onionbagblog

Here’s a project that has been ticking over in beta for a couple of months now, and one that I am formally launching on the first working day of the New Year:

Welcome to the Colchester Chronicle - hurrah!

I guess The Chronic is the big brother for m’blog. It is an online project that I have been considering for a number of months, and one that hopefully just seems to be right for 2012. Colchester is a town that is going through a tremendous growth and transition. A hyperlocal blog would seem to make sense to capture what is happening in the borough.

It is no secret that I have been talking to different organisations and folk within Sunny Colch all about The Chronic. We have been planning what the blog can cover, how to implement this and to look towards such twaddle as a sustainable future.

But ultimately it all comes down to just doing it. You can bang on endlessly in pubs about what you want to do, but just getting your hands dirty and giving it a go is always the best option. I’m not afraid of failure; I have only bought up the domain for a twelve-month period…

And so how does The Chronic differ to my hyperlocal activities here on m’blog? Good question, and one that I have bored many folk with over a half pint of shandy in The Greyhound over recent weeks.

M’blog is all about me - The Chronic is something slightly grander. I have always defiantly turned down commercial opportunities that have come my way for m’blog. Seeing as though the content is mainly all about me, it would feel like I’m pimping myself out to the highest bidder.

A heavy time investment is needed however for The Chronic to work. Current paid for projects might have to be scaled down. An income replacement would be required. But that’s all for the medium to long-term future. Just finding my feet out in Sunny Colch and seeing what kind of editorial opportunities are out there is my main concern right now.

The omnipresent twitter and facebook boxes have both been ticked; there’s some sexy RSS action over here if you are that way inclined. But ultimately it’s still all about the hyperlocal for me. I’m just casting my online circle in the sand a little further a field.

You can take the boy out of the back streets of Sunny Stockwell / Wivenhoe, but…

Blah blah blah.