Local web news manifesto

Lots of folk are running really good local news services on their blogs, websites. nings and other interweb platforms. They produce great stuff but often get tarred with the brush of the bonkers 'sid nutter' bloggers out there. At TAL09 there was a call for some sort of standard people could sign up to that wsa a symbol of a serious intent. But that matched the capabilities of local amateurs or in some cases pro-ams and wasn't gold plating.

Sadly many thought that this was necessary for local councils and other public bodies to take them seriously. Dan Slee's blog post is a good round up of the issues for local government.

This is all against a background of the entertaining 'self-regulation' of trad. print media and an unregulated internet. And of course O'Reillys arguably unsuccessful code of conduct for bloggers.

So, inspired by the glorious Dogme 95 Manifesto that tried to bring basic, core values to film making i knocked together this simple 'manifesto' for local news on the web. These words first surfaced in a talk i did on a future of public service video news a few weeks ago, but you won't have seen that.

So here as a starter for ten is a first stab at some sort of voluntary manifesto for local news on the web. I assume that these words are wrong, but you need to start somewhere and that is why i am asking you, the crowd of hyperlocal publishers. It may be that more than one version is required.

Let me know in the discussion how you would change this in order for your blog to sign up to it.

Local Web News 'Manifesto':

In signing up to this manifesto we agree to be:

1 - Fair
2 - Truthful
3 - Proportionate
4 - Provocative
5 - Playful
6 - Local
7 - Low cost
8 - Not boring
9 - Not evil