I’ve had a break from this site for a couple of weeks. I had other work to do, paid work.

And there were no supporting subscribers. Previous arrangements had been set to finish at the end of 2014.

I asked for similar support for this site at the start of this year in a mailing to everyone on the mailing list, but no one responded. I thought this was perhaps a sign that this particular online record had reached a natural end. I removed the couple of pages for 2015 and to be honest I thought ‘bugger this’.

But then we’ve built a nice momentum, and the number of visitors is increasing, with a lot of people visiting ‘Recent’ to look for new pages. There’s so much to add, no shortage of material. Seems a shame to abandon it. Supporters for 2015 would mean this online record can continue in a similar way.

Behind the scenes at the website

But I wonder if we ever think about the circumstances of the people writing our favourite personal sites and blogs. Usually just one person, as in this case. I have several sources of freelance income and they now have to combine to bring in enough money to cover the usual costs shouldered by any adult of working age trying to keep a roof over their head. If this site brings in no reasonable income then it will neglected in favour of work that does pay.

Yet there’s so much still to cover on these pages. And people keep telling me how much they love York Stories. If I had a pound for every time someone told me how much they loved it …

This site was all made in a generous spirit, as a labour of love. But I’ve given enough away. The internet’s culture of free is not fair and not sustainable in the longer term. This doesn’t just apply to this online record of York and its changes, but to many other similar online resources.

It was a wonderful and enabling thing to have financial contributions in 2014 to keep the site going. It was a solid representation of how many people really do value it. Thank you to all of you.

Into 2015

I’ve given a lot of thought to the question of how best to continue this online record alongside other work I’m doing, and I’ve talked to friends about it. I’ve also looked at possible sources of funding. As I’m an individual (rather than a not-for-profit group) with a site that doesn’t fit neatly into any category, getting external funding from the sources suggested doesn’t seem to be an option.

The site will continue to get visitors whether I regularly update it or not, coming from Google and other search engines. However, I know that people prefer a regularly updated site, and I do want returning visitors to have something new to look at, at least a few times a week.

I’ve thought about adding a photo a day, and may take this approach. Or I can spend about 20 minutes a few times a week writing a short piece, probably directing readers to other interesting things on the web.

The survey results last year suggested that the two most popular reasons for visiting the site were a) for information on York and its changes and b) for opinion on local matters of concern. Those two things are the most demanding in terms of the time they take and the thought that goes into them. So they’ll only happen with support.

Creators, editors, and the personal touch

One of my favourite sites is brainpickings.org. Nothing to do with York, and with a massive readership compared to this little site of mine. But there are a few similarities, and also aspects I admire. It is also made by one individual who clearly puts a great deal of time and effort into her online work. She also asks for financial support from her readers. The main thing I’m struck by is that this site is so obviously and coherently held together by one person’s brain. She links it all together as only she can, because she creates it, so she has the equivalent of a massive database of information in her own head. So she links to other postings in a thoughtful way, making connections far better than a computer can.

And it’s the same here. I’ve got a wealth of York-related information in this brain of mine. I’d rather use it, and keep linking it up, on here, online. If you recognise that has value, please support it.

That’s all very long-winded and thoughtful, isn’t it. Typical me. If you’ve been scanning the above and have got to the bottom of the page, here’s a rather more outspoken and direct summary of the situation, from the Leeds Bloggers site:

Simon, who co-runs Isle Of Wight news site On the Wight with his wife Sally said, it’s ‘rude and wrong’ to expect people who run sites and put so many hours of their spare time into them not to have some financial recompense.

You, dear York Stories readers, I could never think of you as rude and wrong.

But if Simon’s words strike a chord and have made you feel terribly guilty, there’s a page where you can help to sustain this much-loved online record of York and its changes.

Foss Islands cycle track graffiti, Nov 2004

The post Sustaining this hyperlocal content in 2015 appeared first on York Stories.

The changing landscape has left our established local press in a different place. Literally, in a smaller office between building sites, and in online terms as one of many sites offering news and views with a local focus. There’s also yorkmix.com and oneandother.com, now both well-established. The minsterfm.com website has in the last year covered many ‘breaking’ news stories. Steve Galloway’s blog covers local issues and local politics.

Away from ‘news’ but still with a local focus are blogs and sites covering local history from specific areas (such as the interesting Fishergate, Fulford and Heslington local history society site, and the Clements Hall Local History Group) and specific archives (eg Bootham School) as well as the main city archive.

Back in 2004, when I started my little ‘York Walks’ website, here on this domain, I found one personal site by a York resident, and other than that, as I remember it, we had only the Press. None of these sites had the now standard comments facility.

Things have changed so much. There’s an increasing recognition of the value of local knowledge, information, local history, and the internet has made it easy for us to share and discuss all areas of local interest. This is happening in other towns and cities too, of course. I often look at Seven Streets (from Liverpool), and the Sense of Place blog (also from Liverpool), the Leeds Citizen and several London-based sites.

Many of our local concerns regarding politics and the changes in our cities are similar, the same in every place. In every place are people facing changes in the local landscape, people concerned about particular buildings, or about the way ‘gentrification’ changes a place.

Scarborough Bridge, 2007

These ‘hyperlocal’ sites are now an established part of the online landscape. This site you’re reading, being so much focused on place, on a sense of place, is ‘hyperlocal’ in emphasis. The term seems fairly common now, my Googling suggests, though when I Googled it some years back, it wasn’t.

Nesta has undertaken research into the hyperlocal sites, in Destination Local. There have been calls recently for better financial support of hyperlocal sites, specifically news sites.

On the Leeds Bloggers site, a nice summary:

‘Hyperlocal for me has always been about local residents plugging the gaps in the media landscape based on raw passion for their communities.’

I’m not sure about the raw passion part, but this site you’re reading came from the desire to fill a gap I saw, back in 2004, and has adapted over the years in response to the other gaps I’ve noticed.

There’s clearly demand for hyperlocal content and recognition of its value. But then, of course, there’s the question of sustainability. Local sites don’t just need raw passion. To sustain them in the longer term they need hours and hours of work. Not just in writing the articles and taking the photos but in managing comments, answering queries sent by email, using social media, dealing with the coding and more technical aspects of the site, remembering to renew the hosting and domain names, etc etc.

It’s hard work, however passionate you are, and so many local sites and blogs don’t last.

This site you’re reading wasn’t set up to make money. After its first year it wasn’t really added to that much for many years. Back then it was fairly standard to have personal websites you just added to when you felt like it. The pace was slower. As I described in the page on the site’s history, this online presence of mine became more blog-like and regularly updated because of another site launching with the same name. So for three years York Stories was more regularly updated.

As the momentum built and the interest in it grew it was like having a part-time job. But one I didn’t get paid for. I already knew, in late 2013, that this wasn’t sustainable.

For a couple of years I justified it to myself as my ‘voluntary work’, and a gift back to the place I care about, and its residents. I did it because I could, and it seemed the right thing to do.

As I’ve been writing this page I’ve been looking online for information on other small local sites and how they’ve fared. An example from the US struck a chord, described in this article. The description of the site uses a similar phrase to the one I’ve used above:

The website was a gift from Milsaps and his buddies to the people of Raleigh. It was created to support localism and perpetuate the unique culture of the growing city.

The end product there had a broader/different focus, but there are similarities in the feeling and approach, and the work that goes into online content, ‘the endeavor of creating a distinctive voice of the city’, as the piece puts it.

New Raleigh quickly attracted tens of thousands of users and succeeded in establishing itself as a go to website. However despite growing readership and local support, Milsaps was unable to convert New Raleigh’s influence and leadership into sustainable profit which eventually led to its downfall.

Now, if you visit the site, it looks like this.

I’m fortunate here in that I have a fairly narrow focus on the place, and I’m not trying to cover news, culture, what’s on, etc. To sustain this residents’ record of York and its changes alongside my other work will I hope be possible in some form or other. But it will be better with the support of readers.

I wonder how many other smaller local sites have disappeared. One comes to mind, a local venture. Remember talkyork.com? Despite the obvious hard work put into it, engagement on social media, provision of news and a forum, it didn’t last long. I’ve also found several enthusiastic local blogs that petered out after a year or two, as so many do.

The ‘culture of free’ on the internet isn’t sustainable and is changing. Ad-supported sites have bigger and more annoying ads. Crowdfunding is becoming more common, particularly for startups and one-off projects. This is getting a lot of attention.

Something starting up, with a high profile crowdfunding project, is a visible and exciting thing. Less glamorous and interesting, but probably more important, is how we keep these things going, how we sustain them in the longer term, particularly those sites made and maintained by one person. Like this one.

Further thoughts on that on the next page.

The post The future of local media /2: hyperlocal? appeared first on York Stories.