Local Websites in a Nutshell

I’ve added four Local Blogs from London to the Nutshell directory.

Bexcentric, Bexley, London

Written by someone living and working in the London Borough of Bexley, covers goings-on in and around the area.

Brockley Central, Brockley, London (* – Established 2007. Around 1000 postings)

The online home for all things Brockley (SE4), St John’s, Ladywell and Telegraph Hill Brockley Central is a community news and discussion site, which attempts to cover every aspect of life in Brockley, London SE4.

It was first published in February 2007 as a way of promoting the work of the Brockley Cross Action Group and the Brockley Common project, but it quickly grew to reflect the vibrancy of local life and the regeneration that the area is undergoing as a result of the East London Line extension.

Deptford Dame, Deptford, London

Delights and devilry from deepest SE8.

Stay with me if you want to learn more about my manor. Ignore the slaggers, disregard the high street’s down-at-heel appearance, and come with me on a voyage around SE8. It will be a truly local experience, in the best possible meaning of the word.

Transpontine, South East London

South East London blogzine – things that are happening, things that happened, things that should never have happened.

Things to do in Deptford when you’re not dead, plus New Cross, Brockley, Old Kent Road and other beauty spots.

Transpontine: ‘on the other (i.e. the south) side of the bridges over the Thames; pertaining to or like the lurid melodrama played in theatres there in the 19th century’.

Read more here…

I’ve added four Local Blogs from the East Midlands to the Nutshell directory.

Nottingham City Council LOLs , Nottingham

Want to know what your favourite local council (and some of its friends) gets up to? We trawl through all the boring minutes, press releases and Freedom of Information requests so you don’t have to.

Just in case anybody was wondering, this site is not in any way connected to Nottingham City Council, gets no money from them (well, apart from Council Tax benefit) and if we ever did have anything to do with them would probably have been sacked by now. They probably don’t even like us. But then you knew all that didn’t you.

Radnor’s Nottingham, Nottingham

A guide to things to do and see in Nottingham, with a sprinkling of historical fact and contemporary comment.

Nottingham Daily Photo, Nottingham

A photographic daily dose of my thoughts and what I see during the day around Nottingham, Beeston and sometimes further afield . The good, the bad and the amusing.

Comments regarding the pictures are very, very welcome. You’ve looked at them, so why not say something about them! All my photographs are copyright, so please ask before poaching them and saying that they are yours.

Nottingham is Crap, Nottingham

Well I don’t really think Nottingham is totally crap. Like a lot of places it has its good and bad. But this blog is a place to rant about the things that really annoy you about Nottingham.

If you want to rant about something about Nottingham then please post it in the comments box.

Read more here…

I’ve added two more Local Blogs to the directory.

St Albans Blog, St Albans, Hertfordshire

St. Albans blog contains information and independent reviews about living, shopping, eating and drinking in St. Albans. It’s authored primarily by a man in his 30’s who moved to St. Albans in around 2003.

Brownhills Bob’s Brownhills Blog, Walsall.

Life in the northern wastes of Walsall

I’m a middle-aged tech geek with a love of cycling and the outdoors; I care passionately about people, the environment we all share and the social stuff that glues us together. I do a job that makes me think about how things work, and have an inquisitive, argumentative nature. I know what it’s like to be a carer, and what it’s like to struggle and only just survive.

I love Brownhills, it’s my home. I despair of what is happening to it. I’m concerned about the motivations of those who make descisions on our behalf, about their judgement and lack of foresight. I fear for the future of local democracy.

Read more here…

Birmingham It’s Not Shit, Birmingham – (establised 2002)

Birmingham: It’s Not Shit loves Birmingham, its people, arts, animals, buildings, parks, grass verges, factories and bus stops.

We’ve even got a soft spot for the Black Country. B:iNS runs The Brummie of the Year Award, Talk Like a Brummie Day and organises odd stuff like spending eleven hours on the eleven bus on the eleventh of November. Bournville Village, Birmingham The latest news, pics and chat from the Cadbury community.

Created in Birmingham, Birmingham

Linking up Birmingham’s Artistic and Creative Communities.

Created in Birmingham is a weblog that has been written on an almost daily basis since January 2008, promoting, discussing and being part of Birmingham’s vibrant creative community. An online home for the Birmingham arts scene.

Creative Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton – (running on and off since 2006)

The aim of Creative Wolverhampton is to promote professionals and individuals practicing and studying in the city, and to provide a showcase for the creative and cultural industries.

On this blog you will find news, articles, events and updates about the creative and cultural industries in the Wolverhampton area. CW was devised by Debut in 2006.

The site is maintained and updated by Debut, with a small group of regular contributors who share the desire to raise Wolverhampton’s profile as a creative city.

Read more here…

A superb piece in the Economist from July, about the impact of loss of local newspapers and the possibilities – which have not yet reached fruition for “ultralocal” (jargon, yech!) websites to fill the gap.

WHAT happens when a place loses its newspaper? Most of the 80 or so local papers that have closed in Britain since the beginning of last year were the second- or third-strongest publications in their markets. But the weekly Bedworth Echo, which published its last issue on July 10th, was the only paper dedicated to the town’s news. A small former mining settlement in the Midlands, Bedworth also lacks a radio station. Although it will still be covered by newspapers focused on its bigger neighbours, it is now a town without news.

It will not be the last. With a few exceptions (see article) local newspapers are declining quickly. Trinity Mirror, which owned the Echo, shut 27 local newspapers last year and has already closed 22 this year. The main reason more local papers have not collapsed, says Paul Zwillenberg of OC&C, a consultancy, is that they were cushioned by large operating margins. Many have gone from annual profits of up to 30% to negligible earnings. As they tip into loss, the trickle of closures is likely to become a torrent. Enders Analysis, a media consultancy, reckons a third to a half may go in the next five years.

…

At the moment hyper-local sites tend to be filled with discussions of town fetes and the next music night at the village pub. It may be, says Roland Bryan of Associated, that this is the equivalent of small talk at a cocktail party, and that people will eventually get down to local politics. Or they may not. As local newspapers fail, we may learn that their real value was less as a check on politicians than simply as a forum for casual conversation—a place where a town can talk to itself.

Read it all. (There’s a lot more).

Hat tip: Jon Slattery

Read more here…