Over the weekend it became apparent to me that I couldn’t keep all the local blogs that have sprung up in Birmingham straight in my head. I was also aware that what defines a “local blog” is somewhat, well, ill defined. so I started Local Blogging Birmingham, a quick and dirty Tumblr blog to record them as I find them and add a bit of commentary.
On the blog I roughly define local blogs as:
“blogs (or things that are sort of like blogs in that they publish stuff on the Internet in date order) that cover a specific area and nothing else. If that area were to vanish the blog would have no purpose. Someone who blogs about their local area and fishing and carpentry, they don’t get in. It’s all or nothing.”
It’s a working definition and purely serves to give a bit of focus since there are now hundreds if not thousands of active blogs in the city. I’m keeping it restricted to Birmingham because that’s my patch and if I were to cover the rest of the world it’d be too much to process. I’m also interested in the longer term about how these sites network with each other – where are the overlaps and so on.
This relates to the Shift Time blogging project I’m currently working on in Shrewsbury, Nick Booth’s Social Media Surgeries which have produced a number of eligible sites and, of course, Will Perrin’s Talk About Local project which is about to set up camp in Birmingham. Plus countless other things of course but those are the main ones on my radar right now.
I hope folks find it useful and, more importantly, find some of the sites listed there inspirational.
And, of course, I’m missing loads. I’ll add them as I find them but please let me know in the comments below, on Twitter or via email if you know of a likely candidate.
What about buildings?
http://centenaryplaza.wordpress.com/
http://fazeleytenants.tumblr.com/
Or is that too local? ¥ou might start getting into tricky distinctions – eg the Hare & Hounds blog covers a very local area too.
And if the citywide likes of CiB, The Stirrer and Birmingham Live count (and I think they meet your criteria) then so should several of the Birmingham Post blogs. And the Metro’s Lifestyle blog, Style Birmingham, Uber Brum, B(l)og and plenty others.
Thing is many of the blogs on Jon’s list are about an aspect of Birmingham.
By saying yes and no I’ll hopefully start drilling down to some kind of criteria. For example, said a qualified no to http://www.brumlive.com/ but in doing so helped refine the definition: http://loblobrum.tumblr.com/post/119964567/birmingham-live
City-wide blogs aren’t local in the same sense as a neighbourhood blog. Smaller is very different indeed. But some of the city-wide blogs do things that could be applied to local blogs so they’re interesting. Some don’t, so they’re not interesting in this way.
The purpose of this exercise is to take Jon’s big list of blogs that originate from Birmingham and create a manageable list of those that are “local blogs”. If I get too inclusive then the exercise is pointless so I’m going to be strict and probably unfair. Once I’ve got some kind of working definition then I’ll look to expand it.
And remember, this is just categorising. Local blogs can’t exist alone. The rest of the Birmingham blogosphere is essential.
It’s late. Bed time.
Hi Pete
I am using your list to get me started on an aggregator of local blogs.
If you want to offer your thoughts on whether this is a good idea/bad idea, I'd be very grateful for your input.
http://birmingham.localbounce.com/