Placeblogs: an interesting idea
Lisa Williams started H20town, a blog about her town. She began to realize that lots of writing that is being characterized as "citizen journalism" is in fact, placeblogging. Lots of other media bloggers have posted about placeblogger -- Rebecca MacKinnon in rconversation notes William's comment that placeblogs aren't local news but are local.
Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone.
They're about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be
news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn't news
but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat,
conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of
living in a particular place among particular people. However, when
news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in
unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to
discuss those events.
On Pressthink Jay Rosen talks more about how place blogs fit into a media ecosystem. The comments on Jay's post are very good as well. As we are getting ready to roll out our own version of citizen journalism in "Creating Community Connections," it is helpful to see ways to categorize content. Local news and place blog news can exist side by side, but it will be best not to confuse the two.
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