InJersey

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.

In honor of what’s coming to be know as iTablet week — or is it iSlate? — we wanted to make our own little offering to the Apple Gods. The InJersey iPhone app is simplified little interface you can use to browse through the latest updates on InJersey, or your town. It isn’t the first self-described “hyperlocal” app — I counted four others, not to mention related apps like SeeClickFix and Fwix — and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

You can’t yet publish using the app, though that’s something we’d like to build into it in the not-so-distant future. For now, though, you can download the WordPress 2 app and add your InJersey site of choice, and you’ll be able to publish on the go using that.

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.

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.

This last Tuesday I appeared on WordPress Weekly, an internet-based radio show, to talk about what we’re trying to do here on InJersey.com — and in general about the whole hyperlocal news trend.

It was a fun show, and I’m grateful to the host Jeff Chandler for featuring us (even if he did keep referring to me, erroneously, as Todd). Here’s a replay:

You can download the show as a podcast on iTunes here.

A hearty thank you to all the early adapters who have signed up to InJersey and begun posting. We sort of figured that it would take several weeks for people to catch on to the sites, and until then it would mostly be us newspaper reporters doing the lion’s share of the posting. Of course, as with just about everything on the Internet these days, the site has taken on a life of its own — in very exciting and welcome ways.

As you’ve probably noticed, we made it easy for anyone to register and post to InJersey and its town sites. Unlike many other hyperlocal news sites that have sprung up in recent years, we don’t exercise any kind of filter between you and the “publish” button.

That said, we want our sites to be the best user experience possible, and thus it’s important for you to be conscientious about how your posts look before you send them straight to our homepages. A few simple ground rules we’d like you to follow:

• If your post is more than 200 words, break it. You can see the word count on what you’re writing at the bottom of the editing window. Use this little icon to insert a “Read More” button in your post. That way, a lengthy post won’t end up completely taking over the front page of the site you’re posting to.
• Add “tags” to all your posts. The more tags you include, the more it helps goose your post’s visibility to Google and other search engines. Which in turn translates into more people reading your content.
• If you’re pasting from Microsoft Word, please be sure to use the “Paste from Word” button. This is important because Word often applies HTML formatting to text written in the application, which then gets carried over to the blog — often making your text look yucky. You’ll need to click on the rightmost “Kitchen Sink” button to see this option.

  

  To read more on how to use the “Past from Word” button, read this tutorial

• Include a Google map if your post refers to a specific location in town. All you need is the same amount of info you might use to look up the address on Google Maps, like this:
  

  Simply plug in a street address, town, and state, and you should be good. By default, the blog will you your post’s title for the map info; if you want a custom map maker, you can use an alternate title and description. Note: You must save your post once before adding a map location. Make sure to click “Save Draft” before putting in your map info.
  

• Use your real name. Any posts published under suspicious or clearly anonymous user names will be unpublished until you attach a real name to them.

Those are just some basics. If you happen to create an extra-long post missing a break, or accidentally embed a video that’s bleeding over into the site’s sidebar, we may go ahead and help you fix it. And we’ll continue to give advice and feedback about how to make your posts look as good as possible.

Thanks again for joining our site. And please, don’t be a stranger. Email me if you have any specific questions, suggestions or feedback about the site at all.

—Ted Mann