The People's Paper?

Last week, as I was watching twitter scoop the BBC in its coverage of the fire in Soho, London, I stumbled across a tweet about the incident from @theblogpaper.

At first I assumed it was just a community of bloggers posting and rating content and driving traffic to their own blogs, but on visiting the website I discovered there was a more to this blogging community.

Members of theblogpaper – bloggers, citizen journalists, photographers, students or anyone else with content to share - are encouraged to post their photographs and articles and to rate and discuss those posted by others.

But rather than just show on the website front page as the highest rated there is another dimension to this experiment.  Theblogpaper aims to be the first ever user-generated newspaper in London.















What this means is the highest rated and most discussed content of the week will then be published in a print version of theblogpaper – a kind of weekly ‘best of’.

At the moment it's early days, with theblogpaper hoping to publish its first print edition at the end of September, but I’m really excited by the concept. Instead of being fed the media agenda of whatever local or national publication you happen to read, theblogpaper allows its users to set the agenda.

As the website itself states the blogpaper follows "...no political line other than democracy. We believe in the power of the community, rather in the power of the individual."

This all ties into the idea that social media can hand control over from just a few, to the many and theoretically this could produce a publication that actually reflects the issues that are affecting people and the content that people are really interested in, rather than the agenda that is set by the established news groups.

Of course there could be limitations – if the community is fairly small and from niche sectors will this give bias towards certain types of content, for example technology? Also at the moment the print edition will only be published in London - will this deter regional contributors?

But from humble beginnings great things can come. Theblogpaper is a fantastic opportunity for not only established bloggers, journalists and freelancers but also for the wave of media graduates who face and even tougher battle for jobs than usual this year.

Media students will benefit from having a platform to showcase their work, an opportunity to get feedback, potentially gain recognition in the print media and also a chance to show the understand and engage with social/digital media - all of which will add weight to a portfolio/C.V.

I’ll definitely be watching how theblogpaper develops very carefully.

You can find out more about theblogpaper at www.theblogpaper.co.uk or follow the team on twitter www.twitter.com/theblogpaper