There’s an interesting experiment happening in the local blogosphere, and it’s being conducted by an unlikely source. The South Carolina television station WYFF has created a Web site called Sound Off South, and it has aggregated dozens of blogs from around upstate S.C. and western North Carolina.
The television folks are also commenting on what people are writing about. It’s an interesting experiment. Take a look at see what you think.
Here’s a Q&A about Sound Off South, from the web site:
What is this website all about?
Sound Off South is your one stop shop for local blogs from Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina. You may find some other regional blogs here as well.There’s a ton of interesting local blogs in the area, but it doesn’t seem like most folks can find an audience, or even know that their neighbors might even be blogging. That’s where we come in. We’re gathering up links and feeds from all the blogs in the area and getting everyone together for a big ol’ blog jamoboree.
How did my blog get listed on this site?
Good question! Well, the SOS staff has doing their research by checking out hundreds (possibly thousands) of blogs for the area. Along the way we started grabbing our favorites and dumping them into a giant list for future use. 99% of these blogs offered an RSS feed, so we consider it likely that they’re at least semi-interested in having the blog shared with others. That’s what this is all about: community and sharing ideas.…
What are the requirements for a blog to be listed on Sound Off South?
1. You have to be a local blog.
Our target area for blogs is the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson-Asheville area (which just happens to be television market #36). But there’s so many great blogs coming out of Northern Georgia, Western North Carolina, and throughout that middle part of South Carolina that we aren’t going to set any really rigid guidelines on location just yet. We’ll be checking over you blog to make sure that it’s written locally or has a local focus. If you are about to make a blog for this, it would be helpful to get some dedicated servers for your website so it is always live for people to see. I hear that HostiServer provides useful services in this area.2. Content is also a deciding factor.
Sound Off South is not going to be in the business of censoring anyone’s voice. You have a blog and can say pretty much whatever you want…on your blog. But this site is our blog and we’re going to make sure that the discussion is free of harassment and hate speech. We’re not going to limit blogs based on someone’s political views, but if we feel that’s a legal liability for us, or something that hurt or offend our viewers…it’s not going up on the site or in the feed.3. It has to be a stand alone bloggy-blog.
For the sake of bandwidth and a number of technical (and editorial) reasons we’re not incorportating MySpace and Facebook journals/blogs. We want the real thing here. You might have a blog about your local business. Maybe you are really into politics and want to shout your views from an open window. That’s cool too. Or maybe you just write about your cat. Umm, that’s all right too.…
Who are the people who write for Sound Off South?
You can find out all about our contributors by clicking here. Right now we’re not accepting any paid (or volunteer) positions, but don’t think we aren’t keeping a eye on the most active community members! We have plans to evolve and expand, and there’s a good chance we’ll be taking on some new authors as the site grows.Is it true that Sound Off South is owned by a television station?
Yeah, you heard right. Although the folks here at WYFF4 consider ourselves part of a “digital media company” and have just as much presence on the Internet as we do on television, Sound Off South is brought to you by the same, award winning staff of WYFF4.com. But, this site is a very different entity altogether. This isn’t us ringing you the news, you’re bringing the news to us and your community. Sometimes that news is about important local issues that have gone unnoticed by the media. And sometimes your news is about the latest Incredible Hulk action figure you just found. This is the place for all that kind of hyper-local news.