Frequently Asked Questions
What is Neighborhoodr, and why should we care?
Neighborhoodr (main page here) is a network of Tumblr blogs set up by Anthony DeRosa (Reuters, SoupSoup) and Richard Blakeley (Thrillist, This Is Why You’re Fat). The goal of Neighborhoodr is to have a localized center to Tumblr where readers can share content about news, upcoming events, and cool multimedia related to where they are. There is a Neighborhoodr page for every major city in the United States, several international cities, and a bunch of small towns wherever someone wants to start one (see an incomplete list in the right column of this page).
Why Tumblr? Why not Facebook or Twitter, where there are more users?
Tumblr is a much more multimedia-friendly site, and submissions are easier, which gives Neighborhoodr blogs the ability to be user-generated. Also, Tumblr is big enough to spread the word, but small enough to still have an intimate feel to it.
Who are you?
The editorial “we” is used throughout Neighborhoodr-AthensOhio, but at this point there is just one person regularly posting content to this blog. My name is Jason, I’ve lived in Athens since 2006, I graduated from OU in 2010, and my diet has become much more fun since pizza became a vegetable.
If anyone can post to Neighborhoodr blogs, why are you the only one doing it on this one?
No one else has expressed interest in helping me, but I’d welcome assistance because I won’t be doing it forever, at least not at this volume. If you’d like to help, just start submitting cool stuff.
How do I submit something? What am I allowed to submit?
At the top of every page of every Neighborhoodr blog, there is a submissions widget, but it sometimes only works from the home page. Or, from the dashboard, at the bottom of most posts you’ll also see a “Submit” link, and you can also just click here. You may submit any text, photo, quote, link, or video related to Athens, Ohio. I welcome any event announcements, local photos or videos, Facebook/Twitter screen caps, and anything else you’d like to share with local Tumblr users. The more, the merrier. If you’re not a Tumblr user or don’t want to associate your submission(s) with your Tumblr account, you can still submit if you provide your name and email address. Here are the terms of submission, written by Tumblr.
How do you decide what to post? Where do you get your content, and how do you decide who to reblog?
I post any web content relating to Athens County (including these places) from The Athens Messenger, The Athens NEWS, The Post, WOUB’s news department, The New Political, WATH/WXTQ’s news department, Backdrop Magazine, Speakeasy Magazine, and ACRN. If a story is printed/aired but not put online by the media outlet, I don’t post it because I’d have nothing to link to. Also, if a story isn’t readily available from their news page, I may not find it until it’s old news. Additionally, I subscribe to Google Alerts for “athens ohio” and I post selectively from those results. This helps me find out when local stories are making state or national headlines. I also regularly check the Reddit page for Athens and saved Flickr and Twitter searches. As far as reblogs go, I track “athens,” “athens oh,” “ohio university,” and “ou” on Tumblr, and I then reblog share-worthy posts with those tags. Finally, I occasionally share content from people I personally follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
You must spend all day on this stuff.
Nah, I do one main sit-down session with it during my lunch break, and then occasionally add things throughout the rest of the day as they pop up. It’s common practice for Neighborhoodr blogs to use Tumblr’s queue (when it works), so posts will publish any time between 10am and 10pm, whether I’m sitting here or not.
What does “ICYMI” mean?
“ICYMI” is short for “In case you missed it,” and is generally used when a story is being re-posted. On this blog, if you see ICYMI, it means another local publication has already covered the story, and clicking on ICYMI will open a new tab with the older post. For example, if The Athens Messenger covers a story on Tuesday, I’ll post it then, and if The Athens NEWS covers that same story when they publish on Thursday, I’ll link back to The Messenger’s story with “ICYMI.”
Why don’t you post entire articles from The Athens Messenger? I don’t want to buy a subscription just to read one interesting article.
Social media is for sharing content, not plagiarizing it. Common practice on Tumblr is to share the first three paragraphs and then link to the rest. If The Athens Messenger thinks it should charge readers for full access to their content, they have the right to do that. Remember, you can view 8 free articles per month on their site, and that is monitored using your browser’s cookies, so it is possible to view more articles if you know what you’re doing with cookies.
So do these other publications object to you using their content?
I don’t know; I haven’t asked them, but I’ve been doing this blog or a similar one since April 2011. I don’t make any money doing this, but I assume that if a publication has a problem with me directing traffic to its site, it’ll let me know.
If this isn’t for your own personal gain, why do you always put a “follow” link at the bottom of your posts?
If a tree falls in the woods, etc. It never hurts, and that tag makes rebloggers think twice before stripping the source. Plus, it’d be pretty cool if this Neighborhoodr blog had more followers than some major city’s Neighborhoodr blog. I don’t have that information, but Anthony and Richard do.
Why don’t you include more content from Speakeasy and other OU student publications?
Just because a publication is run by OU students for OU students, that doesn’t make it local content. I don’t care what some magazine major thinks of the latest box office hit or Kanye West album. I have recently started checking Speakeasy, Backdrop, and ACRN daily for their rare local features.
Why don’t you post more sports stories?
If I thought I could do it correctly, I would. With the amount of OU and high school sports stories that are published every day, it’s hard to keep up with that on top of the rest of the news. If you’d like to do a daily Sports Roundup post for this blog, let me know.
Why doesn’t anyone follow your Twitter?
That’s easy: I don’t tweet enough and I don’t interact/retweet at all from that account. This is first and foremost a Tumblr blog, not a Twitter feed, but cross-promotion is great too, so if you’d like to help by following local Twitter accounts and engaging with them properly through @AthensHoodr, I’d be more than happy to share the Twitter duties. Again, just email me and we’ll make it happen.
If you want so much help with this, why not ask OU? Surely the J-School would have people willing to intern.
I’m not interested in running a student organization (been there, done that). If you wanted to help with this blog and try to use that as internship credit, I’d be willing to fill out whatever reference papers you needed, but you should probably try to set your bar a little higher if you’re trying to build your resume.
Why don’t you post much on the weekends? That’s when I spend the most time on Tumblr.
The local media outlets don’t post regular web content on weekends. I’ll occasionally do special themed weekends (such as Old Photos Weekend), but come on. Go outside or something.
You didn’t answer my question here.
I’d be happy to fix that. You can use Tumblr’s ask function (subject to Tumblr’s submission guidelines) or email me (better for private inquiries) with any questions, comments, or suggestions on how this blog can be done better.
