BBC reaches out to Mancunian bloggers
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 29 August 2006 at 08:54
Tags: BBC, Blogs, Journalism
A new community blog aims to help BBC Manchester journalists engage with people who are creating local content using third-party tools like blogs, the photo-sharing web site Flickr, and the video sharing site YouTube.
The corporation will recruit one or two bloggers from each of greater Manchester’s boroughs, hold workshops on the use of blogging tools, teach them about the BBC’s editorial guidelines and production values, and finally pair them with BBC staff mentors. Other Manchester bloggers will be encouraged to flag relevant content with the tag “bbcmanchesterblog”.
Journalists running the BBC Manchester Blog will then monitor the bloggers’ work using RSS feeds and will link to the best of their content.
The bloggers will not be paid, leading one Manchester-based blogger to suggest that this is “a clever way for the Beeb to land themselves some free, fresh, local content”.
One of the journalists running the project, Robin Hamman, quickly responded, arguing that if the BBC simply wanted to use local bloggers’ material, it could legally do so already.
The aims of the project, Hamman wrote, are broader: “It’s about building relationships with people who are, or who want to, create stuff and publish it online. We want to help participants build their own audiences and make their efforts self-sustainable.”
Tags: BBC, Blogs, Journalism
