Covering the General Election from a hyperlocal perspective - #TAL10session

[william perrin]

Most folk who run local sites aren't much interested in taking sides
in party politics. If you did it would change the nature of the site
quite a bit.

In Kings Cross I take the line that there are loads of places you can
discuss party politics on the web my site isn't one of them. I love
providing information for people to take part in local civic campaigns
and get stuff done locally. A planning dispute is rarely a partisan
thing. But it feels i would be leaving a huge gap if i didn't provide
hyperlocal information to help people decide on candidates' positions-
ie what does voting for fred or val mean for our tiny area. So i have
asked candidates to give me 500 words or a short video.
http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com/2010/04/election2010.html

Philip John of Lichfield Blog is interested in aggregating hyperlocal
general election posts

So we shall run a session on this if peoepl are interested - let us
know

[Louise Bolotin]

Am interested in a session on this. We haven't launched Inside the M60 officially yet but my business partner Nigel Barlow was discussing this very topic at Manchester's Social Media Cafe last Tuesday. We are officially neutral as far as site politics goes, but we will be covering the elections and interviewing as many local and national candidates as possible.

Louise

[Richard]

I take the view that, although there are other places on the web where
local politics is discussed, rarely do local candidates have to
undergo the scrutiny of a proper interview. I think doing interviews
with local candidates at election time, and with local politicians at
other times, is a real public service that hyperlocal sites can
provide. Although MPs and Councillors are often quoted in local
newspaper articles, and (usually ghostwritten) columns by MPs are
commonplace, this information often comes from press releases and
such. There's no substitute for a real interview, especially as the
flexibility of hyperlocal means it's easy to put the audio of the full
interview on the site, in a way that local newspapers just wouldn't.

During this election on www.saddleworthnews.com, I'm going to be
interviewing all the candidates for the three closest Westminster
constituencies, as well as all the candidates for the three council
wards in Saddleworth. I did the first one today, just about 25 or so
to go! It's going to be fun though.

On 8 Apr, 17:58, Louise Bolotin <louisebolo...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am interested in a session on this. We haven't launched Inside the M60
> officially yet but my business partner Nigel Barlow was discussing this very
> topic at Manchester's Social Media Cafe last Tuesday. We are officially
> neutral as far as site politics goes, but we will be covering the elections
> and interviewing as many local and national candidates as possible.
>
> Louise
>

[Hugh Flouch]

I completely agree. At www.harringayonline.com we're focussing on the
local elections since it's local politics that gets passed over. We're
building up the best possible profiles we can of people, posting all
election bumph and we're doing short video interviews with all
candidates. We're aiming to have a realworld-cum-virtual hustings too.
We cover all or part of three wards so that gives us quite a number of
candidates who are showing varying degrees of interest in
participating. Very interested to hear how other folk are handling
things and sharing experiences / approaches.

[Louise Bolotin]

We're not covering all of Manchester unless we get some citizen journalists volunteering coverage in other wards/constituencies - our core coverage will be on our two patches. Yes we'll be focusing on the locals as that's the grassroots stuff for local voters but we're keen to cover the nationals too because some interesting candidates are coming forward already - we've got a 19-year-old Pirate Party PPC standing against Gerald Kaufman (nearly 80) in Manchester Gorton, for example, and we're keen to see if he can pull together a credible manifesto  that covers health, economy, crime, etc as well as the digital issues that preoccupy his party. Like Saddleworth News, we'll be publishing a lot of audio and video interviews of candidates. I think this is going to be really exciting and an opportunity to cover things in a way that no paper, not even a local one, will touch...

Louise

[Alastair Tibbitt]

In Scotland, there ain't no local elections to cover, and Greener Leith
is a charity, so we have to be careful to maintain balance. Also our
patch straddles the boundaries of two constituencies which means there's
loads of PPC's to cover... However, there is a role for Hyperlocal, and
it's interesting to hear how others are tackling it - especially as both
of our local constituencies are two, if not three way marginals. We're
doing our best to signpost people to local hustings, and we may yet
invite all the various PPC's to write guest posts on their take on local
environmental issues.

Al

Louise Bolotin wrote:
> We're not covering all of Manchester unless we get some citizen
> journalists volunteering coverage in other wards/constituencies - our
> core coverage will be on our two patches. Yes we'll be focusing on the
> locals as that's the grassroots stuff for local voters but we're keen
> to cover the nationals too because some interesting candidates are
> coming forward already - we've got a 19-year-old Pirate Party PPC
> standing against Gerald Kaufman (nearly 80) in Manchester Gorton, for
> example, and we're keen to see if he can pull together a credible
> manifesto that covers health, economy, crime, etc as well as the
> digital issues that preoccupy his party. Like Saddleworth News, we'll
> be publishing a lot of audio and video interviews of candidates. I
> think this is going to be really exciting and an opportunity to cover
> things in a way that no paper, not even a local one, will touch...
>
> Louise
>
>
>
> On 8 April 2010 18:21, Hugh Flouch <hju...@googlemail.com

> <mailto:hju...@googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
> I completely agree. At www.harringayonline.com

> <http://www.harringayonline.com> we're focussing on the

[Ed Walker]

Definitely interested in this. Over on Blog Preston we've been getting
our election coverage started - but one of the difficulties we're
finding is getting candidates to recognise us. Getting a lack of
response/interest in engaging.

Would be excellent to see hyperlocal's covering their patch though for
the election.

On 8 Apr, 15:36, william perrin <williamjper...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Most folk who run local sites aren't much interested in taking sides
> in party politics.  If you did it would change the nature of the site
> quite a bit.
>
> In Kings Cross I take the line that there are loads of places you can
> discuss party politics on the web my site isn't one of them. I love
> providing information for people to take part in local civic campaigns
> and get stuff done locally.   A planning dispute is rarely a partisan
> thing.  But it feels i would be leaving a huge gap if i didn't provide
> hyperlocal information to help people decide on candidates' positions-
> ie what does voting for fred or val mean for our tiny area.  So i have

> asked candidates to give me 500 words or a short video.http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com/2010/04/election2010.html

[NigelBarlow]

To me the coverage of the election at a local level and scrutiny of
local polititians is one of the main drivers behind hyperlocal sites.

As for objectivity,it distinguishes the "professional" journalist from
the ranter and it is important that hyperlocal sites maintain a non
partisan for credibility purposes.
However we are all subjective beings and sometimes it can be difficult
to maintain a middle of the road stance.

On 8 Apr, 15:36, william perrin <williamjper...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Most folk who run local sites aren't much interested in taking sides
> in party politics.  If you did it would change the nature of the site
> quite a bit.
>
> In Kings Cross I take the line that there are loads of places you can
> discuss party politics on the web my site isn't one of them. I love
> providing information for people to take part in local civic campaigns
> and get stuff done locally.   A planning dispute is rarely a partisan
> thing.  But it feels i would be leaving a huge gap if i didn't provide
> hyperlocal information to help people decide on candidates' positions-
> ie what does voting for fred or val mean for our tiny area.  So i have

> asked candidates to give me 500 words or a short video.http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com/2010/04/election2010.html

[william perrin]

you helpfully tease out two differnet things here - objectivity and
neutrality

i try not to be objective in kings cross about the area - we have to
stick up for and be partisan about that. but it doens' mean we rant
about it. some planning issues say where there isn't a clear right or
wrong we stay neutral. and we generally stay out of or neutral in
party politics because it is so dull.

[Mark a.k.a. @cybrum a.k.a. Bearwood hyperlocal]

Looking forward to this session. Too big/important a subject to
ignore, but needs to be fair/balanced/unpartisan/equal.