That London

If today is Friday April 29th then it's the day of the UK Blog Awards at which the Coronation Street Blog is shortlisted in two categories.

Since setting up the Coronation Street Blog back in 2007 it's the first time I've entered it for any awards. 

You can read my thoughts on the awards ceremony, the voting process and the whole thing here.

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I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

The Coronation Street Blog and me

Not so much of a blog post, more of a brain dump so excuse me if I prattle on but if this thought doesn't get out of my head it just might start making me, ooh, quite cross.

You may know I run a Coronation Street fan website at the Coronation Street Blog.  It's popular, it's successful and it's a not for profit site. There are a few Google ads on there as I wondered if putting Google ads on a website made it go up the search ratings any and it seemed to do the trick and so the ads stayed. 

There's a team of us Corrie fans working on the site, I'm the editor and it's 'my' blog if you like but I can't take the credit for making it as popular as it is. I just steer it and guide it and encourage Corrie fans to join in if they can write well and take the blog in a direction I like, as its founder and editor. It's irreverent, funny, sometimes scathing about the show we all love but we never disrespect Corrie and love the show to bits.

But because the Corrie blog is now so popular, and its feed goes out to as many places as I can possibly send it, it's being used as a news source itself.  National online media companies and tabloid newspapers are using us as a news source without giving us credit.  One hugely popular soaps writer with an enormous following online emailed me once to say thank you for the blog; without it she couldn't write her monthly soaps column for a national paper. And the soaps editor of the UK's most popular entertainment website emailed me to say the blog was so brilliant, he'd be mad not to use it a source for Corrie news.

Yes of course I'm flattered. But it rankles. All they, and others who use the site as a news source, have to do is put a link from their work to our blog.

Less of a problem (because it's so poor) but something else that rankles nonetheless is that a for-profit Corrie blog run by a limited company keeps their eye on us too, following our lead, trying to do what we do. They're not a fan site but pretend that they are, they're set up to make cash, a business, but have no acumen apart from rising from bankrupt ashes yet still owing their bloggers hundreds of pounds. They're also good at copying and pasting and stealing ideas, and not just from us. Shame on them.

Anyway, we're not asking for payment from the media who use the blog as a source. I don't need the money and I don't want the Coronation Street Blog to be ripped full of ads. I've always thought that if there's an ad on your site and a user clicks on it, you've failed.  The job of a website editor is to keep the user on the site, keep them informed, entertained, interested not clicking on an advert for a new phone.  I joined the internet back in 1993 in the days before adverts, before commercialism took over online. I was a riotgrrl and there's a part of me that still is.

There's a certain flattery I guess in being used as a news source, it confirms what we know - that we're good, ahead of the curve and that's what makes us so popular with Corrie fans worldwide. We have up to half a million views per month, so I know we're doing it right.  I also know ITV keeps their eye on us and allows us to exist in the way that we do. We're like an online Coronation Street fan club and I love what I do. I just wish those who used us, took advantage of us, had the decency to admit that they like us too. As I said above, all they have to do is put a link in to the blog from their online or printed work.

It's easy to remember, we're the Coronation Street Blog.

Corrie paste and copy blog

As regular readers will know, I blog about this, that and Coronation Street. Way back in 1995 I started writing Coronation Street Weekly Updates for a fan group online. Word of the updates spread and at its peak, there were 6,000 email subscribers to the updates until the email server collapsed under the strain of the weight and the group moved to the more stable platform of Yahoogroups. The updates featured on all of the Coronation Street fan sites and garnered some great praise over the years. They even have their own website.

Fast forward 10 years to 2005 when commercial blogging company Shiny Media launched Corrieblog. Ashley Norris, one of their three Directors at the time, asked me to be editor of this new Coronation Street blog, based on the witty, weekly Corrie updates I’d been writing for 10 years.

I edited and wrote for Shiny Media's Corrieblog for two years, all the time continuing to write my Coronation Street Weekly Updates for Corrie fan sites and the email subscription list too. I asked Shiny Media if I could bring the Coronation Street Weekly Updates to Corrieblog and they agreed. I posted the weekly update as an extra blog post in addition to the 5 blog posts a day I was paid to write.

In 2007 after two years with Corrieblog, I gave it all up. Before I left, I brought in a new writer who is still editing the site. But while I have left Corrieblog behind me, the new editor carries on writing with much the same style, tone and ideas as I always did. Flattering? Possibly.

What irks is that my Coronation Street Weekly Updates remain a part of Corrieblog long after I left blogging for cash far behind me. They’re now called Coronation Street Weekly Reviews but are written in much the same style and tone as my own. Despite repeated requests to the editor and to Shiny Media that a weekly post in this format no longer be included on a commercial site, my requests have been ignored.

When I handed over editing Corrieblog to the new person, I gave her as much help as I could over a period of weeks as she found her blogging feet, handing over pages of contacts and sources for stories, passing on emails from PRs companies and even media companies looking for a Corrie fan to interview.

However, another request last week to reconsider using the Coronation Street Weekly Updates on Corrieblog has gone unacknowledged again by both its editor and by the one remaining director of Shiny Media, Chris Price.

You're probably reading this thinking that I'm being too sensitive and over protective of these Corrie weekly updates... but after 14 years of writing them and developing the fan community around them, wouldn't you be the same?

I said no, no, no

One of the joys of blogging is to say what you want and type what you like. The success of my other blog, the Coronation Street Blog has meant this week I was been approached by people wanting to get in on the act. Yes, they tried to make me blog for money, but I said no, no, no.

First off came a flattering offer of writing for a well known telly blog that I like and read often - and getting paid for it - but I said no. I've had enough of blogging for cash after doing Corrieblog for two years. And then came an offer from an international company asking if they could give me cash in exchange for ad space on my Coronation Street blog. Again, I said no. I'm blogging for no-one but myself these days and that's the way I like it.