MA Online Journalism: Law for bloggers a... Warning: this is a long post, get yourself a cuppa before you start…. Last week I popped along to the Coffee Lounge in Brum for one of Paul Bradshaw’s open MA Online Journalism sessions. This one was about the law & blogging, something I obviously need to be aware of with The Lichfield...

Defamation – Case Law: Derbyshire ... 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,...

Hyperlocal: Give me your ideas, I’... 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...

Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 3... 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...

My (disappointing) correspondence with M... With today’s announcement of the Digital Economy Bill containing the dreaded three strikes policy I thought I’d share my disappointing correspondence with Michael Cashman MEP. I first wrote to him with; Dear Michael Cashman, I’m biased as my career is based entirely on the web, but...

Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 2... 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...

Great for @4iP! “The remit of Chan... The remit of Channel 4 will also be updated so that it includes the provision of public service content on all media platforms, including the web via guardian.co.uk This was posted via web from Philip’s posterous

Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 1... 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...

I probably would pay for individual arti... Pledging to “rewrite the economics of newspapers”, Harding said the Times would charge for 24-hour access to that day’s edition of the paper alongside a subscription model, but dismissed the idea of micro-payments for individual articles. via guardian.co.uk I don’t like the idea...

Tools for hyperlocals: OpenlyLocal Wordp... 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...