What “professional” journalists can bring to hyperlocal

Tweetdeck on my laptop last weekend was dominated by Tweets coming out of the Talk About Local 09 unconference taking place in Stoke. So many great hyperlocal sites, each doing things differently to best serve their community. Then, over the week, it’s been interesting to see the debate continue – largely on Roy Greenslade’s update

Five search engines (other than Google) for journalists

Warning: This isn’t a knocking post about Google. Google is great for the vast amount of searches we do, but it’s always dangerous as a journalist to fall into the trap of only ever using one search. If Google does have a problem, it’s the fact that with so many different organisations competing to be

Can the winner of X Factor be predicted on search trends?

I’ve been reading Bill Tancer’s brilliant book Click over the past few weeks. It’s one of those books you won’t pick up if you assume you understand how the web works. If you don’t make that assumption, and you do pick it up, it’s fascinating. Bill is general manager of global research at Hitwise and