The brief: BBC linking out to hyperlocals, the changing face of towns and cities and how to remove Breivik

Here's a selection of links and tweets I've spotted in the last 24 hours, it's mainly a hyperlocal and regional media flavour to today. Plus the Breivik trial and how one site in Norway is using the web to offer readers something different.

Are our towns and cities too big for a local paper?

Really thought provoking piece by Matthew Engel on the FT about the changing face of the local press, and he hits on something which perhaps away from the job cuts, digital changes and restructures is at the heart of all this. Our towns and cities themselves are changing. People are more transient, and are not in their town/city in the same way. They may commute, they may work part of the week away, and so community to them is something very different. Local publishers jobs are to enable whichever community is there at that time time and being of value to them - whether this is print, online, tablet, mobile or any other device. The BBC regional news sites and linking out

Andy Mabbett blogs about trying to get the BBC to link to his hyperlocal site and it's positive to see Robin Morley from the BBC Regions looking at trying to increase the corporation's linking out. It's always been a bug bear of mine that Blog Preston (disclosure: The hyperlocal site that I founded and run for Preston) isn't linked to off the BBC Lancashire page and yet another random site in Ormskirk is. It might not be a huge boost in traffic, but it does help with the site's ranking on Google and visibility to receive this semi-official nod from the BBC. Let's hope Robin and his team can clarify when the BBC should be linking out.

How my successful hyperlocal improved my job prospects

This cheeky headlined post from Sarah Hartley followed Richard Jones - who runs Saddleworth News - posting on the BBC College of Journalism about his time running a hyperlocal site for Saddleworth. Richard is a top journalist and his Saddleworth site is fantastic, but he couldn't make it pay. But then his time doing that opened up other doors. I would definitely back this and say I doubt I'd be doing what I'm doing for Trinity Mirror if I hadn't of started Blog Preston. That cold Sunday afternoon in January over three years ago when I switched on Wordpress and started blogging about the city of Preston definitely helped shape where I've got to.

Online, you don't always have to 'go big'

You often hear editors and news editors say "let's go big on this" and suddenly 2/3 reporters are working on the same story, there's video, pictures, timelines, PA coverage and loads more on a huge breaking news story. We make the assumption our readership cares, and no doubt many of them do, but for many readers it is overkill. They just want the basics and to carry on reading about Newcastle United's attempts to make it into Europe (I'm a Spurs fan, so no, they won't do it). This Norwegian paper has struck on a potentially brilliant way of doing it, you get to see the rest of the site without the big story getting in the way by hitting a little button on the masthead saying "remove all mention of Anders Behring Breivik".