InJersey

Our intrepid editors — and early adopters — here at InJersey have been using the location-based game FourSquare more and more lately. We have a heated battle in Cherry Hill, NJ, between site editor Julia Hays and myself over who will retain the crown of Mayor of the Courier-Post.

Today we discussed new ways to use FourSquare to share local news with residents when they check into neighborhood businesses and restaurants. And almost the minute we got off the phone talking about it, lo and behold, InJersey tips started showing up at shops all around Collingswood.

Check out Julia’s Collingswood InJersey FourSquare Page.

If you like or work in one of the towns with an InJersey site, be on the lookout for tips from your local site editor. We’ll also post links to our InJersey FourSquare accounts as we get them set up.

Incidentally, props to the Wall Street Journal for paving the way for this type of news sharing with their FourSquare page, and many thanks to Jodi Gersh at Gannett/ContentOne for giving us the spark of the idea.

I was recently interviewed by Shields Bialasik, who runs LocalsGuide (devoted to Ashland, Oregon). We talked about all things hyperlocal, including our efforts here on InJersey, some of our competitors, and the future of niche websites like these. I don’t quite know if I agree with Shield’s identifying me as a “hyperlocal expert” — like everyone else working in this space — I still have far more to learn than I do to teach, but it was an interesting conversation.

Read the full interview over on Hyperlocal101.com.

A visitor to InJersey, Jim Parker, just let me know about a video of my presentation at WordCamp NYC that’s up on the web. In it, I recap what we’re trying to do with hyperlocal jounalism on InJersey, as well as the software we’re using here — WordPress and BuddyPress. Many thanks to Jim for the head’s up, as well as the kind soul who shot this. Enjoy!

Below is a video of a panel I hosted a few weeks back at an event at CUNY, hosted by Jeff Jarvis, about hyperlocal websites. The title of the session was “Setting up Shop,” and since so many of these sites are blog-based, I invited Jane Wells of WordPress/Autoamattic, David Jacobs of TypePad/Six Apart, Jason Morrow of Blogger/Google, and Jeremy Zilar of the NY Times to join me on stage.

Setting Up Shop: Tools, Technology & Tips from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.

We’ve been hitting the interview and conference circuit lately to talk about what we’re trying to build here on InJersey.

In addition to speaking at several events (from WordCamp to the Citizens Jouranlist Conference to HyperCamp), I also gave an interview to WPMU.org — which covers WordPress MU, the software that powers this site — about how we’re trying steer the hyperlocal conversation here.

Check out the full Q&A here.

Today I spoke at WordCamp NYC about what we’re building out here on InJersey. WordPress is the software that makes InJersey possible, and my talk focused on how we use it here, as well as how we employ BuddyPress to help build up and communicate with our network of community bloggers.

It was a great session — despite being held at 5pm, very near to the end of the day, when I imagine most attendants were more interested in getting their drink on than in learning about hyperlocal journalism. Still, I’m still flattered that we had such great attendance and such engaging questions. Thanks to everyone who turned out, and please, don’t be shy about shooting me any and all questions about how we use WordPress.

Here are the slides from my talk:

One of the things that Day 1 of WordCamp has inspired me to do is upgrade BuddyPress to the latest version. Please excuse any wonky behavior while I set out to do this in the next day.

It’s been a week of hyperlocal brainstorming for me at both the New Media Women Entrepreneurs Summit in DC and the Hypercamp conference in New York yesterday. Luckily, editors and practitioners from around the country agreed on a few best practices for media partnerships and monetization for hyperlocals:

Media Partnerships

Some ambitious hyperlocal blogs are earning extra money and broadening their audience by syndicating their content in other publications. For hyperlocals with reporters on the ground, the ability to scoop major media outlets can be profitable: newspapers and broadcast networks are sometimes willing to pay for breaking news or investigative work that they don’t have the resources to cover.

Other blogs form blog networks, where they actually partner with niche blogs in their same area. As Jarvis said at Hypercamp, “Do what you do best, and link to the rest.” Under this philosophy, a hyperlocal editor would spend her time focusing on local news, but might partner with an existent sports blog in the area, or a blog that focuses on state-level politics. By sharing content and information the blogs can generate more content and reach wider audience.

Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday, I got to attend the New Media Women Entrepreneurs Summit in Washington, DC, where a group of 13 hyperlocal editors gave me some great ideas for recruiting and training citizen journalists, partnering with other media organizations and non-profits, and monetizing in innovative ways. In this post, I’ll discuss what I learned about recruiting help on the ground.

Finding Help: One of the biggest challenges all of the hyperlocals agreed on was finding help on the ground to report all the news, take all the pictures for slideshows, and create a community of voices and perspectives–especially when those helpers are volunteers.

Some of the tips they found useful, which I can’t wait to try, were:

* Tapping into the journalism job market: There are a lot of out-of-work journos right now, and by using sites like journalismjobs.com, mediabistro.com, etc., editors might be able to find freelancers with solid skills who are looking to keep their portfolios fresh & learn new media. Offer to help them learn new media in exchange for stories; don’t be afraid to barter, beg, and cajole.

Read the rest of this entry →

November is shaping up to have a slew of big hyperlocal events. Here are the biggies on our list:

• Nov. 9 – New Media Women Entrepreneurs, Washington D.C.: A day-long gathering of blockbuster speakers, all of them women, and almost all of them working on hyperlocal news sites. Although I may not be able to make it to D.C. for the event, I’d particularly love to hear Debbie Galant, of Baristanet.com, and Lisa Williams, of Placeblogger.com.

• Nov. 11 – Hypercamp, NYC: This is one I absolutely won’t miss. I’ve been working with Jeff Jarvis and his team at CUNY (”New Business Models for News”) to set up a day-long event devoted to how to improve the quality of hyperlocal news sites, and also how to monetize them once they’re built. Should be an amazing lineup of speakers, including Jarvis himself.

• Nov. 14-15 – WordCamp NYC: While not technically hyperlocal, since InJersey is all built on WordPress MU and BuddyPress, as are most of the blog-based hyperlocal sites out there, this is going to be a very important event for me. It’s arguably the biggest and best WordCamp event outside of the San Fran one.

• Nov. 18 – Citizen Journalism Conference, Monmouth U, West Long Branch, NJ: I’m scheduled to speak at this free half-day event being put on by the Citizens Campaign, a non-profit aiming to help promote citizen journalism and civic engagement. My panel’s discussion: “The New Media Climate: How the internet is transforming journalism and its impact on local government & politics.”

Should be a wild couple weeks. If you’re planning to go to any of these as well, drop us a note on the InJersey wall and let us know.