David Wilcox

Two conversations in Manchester this week deepened my understanding of the changes social media is bringing to communication at local level – and the potential for new collaborations between journalists and community activists.
The first chat was with Craig McGinty, who has worked in print and online newspapers, and now helps a wide range of people use free or low-cost online tools. These include a groups of landscape designers and gardeners who have used free Ning social networking software to set up a non-organisation for collective marketing. More on that later.
After an hour or so’s chat about the fast-changing digital landscape, I invited Graig to give me his thoughts on how social media is impacting on newspapers, communities and organisations.
He focussed first on a changing role for local journalists, as papers go out of business in a world where advertising moves online, and people won’t pay for news and information that they can find in other ways.
He envisages freelances setting up advertising-supported blogs to develop news and other services for local residents and businesses, happy to take and share content feeds via RSS (explanation here). These feeds could come – in part – from blogs set up by community activists on the hyperlocal model being promoted by Will Perrin.
They would operate as light-weight content developers and aggregators in a distributed communications environment – a very different model from the centralised online systems attempted by some local papers with mixed success.
Craig’s view is that the loss of local papers may be no great loss in many instances – provided journalists and local enthusiasts can collaborate to fill the gap. The best thing government could do would be to make available the great deal of data and information they hold. This could help fuel the development of local content and conversations.
We also talked about membership organisations, and Craig – like Clay Shirky – believes they face a tough time unless they change the way they operate and offer greater value. Craig writes here about the Landscape Juice Network, where professional gardeners, landscapers and designers have a site created by Philip Voice using free Ning software. It offers a place for members to provide information to trade and public about their services, while sharing a common space in which to solve problems and offer each other help.

I then want on to meet Gary Copitch, who is one of the pioneers of local community networking. He joined Manchester Community Information Network 10 years ago, and is now helping develop People’s Voice Media. They run a Community Reporters programme, social media centres, Internet radio, and are experimenting in a host of different ways in which new social technologies can be used locally for social benefit.
As you can hear, Gary gives a pretty eloquent explanation of what’s possible, and I’m really looking forward to working with him and a team of reporters at the National Digital Inclusion conference at the end of April. We are already talking about how the team can shoot some video on the realities of digital inclusion – or exclusion –  from the streets and homes of Manchester, and the potential of social media.
Tomorrow I’m off to Birmingham to find out for myself about the great things bloggers and other social media enthusiasts are doing there, as Nick Booth explained here.
There may be a lot of buzz in London, but I suspect a lot of the solid, useful application of social technology is happenign elsewhere with too little recognition. Ooops, reminder to self – must meet up with Harringay online. Who else?