC.com holding the purse strings.

UPDATE: This bit from the Nieman Journalism Lab includes several more write ups about EveryBlock’s news.  The interview on Poynter is especially informative…

Holovaty answered a lot of questions about the redesign in a Poynter chat, saying that the site’s mission has changed from making people informed about their area as an end in itself to facilitating communication between neighbors in order to improve their communities. GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram applauded the shift in thinking, arguing that the main value in local news sites is in the people they connect, not in the data they collect. At 10,000 Words, Jessica Roy noted that the change was a signal that hyperlocal sites should focus not just on the online realm, but on fostering offline connections as well.

AOL acquires Outside.in for $10 million

Posted on Friday, March 4, 2011 by • No comments yet

From Lost Remote today…

AOL is acquiring the hyperlocal blog aggregator Outside.in for $10 million, reports TechCrunch. That’s $4.4 million less than Outside.in’s total funding to date. As you might imagine, AOL plans to integrate Outside.in’s aggregation in Patch, its network of hyperlocal news sites.

The acquisition means that Patch can beef up its coverage through aggregation, which conceivably would include links to competing hyperlocal newspapers and blogs. Or similarly, Patch can reduce its original coverage by relying more on aggregation. Either way, today’s news illustrates that AOL is still invested in Patch’s success.

UPDATE: Good commentary going on about this acquisition and broader themes… here, here and elsewhere.  A concise analysis was offered in this tweet about mega-chains of hyperlocal sites…

because they have no soul — RT @marshallk: why haven’t hyperlocal news services like Outside.in, Everyblock or Fwix won over the public? mathewi

UPDATE 2: Mathew Ingram has a good take on all this on GigaOm.

Year-end look at hyperlocal big boys

Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 by • No comments yet

Peter Krasilovsky offers a year-end look ahead at the WalMart approach to hyperlocal news…

… there is a rap out there that hyperlocal doesn’t scale and these [Patch and Fwix] are toys.  Is it still the case?

Patch now has a local presence in 600 communities, with editorial and sales “pods” of 12 each Some of being run by longtime newspaper industry leaders. Last Sunday, LA Times media columnist James Rainey wrote that Patch is revitalizing local journalism and asserted that may have become THE place for journalists to go (aside from wages of $35k-$50k, or half the salary that big city journalists might have gotten from the big metro, if they were hiring).

Patch President Warren Webster… didn’t dispute my characterization of Patch as an experiment that wants to quickly get a national footprint to attract national, regional and local advertisers; create a business directory that goes beyond the Yellow Pages; and scale editorial and sales resources.

On a macro-level, local ad revenues typically split 50/50 between targeted national and local. For Webster (and cohorts), the bet is that Patch is poised to do both. They’ve publicly said they were spending $50 million to ramp it up in 2010…

Peter offers this list of horses in the race, grouped in an interesting way…

National/regional “hyperlocal” news sites

Local editorial and sales
Patch
Main Street Connect
Hello Metro
TBD.org

Geographic aggregation for media partners
Topix
Outside.in
Fwix
Datasphere
Everyblock

Local event and news sites
AmericanTowns.com
Center’d
DiscoverOurTown

Aggregators also supported by unique user-generated content and pro/amateur content farms
Examiner.com
Associated Content
Demand Media
Helium
Merchant Circle

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Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more

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