I’ve been thinking a fair bit about city-specific blogging recently. More specifically about why there isn’t a good general blog for Birmingham, whether there could be one and whether I could actually do one.
City blogs had something of a mini boom a while back with the expansion of the Gothamist and Metroblogging networks, both originating out of the US. While they have made some inroads into non-US areas it’s been a bit hit and miss. Just dumping a structure in place and expecting it to develop doesn’t work. Londonist appears to work well but it used to be an independent group blog called The Big Smoker before joining the Gothamist network. On the flip side the Birmingham Metroblog is pretty much a one man show.
Why did the Brum Metblog, relatively speaking, fail? Or more to the point, why didn’t I, an established blogger who occasionally writes about Birmingham, join the thing? At the time it was because I didn’t think I’d be able to commit to their 3 posts a week requirement but thinking about it, why should I? I have a blog with a healthy readership. It exists within various networks of blogs and in nicely indexed by Google. Any Birmingham content generally finds its audience through these communities. More to the point, Metroblogs are plastered in adverts but writing is voluntary. Someone’s making a profit (however small) and it’s not the writers. I wouldn’t have felt like I had any ownership of the blog and since I have my own blog there wasn’t any real incentive.
There’s also the point that while I’m sure Gaz, the sole contributor to Metroblogging Birmingham, is a nice guy with his heart in the right place he’s not exactly, shall we say, on my wavelength. With something like Flickr this wouldn’t be a problem as photos are relatively neutral but blogs are about opinions, view and ideas. Sharing a platform purely on the basis that we live in the same city really isn’t enough – there needs to be something more than that.
That’s the thing about cities. They tend to be rather large with populations in the millions. While there does exist some sense of community and identity, the in depth perception of a city – its merits, relative safety, efficiency and so on – is a very personal thing. My Birmingham will be different to your Birmingham, even if they overlap a lot. Come to think of it my Birmingham next month will be different from my Birmingham today.
Leaving the perils of group blogging aside for a moment, the next question is whether there’s actually enough in Birmingham to merit a dedicated blog. This isn’t a stupid question. One of the reasons Londonist works and why there are so many London bloggers compared to Birmingham (1206 vs 60 according to Britblog.com which won’t be accurate but it makes the point) is that it’s London and in a different league. Birmingham has stuff but does it have enough stuff?
A cursory look at the traditional media outlets for the city wouldn’t imply there is. BBC Birmingham is probably the best but other than the occasional article I don’t find it particularly inspiring while icBirmingham, covering local rags the Mail and Post, tends to inform you how may people were shot and stabbed and how the football is going. Suffice to say it doesn’t represent my Birmingham.
I think there is enough stuff going on in Birmingham but its happening under the radar. That’s not to say it’s all underground alternative weird stuff by any means. Take Artsfest, the massive, um, arts festival run by the council that’s been taking place in the centre of Birmingham every summer for nine years. I’d never heard of it until someone on Birmingham Flickr suggested we photograph it. How could that happen?
Next question – can a blog hope to “fix” this? And is that the right question? Maybe a better question is what can blogs do well?
- The can filter information and pull together things that aren’t usually pulled together. People are generally more complex than the genres, niches and other boxes we usually put things in and a blog will reflect that.
- They tend not to be slaves to their perceived audience or advertisers and will have a different system of prioritising subjects based on what the writer finds interesting.
- At their best they fill in the gaps, drawing out things that aren’t getting attention elsewhere.
Of course they also do a lot of things badly and the challenge is avoiding that but I think a case can be made for a city-based blog that does what other online news and entertainment services won’t or cannot do.
