AllCamino is now listed at GoHyperlocal.com! GoHyperlocal is a blog about producing and improving hyperlocal news web sites and it features a listing of such sites throughout the U.S. and U.K. I submitted AllCamino for their consideration and happily it was accepted. Here’s my listing.
“Hyperlocal” refers to the growing trend where news stories are being reported and published from and about small well-defined geographic regions such as cities or even neighborhoods. It contrasts with traditional media outlets which don’t have the bandwidth to report down to the same level of focused detail. The hyperlocal trend is yet another area where technology and the internet are democratizing the flow of information and putting powerful communication capability in the hands of individuals.
AllCamino does stretch the concept of hyperlocal. On the one hand it’s super-hyperlocal because it focuses on a single street, but on the other hand it’s inter-macroregional because it cuts across multiple cities, counties, even countries. Nevertheless I do fit GoHyperlocal’s profile as a small, independent, slightly obsessive blogger. I also satisfy their definition: “An independent news site dedicated to a physical location that we can point to on a map.”
Speaking of maps, GoHyperlocal maintains a Google map which pinpoints all their listed sites. It was a challenge for me to pick a single coordinate to represent AllCamino but I decided on 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara. That’s the address of Santa Clara University and I picked it because the immediate area contains so much of what AllCamino is about. There’s a mission, a university with athletic, cultural, and academic venues, a train station with a museum, and a transit center. There are residences nearby, businesses, and retail. It has it all. Even a bell. On a personal note it’s also pretty much the closest point on El Camino Real “proper” to my house.
GoHyperlocal is run by a fellow named Chad. He doesn’t just list other sites. He posts articles useful for the hyperlocal blogger such as story ideas, journalism principles, and critiques of what works and doesn’t work on hyperlocal sites. Surprisingly Chad doesn’t run a hyperlocal site himself. He started GoHyperlocal as a way to combine his interest in web technology and his background in sports journalism. He says of local sites, “They’re a much better way to get to know a place and its people than reading about it on some travel site or even in their city newspaper.” It’s meta-tourism.
I found GoHyperlocal when I was searching for other local blogs that encompass El Camino. I turned up the excellent InMenlo.com which is all about Menlo Park and Atherton. InMenlo is also listed at GoHyperlocal so one click led to another and here we are. GoHyperlocal is always looking for other suitable sites so if you know any, be sure to submit them.
Thanks for the mention. I’m going to start using the phrase “Meta-tourism”.
Good luck.