Rob Wells

It’s been over a month since I put LSJ bloggers into hiberation, and as the new year approaches I’m considering what to do next with it. The initial response was incredibly poor, with very few people contributing — only about a third of the people who submitted links to their blogs got involved in some way. It seems appropriate to take another look at LSJ bloggers, and look at what can be done to improve things — even if it means a total overhaul of the concept.

In my retrospective of how the first topic went, I was very pessimistic about the chances of increasing involvement, and dismissed it as yet another case of my 90/10 rule on student effort.¹

Just a small town girl

After I posted, Andy Hickley emailed me some comments. Andy has given me permission to reprint his thoughts here, and I think they’re illuminating about why LSJ bloggers is in the state it is, and what could be done to improve things.

Whilst having a blog ring is very simple and easy, i think it’s basically the subject of it that led many people to completely ignore writing up an article – i don’t know how relevant hyperlocal journalism is in the world, but it’s not a phrase i’ve ever heard uttered before.

Naturally a lot of people just aren’t gonna be interested in writing or reading a blog about something they don’t care so much about. Maybe we should start with softer topics at the beginning of the LSJ phenomenon that slowly work their way up to harder views? Thus my suggestion for the next one would be about what people’s plans and dream jobs are after graduation – whilst hardly groundbreaking, it’d at least be readable and help the general public to find out more about the individual bloggers personalities, which might help them come back when we talk about something a little over their heads?

Also whilst i’m slowly growing more to love Twitter, i’m fairly certain that journalism students who use it are in the minority, maybe getting some Facebook updates (even if it’s just a status or something from you), or asking Sam Pidioux to email round updates and reminders to contribute like she did when the thing got created, might get some attention and contributions?

Just a city boy

I think Andy’s views are far closer to those of the “average” journalism student than anything I, or Shane, or Daniel, or Josh might write.

i don’t know how relevant hyperlocal journalism is in the world, but it’s not a phrase i’ve ever heard uttered before.

This example is incredibly revealing. Andy isn’t thick by any means, but hyperlocal is a “big thing” in the media world right now, to the point where my natural instinct is not to link to any sources because I assume that the people reading this already know about it.

What needs to be considered is that a lot of the things I take for granted don’t figure for most of the students on the journalism course at Lincoln (and perhaps a majority across the UK). The people who know about this stuff, and read and write about it, and use Twitter (etc.), as Andy points out, are in the minority.

But to the people in this minority it all seems very natural and ordinary — “You’re not on Twitter? Really?” — and I think this also carries over into blogging. With regards to potential topics for LSJ bloggers, I subconsciously assumed that people who had a blog would be “in the know” when it came to the prevailing discussions of the future of journalism — hyperlocal being an example.

It’s a census year

So now we have two distinct groups which I’m going to define as “those who know”, and “those that don’t”, at the risk of sounding condescending.

What really excited me about LSJ bloggers when I was setting it up was that it could be an unparalleled venue for discussing the future of journalism, and other major issues facing the trade — it would look at national and international trends in journalism with the ability to apply them to a shared, local situation. It could easily combine lofty theory and on-the-ground practice.

I hope this explains why I wanted it to be a place where we could easily discuss things such as hyperlocal journalism, because we could take the theory, and think about how we could apply it — the city of Lincoln would provide a common foundation and testing ground for a variety of ideas.

But this assumes that the people taking part in the discussion are part of the first group — “those who know”. Unfortunately the majority of journalism students aren’t in that category, at least at Lincoln.²

Move to the suburbs?

That’s the situation. It may not be ideal, but it’s what we’ve got to work with. So how can we alter LSJ bloggers to draw more people in, and be more active once they are?

I think the most important thing is what topics we discuss. Implementation and notification are secondary issues — posting notifications on Facebook (etc.) is a secondary thing, whereas topic selection is fundamental.

I still completely reject the line of thought put forward by Darren Moss, because it ignores our constituency: journalism students at Lincoln.

We need lightweight journalism-related topics, it seems. That, combined with a different system of notification and advertising, may prove enough to get more journalism students involved. Topics should be interesting, journalism-related, but shouldn’t sound like the quantum physics of journalism. They should be things that people already have some kind of opinion on, so that it doesn’t seem like a lot of effort to develop and voice it.

It’s time to have a think. If things go well, LSJ bloggers may be relaunched for semester B.