IT’S OUR 4th BIRTHDAY TODAY – on February 5th 2009 the article Our Hedon Adventure (which was also the name of the Blog at that time) was published and we were off blogging about the town.
Not many people read that first article – in fact more people will probably have a gander at it today than during the whole of 2009 – and it took the Blog a long time to acquire its first loyal readers.
The Hedon Blog has mainly been established through word-of-mouth. There has never been a budget for marketing what the Blog does – in fact there has never been a budget for anything at all!! So considering that, it really is amazing that over these four years we have generated nearly 350,000 page views and now regularly get anywhere from 150 – 400 people visiting the site everyday generating hundreds – and occasionally thousands – of page views.
In 2013 we hope that the Hedon Blog can finally become ‘mainstream’ in Hedon by adopting an idea we first proposed in 2011 The Hedon Local News Hub.
Today I announce the plan to set up a new Community/Citizen group that will aim to discover the answers to the following:
- What kind of ‘local news’ do local residents wish to receive on a regular basis?
- How would residents prefer to receive that news; i.e. through a Blog, Facebook, through a newsletter/newspaper, or other means?
- What platforms can we use to deliver that news most effectively (via laptops/computers, phone or tablet, in print, noticeboards, etc)
- Who would like to get involved in providing that news?
- What training, assistance and support will we have to give to those wanting to get involved as news providers?
- Who do we need to work with in partnership to make things happen/raise funding?
- And crucially… what bids for funding can be made to create a new news gathering, news-sharing service and training organisation?
The idea is to set up a group with specific aims and objectives that can bid for funding and build the partnerships necessary to create a local news hub – a network of citizen-journalists and community reporters that will focus on Hedon and the immediate area.
The Hedon Blog will continue – but as part of a bigger, more ambitious project.
So, who’s in? Who would like to get involved?
Ray Duffill – Tuesday 5th February 2013
I would be interested in being involved