Hashtag Linking: Terms of reference for linking from our live modules

Matthew Barraclough provides an update on the project to introduce hyperlocal news stories into the BBC Local Live feeds. 

Over the last few months BBC English Regions has been adding a live updates page to its local BBC News websites across England.

The live update pages are designed to be a real-time feed of short updates about a given area: links to BBC stories, useful info such as traffic and weather, other relevant BBC content and social media posts. There are currently 24 in operation with the network across England with a total of 42 areas due to be served by June of 2016.

In recent months and following discussions with industry partners on the Local Journalism Working Group, we have started including updates from other media providers in our live feeds too. This means that those using the BBC's news services online get a richer picture of what’s happening in their local area and the other media providers get some of those BBC users’ attention.

We call it "hashtag linking" because our partners use a Twitter hashtag to draw attention to their stories. This initiative is just one of a number of things we’re trying at the moment to work more collaboratively with all parts of the local news landscape. 

Links from the live feed are in addition to those on the automated Other local news sites section or those carried in the body of our stories. The big advantage from our partners’ point of view is that they actively recommend to us which stories they want us to promote, as opposed to an algorithm choosing for us. We carry links to news operations large and small – from regional to hyperlocal – what counts is that the content is interesting and adds value to our users’ experience.

We’ve been doing it now informally for nine months and learning as we go along. But for the benefit of partners already involved - and anyone who’ll take part in future - we have produced some terms of reference and you can find them in the Terms of Reference.

If you are an online local news provider and would like your content to be considered as part of this project, then you can contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

Matthew Barraclough is Editor, English Regions

• Matthew wrote about the first meeting of the Hyperlocal Forum in which 'linking out' was discussed in November last year. 
• Read BBC seeks the views of websites, community news and bloggers by David Holdsworth, plus Why we're building stronger partnerships with local media from September.