Wordblog

The alluring smell of hot metal first got to me as a teenager when I visited the home of my best friend — the flat in an ancient timber-framed town centre building which also housed the office and works of the Banbury Guardian.

My friend’s father edited the paper and had only to go downstairs to check the smooth running of the old press. It was one of the nostalgic images that came to me as I thought about what to do after my enforced retirement.

Online news allowed the dream of returning to those days of independent small town newspapers based in the heart of their communities. We might now call it ultra-local or hyper-local but the spirit was the same.

The area of Suffolk where I live looked ideal, one small town and several large villages with no strong presence of weekly newspapers. In my nostalgic view of traditional newspapers it looked good enough to provide work for a couple of journalists with an army of of contributors and a couple of people to look after the office and advertising.

But once I looked at real factors it was very different. Patterns of work, life and leisure in the English countryside have changed. Fifty years ago most people lived close to their work: now mid Suffolk has one of the highest proportions in England of people commuting out of the area to work. They also travel further for cinema, music and to eat out.

That neat circulation area in which people lived, worked and played, no longer exists. To provide the information people living in the area want there has to be coverage of a much larger area — most of the county.

The hyperlocal news concept with street-level news still seems appropriate but it would not be enough without listings of events, pub and restaurant reviews and much more from the wider area.

And if that information has to be provided it makes sense to supply it to a wider audience. A series of hyperlocal mini news sites backed by common wider area section still looked good. In a modified way it still does.

The idea of starting a site with virtually no investment other than a little for software and marketing plus my time (as a “retired” man I have enough of that) continues to appeal as a viable basis for a business.

I believe it can work but the time has come to have a broad discussion; to bring other minds and experience to bear on the subject. Over the next week or so I will post more about my ideas on encouraging, involving and supporting contributors, developing income and the mechanics of the site.