The city is changing fast, but can local people in the blogosphere keep up?
I have recently been increasing the number of RSS feeds that I subscribe to and decided to look for the best Sheffield blogs on the internet. Where are they all?
Half an hour on Google and I’ve come up with a couple of aggregated feeds from WordPress and Google, news blogs from established institutions like Sheffield University, one or two organisations such as Creative Sheffield and some less local ones covering the whole of Yorkshire.
Plus, there are a wide selection of feeds from Sheffield Newspapers that put the single news feed on bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire to shame (the local BBC site includes a page of Radio Sheffield presenter blogs but with no feeds…what is the point?)
These are all well and good for controlled press releases and news, but where is the heart and soul of the city represented online? Sure, there will be plenty of Sheffielders writing subject-specific blogs about their own lives, but given the size of the city, the levels of civic pride that exist amongst locals and the snowballing redevelopment and regeneration, I would expect there to be more out there on the general topic of Sheffield and how the city is changing.
Perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough or perhaps they aren’t indexed very well in search engines. Either way please leave a comment with a link to any good Sheffield blogs and in the meantime I will continue to write this one.
Three-Legged-Cat
/ 8 April, 2008I had exactly the same experience. I have searched for blogs about Sheffield, using search engines, Technorati, Bloglines etc but without success.
I have found various Sheffield based bloggers writing about football or personal/general stuff, but blogs that are actually about Sheffield seem to be thin on the ground. Other cities seem to have lots of people writing about them or photoblogging. Maybe Sheffield does as well, but I’ve not found them yet. The solution (for me) was to start a Sheffield blog of my own.
This blog’s great (I’ll definitely be linking to you!). There is also a nice history forum at http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk.
the author
/ 9 April, 2008Well that makes two of us! I am linking to your blog, too. What is the difference between your two blogs?
Three-Legged-Cat
/ 9 April, 2008There’s not much difference really. On three-legged-cat I ramble on about anything and everything, including Sheffield. I decided to put all the Sheffield posts in one place without all the other random stuff and nonsense, but with Sheffield links, blogroll etc in the sidebar (I haven’t got around to that bit yet), so I set up a second blog to do that.
I’ve linked them together because it seemed sensible to have one set of comments for each post – although it’s my Sheffield posts that get the fewest comments, because most of the people who read my blog don’t live anywhere near Sheffield.
Barrington
/ 28 August, 2008Perhaps Sheffield folk are out having a life instead of sitting at a PC typing about global warming and the price of advocados.