Philip John

Category: Hyperlocal

  • Defamation – Case Law: Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd

    Held, dismissing the appeal, that since it was of the highest public importance that a democratically elected governmental body should be open to uninhibited public criticism, and since the threat of civil actions for defamation would place an undesirable fetter on the freedom to express such criticism, it would be contrary to the public interest…

  • Hyperlocal: Give me your ideas, I’ll (try and) make it happen.

    Some of you may be aware that I’ve begun writing a WordPress plugin using OpenlyLocal. It’s not the only thing I’m working on though, and I have lots of ideas. However, I know that there’s plenty of hyperlocals out there that probably have their own ideas of what would make their life easier, or just…

  • Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 3: Money, money, money!

    Parts 2 and 3 of this series covered legal issues and journalism. Now I’m going to cover that big elephant in the room: money. Much (most, all?) of the hyperlocal efforts at the moment are voluntary, passion-driven projects. Many I’m sure cost only time; it’s easy enough to run a site on WordPress.com for free…

  • Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 2: Journalism

    While the conversation continues around legal issues, burning issue number two in my mind is the quality of hyperlocal content. I’m very fortunate that at the helm of The Lichfield Blog is former journalist and current journalism lecturer, Ross Hawkes. I’ve learnt a lot from Ross, mainly that as hyperlocal looks to play a part…

  • Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 1: Legal issues

    More and more as things progress with The Lichfield Blog it’s becoming apparent to me that hyperlocal has a real part to play in the changing local media landscape. So it’s time to get serious and look at what we need to do if we’re to make a serious contribution to local media. There are…

  • Tools for hyperlocals: OpenlyLocal WordPress plugin

    I’m starting to develop a range of tools for hyperlocal sites, taking advantage of the extensibility of blogging platform, WordPress. My first effort is using the fantastic OpenlyLocal site and all the data provided in raw XML. So far, I’ve built the bare bones of the plugin, an admin page to select the local authority…

  • Why I don’t think journalists need business skills

    There’s tons of talk around hyperlocal and local media at the moment and some of it is about the kind of skills journalists need*. Not being a journalist, I’m looking at it from a business perspective. We have a good system with The Lichfield Blog. Ross is the journalist, that’s what he does – he…

  • £72.50/mth ain’t bad for The Lichfield Blog

    What started as ‘suck it and see’ exercise is now generating over £70 in ad revenue each month for The Lichfield Blog. With 7 out of 8 ad spots now taken up on the blog I’m wondering whether there is some money to be made here… We’ve made very little effort to actually tell people…