Glasgow’s Evening Times has launched 24 community websites. Readers can upload news , pictures, notices and events. They have listings for schools, doctors and museums. Few people have posted comments yet, but the sites look promising. They are clean and very interactive.
Community websites can profit from surburan news. For example, bollards have been built at my local shopping centre. A slab pavement has been tarmacked and arrows painted on the car park floor. The Nottingham Evening Post will never cover this, but most people living in the area are vaguely interested in it because it affects them. There’s a huge gap in the market for this kind of banal surburan news.
Cornwall and Devon Media have made a wiki which can be editied by readers. It is similar idea to the Evening Times’ community sites. Both prove that community and citizen journalism can work alongside the big stories and scandals in the main paper. If I was an editor or owner I’d be snapping up these community patches as fast as possible.
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