Transforming Barnet - An Announcement

If we look at the extraordinary story of the Barnet Eye since its inception in October 2008, it is truly amazing to think that the whole thing started by accident. If Barnet Council had not relentlessly applied pressure on the Hendon Times to remove my community blog from their website, the whole thing may never have happened. Since then, the blog has become a focal point for local people to rally around.

As the months have progressed we've built up a fantastic team of guest bloggers, guest contributors, leakers in the council and most importantly readers of the blog. Whilst the traditional media has struggled to adapt to the internet and local papers have trimmed their editorial staff and editorial content, the online blogosphere in Barnet has thrived.

It is truly amazing that a local blog, deailing with local issues gets over 1,000 hits a day. We guesstimate that sometime towards the end of May we will get our 500,000th hit (as recorded by Blogger stats, which started in June 2009, when we were getting a mere 500 hits a day).

This has not gone unnoticed. Since it's inception, the Barnet Eye has had approaches from all manner of people making all manner of offers to the Barnet Eye for our services. These have always been refused, up until now, due to the fact that we already have a business we are passionately committed to and we don't do this for the cash.

We have recently been approached by a group of social entrepreneurs, who have serious financial clout and are interested in the difference we've made. Regular readers will know how many issues that would never have seen the light of day have been unearthed by the Barnet Eye and our fellow Barnet bloggers. They have, quite correctly, identified the fact that with proper resources and a proper editorial staff, the Barnet Eye could actually transform the whole social and media scene in Barnet.

Although we do our best, just suppose for a second that the Barnet Eye could cover everything, from under 9's youth football to church choirs, to local gigs to local gardening tips? All of these things would be possible with a small amount of investment. Just imagine if we were able to offer commissions to local people to write investigative stories? As so many local people already check this blog, with zero budget, imagine what we could do with a proper team behind us?

We have a plan. We have the backing and sometime in the next week, we will be making an announcement which will show our commitment to raising the bar in Barnet and showing exactly what the blogosphere can do if it is properly resourced. We believe we can transform Barnet and we have people working with us who are prepared to back up words with hard cash. Watch this space.