Preston Bloggers shorlisted for MLF Award

PrestonWN is pleased to announce that this year, two Preston Bloggers have made it onto the shortlists for the Manchester Literary Festival's Annual Blogging Awards.

Two!! What makes it even better is that the Manchester Blog Awards broke their own record for nominations this year - with over 130 blogs nominated across all categories, these two have beat off some pretty stiff competion to get so far.

In the running for Best Personal Blog is Just Testing. The author - Kim McGowan - writes about her travels, family and ruminations on the ups and downs of a Creative Writing Masters Degree.

Shortlisted for the Best Writing on a Blog award is Richard Hirst - PrestonWN volunteer, regular performer at Word Soup and the man himself behind online-satire blog I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car.

The rules of the Manchester Blogging Awards mean that anyone who works or lives within commuting distance of Manchester is eligible for nomination - that includes all us Prestonians.

With two previous category winners A Free Man In Preston and Every Day I Lie a Little written by Preston-based bloggers, here's hoping that 2009 sees us make it a hat-trick.

The blog awards ceremony is held at the on the 21st October at Band on the Wall. Tickets are £4 and the night starts at 7pm. You'll probably want to book in advance - last year's night was packed. Preston author Jenn Ashworth will be reading at the event, and the winners in each category will be announced and awarded their prizes.

Good Luck to Just Testing and I Thought I Told You To Wait in The Car!

PrestonWN volunteer unmasked!

Even though Halloween is still weeks away, we're getting a bit excited about it here at PrestonWN towers...

Congratulations to our most secretive PrestonWN volunteer, The Great Tyrant - who's been outed as our very own Robyn Talbot with this article on the Meet the Horror Bloggers section of the Zombos blog...

<- that's not Robyn by the way. Go to the article for what he really looks like....

Blog Roundup

It's that time once again: where we delve into the technicolour world of Preston's blogs. This month we'll be turning our attention to the 'new and views' patch of Preston's blogosphere.

First up is Punk Psychologist. Just as the title suggests, this is a blog, maintained by psychology lecturer Mike Eslea, whose twin subjects - psychological musings on themes as varied as mental arithmetic and knife crime, and old-school British punk rock - occupy the majority of the posts. The overall raison d'etre of the blog, however, is to aid science in its defence from the evils of 'pseudoscience'. Eslea variously tackles homeopathic medicine, chiropractors and the great MMR autism hoax in his posts. All of which are, of course, backed up with the sort of linked references you'd expect from a rigorous-minded academic. He even goes so far as to test his theories about acupuncture's efficacy by submitting himself to various needle 'treatments' and filming the results for his followers' edification. Amid all this holding up of quack science to swashbuckling scrutiny, he also finds time to go watch Killing Joke and get his hair dyed.

Missives From Doktor B is also a journalism blog, although with its roots more firmly anchored in the world of Westminster and party politics. Liam Pennington - Doktor B's Clark Kent, if you will - wears his Liberal Democrat allegiances on his sleeve being, as he is, a card-carrying member of the party. This, however, has given readers a more detailed insight into the recent Lib Dem conference than one ordinarily tends to expect from a blog. Elsewhere, 'B' analyses the ongoing campaigns again Barack Obama's plans for healthcare reform orchestrated by Republican rivals, the apparent success in the far-right BNP's campaign for self-legitimisation, and that hottest of topics: Derren Brown's recent lottery 'prediction' stunt.

Andy Dickinson another local lecturer, is similarly rigorous when it comes to including links to other blogs and websites, to the point where some of his posts are composed solely of links to recent articles which he's found interesting. Current areas of interest have been what the future of print journalism (if there is one) would look like, the growing importance of Twitter and, naturally, the influence of bloggers. Handily, there's also tips on how to get the most out of various software and online resources for the would-be blogging journo.

And finally we come to the wonder that is iFranky - a blog by self-confessed 'web nerd', also has plenty of advice for aspiring bloggers looking to establish a greater online presence for their writing: how to reference a blog as part of a CV, a list of indispensable 'Holy Shit' online resource discoveries, and plenty geek-heavy posts about things such as 'visualization graphs'. This blog also takes on a veritable trove of further subjects: current posts have focused on the on the ever-ongoing debate about what the legal status of downloading music should be.

And that's all for now, folks. Join us next time when we explore yet more of the flaura and faunae in Preston's blog-forest!

Spring Clean

Those wise souls among you who read PrestonWN through a reader might want to click through this time, because the PrestonWN team have done a bit of spring cleaning in the side-bar.

We've been up and running since March and a big part of what we've done since then is to find all you writers, bloggers and readers and try and get you talking to each other. At last count (and it will be more, I'm sure, by the time this blog post has been slotted into September's Schedule) we'd found over 120 Preston based bloggers... 120. One hundred and twenty. If we were all in a room at the same time, that would have to be quite a big room. I'm having ideas about a Blogging Word Soup special as we speak...

To make it easier to navigate through all those lovely links we've gone and broken them down into categories for you. At least one of us is a librarian, and found the task strangely soothing.

We've got Creativity - blogs about art, design, crafting, cooking, books, television, music, theatre, bands and photography. Fictional blogs, blogs for web and graphic designers, blogs for fashionistas and lifestyle gurus.

We've got The Great Outdoors - a fairly wide-ranging category (as big as outside is, in fact) that encompasses travel, gardening, environmentalism, conservation, sport, animals and games. We never knew how many of you felt as strongly as you do about our Ribble, and now we do.

We've got Community Blogs, for those of you commenting on the world, politics and society, creating your own digital newsrooms, blogging about your street, neighbourhood or suburb, for activists and commentators of all ilks, and for those of you blogging collectively about your group, church or society.

And finally, we have the Personal Blogs - mums and dads, relationships, your jobs, daily lives, darkest secrets, pets, houses, the world of work and anything else weird and wonderful you see fit to put hand to keyboard about and share with the world.

Now we want to ask you a little favour...

Go off and spread the word. Tell us about blogs we've missed so we can link to them from here. Go and tell other Preston bloggers about us. Have a click through the links, find a new blog to read and tell them where you found them. And, if you must, tell us when we've put you in the wrong category or spelled your name wrong (we are only human...)

That's all. Once you've done that, you can get back to your lurking.

Interview: Ed Walker from Preston Blog

We're assuming, if you're reading this, that you're interested in the nuts and bolts of blogging - choosing a subject, building a readership, networking and promoting yourself. Who better to ask, we thought, than Ed Walker, who writes the locally famous Preston Blog and edits the Preston Twitter directory, among other things. Currently, Ed works at the UCLAN Students' Union as Web & Digital marketing co-ordinator and is also a trustee for Mencap Liverpool. We roped him in to answer a few questions about blogging.

PWN: Hi Ed. Thanks for coming. Lets get the ball rolling . How did it all begin? What inspired you to start Preston Blog?

EW: It was a bit of a New Year's resolution. I was sick of mates bitching about how poor the LEP was and how there wasn't anything that really represented Preston. I saw a gap for a decent blog that encompassed loads of different stuff about Preston and really connected with a community. I also took inspiration from St Albans Blog run by Robin Hamman (ex-BBC head of social media) and thought if St Albans can do it then why can't Preston?

PWN: And what's been the highlight of the experience so far?

EW: Opening my inbox and every day having an offer from someone for a guest post, a lead for a story, an image or simply someone just saying how much they enjoyed reading the blog. Oh, and the Sunday just gone when the blog got 271 views in a day! I nearly fell off my chair.

PWN: Has the project taken off as you expected it to? Have there been any 'blips'?

EW: It's surpassed all expectations. I started the blog just under a month ago and it's just gone from strength to strength. I really have been taken aback by the level of support I've received from all the readers and it seems that my hunch was right, there really is the demand out there for something like Preston Blog on the web. Blips, there's been the odd evening where I've had no idea what to write about but then something pops up on twitter or drops in my inbox and suddenly I'm up and running.

PWN: Do you do it all on your own? Are there opportunities for budding bloggers and web journalists to get involved?

EW: I had an email from a student journalist at UCLAN, Kirsty Higginson who said she wanted to help out. I asked her what she was interested in and she said music and films, so she's now music, films and entertainments correspondent - so hopefully she'll post regularly and that takes the pressure off me a little bit. I've also had some guest posters now, but basically Preston Blog is there for anyone to contribute to and I've had a really great mix of people so far.

PWN: So, for people who might be thinking about submitting some work to you - what do you think makes writing for a blog distinctive - different from other kinds of journalism or non fiction writing?

EW: I think it's distinctive because it really is your own voice - if you've got something to say you can say it. There's no newspaper owner, book publisher, PR man etc wanting to change this bit, take that angle. If you want to say something you can go right ahead and just say it - within reason of course.

PWN: And along the same lines, what turns you off blogs? What's likely to make you want to click away and go and read something else?

EW: If it hasn't been updated for a long time. If the only posts written are 'Today I went to the shop and I bought some eggs and then I read the paper and I thought it was good...'. Blogs aren't there as a diary. The only time that they should be used as a diary is if you're someone famous or do a very important job and then a diary is interesting.

PWN: If you could give advice to someone about to start a blog of their own, what would it be? EW: Just do it. Get your blog started, get posting and that's when it all really starts. Don't spend too long on the design, colours etc - just get your content. Also make sure you are commenting on other people's blogs and reading around your subject, this will get people coming to your blog. And stick at it, at the start you'll look at your blog views and despair that 8 people a day are looking at it (that's what it was like when I started Preston Blog) but I got out there, talked about, made connections, begged some guest posts off people and then it took off.

PWN: And 'a little bird' (joke - birds, tweet, twitter! Get it? No? Sorry) tells me you're planning an event sometime soon. Fancy plugging it here?

EW: Preston Blog is running a 'tweetup' - hosted by Stage 9 Marketing and held atthe New Continental pu b, in the Snug room, on Tuesday 17th March 2009 from 7 PM. You can regis ter beforehand to reserve your place and also claim a free drink if you're in the first 50 to register. Preston Tweetup is a chance to come together and share your views on an important issue about the city, either in person, via twitter, or both!

PWN: You'll have to fill some of us luddites in on what a tweet up actually is. We know, because of your famous Twitter Directory you're fond of twitter, so I'm presuming its something to do with that?

EW: A tweetup allows you to bring a laptop/mobile phone on the night and connect to wireless and then contribute, via twitter, the micro-blogging site, both online and in person.

PWN: And there'll be technical support on the night for those new to social networking?

EW: Absolutely. And go here if you want more information.

PWN: Any final thoughts about the writing 'scene' in Preston?

EW: It's quality and not quantity that counts. I don't think there's been any effort to really connect writers in Preston and create a 'scene' so to speak - but there's a big university, with courses in English/creative writers, there are libraries and novelists, and if you can get these people talking and working on things then suddenly there's going to be a buzz. I don't think we should compare ourselves to other cities, or worry about them for that matter, let's build a community in and around Preston and then hopefully there will be some great stuff produced.

PWN: Thanks for coming Ed, and good luck with the night. We'll be there, and you can follow Preston Writing Network on twitter and keep up with us in real time by clicking here.

The Preston Tweet up logo was designed and created by Kerry Sholicar, a graphic design graduate from UCLAN.

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