The lovely Sarah Hartley, who sadly for us is not based in Manchester any more, has instead been beavering away at Guardian HQ training up three so called ‘beatbloggers’ to usher in the future of local journalism.

Yesterday Sarah announced that they will be hitting their beats in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds as of next week with blogs to be launched in the first half of this year.

This is a really interesting project which the wider journalism community is watching with bated breath. Sarah describes them as ‘talented journalists’ so I for one can’t wait to read their hyper -local blogs.

On the subject of local journalism, I was chatting to the director of a local charity this week who was concerned that the local media didn’t seem interested in the great hands on work they do in the community with groups who generally don’t get a lot of good press.

Maybe hiring talented local bloggers is one way busy news organisations can penetrate deaper into the community they serve without adding massive overheads.

I really hope the bloggers can get onto their beats and into the lives of their readers and wish Sarah and her team lots of luck.

Since we first met Louise Duerr of BabyDeli last month it’s been baby central here at Democracy Towers. Which might explain Jen’s Facebook status ‘it’s all about the babies’ to those of you who were alarmed and confused.

A couple of my close friends have little ones, and I’m ashamed to say that the moment the baby pops out the friend tends to pop out of the nights at the pub and trips to the cinema. I’m sure this is as much to do with them as it is with me but I’ve been finding all our intensive baby research fascinating.

I’ve always imagined having a baby meant your social contact was limited to a little squishy blob and cbeebies but it seems not. Mum’s are making the most of the internet to chat to each other; and mostly not even about their babies.

This month though seven lucky headed off to Disney Land Florida for a week, as chronicled by the very excited Linda of influential parent blog ‘You’ve got your hands full’. The trip was organised by Marketing Agency Digital Outlook who are setting up a directory of mum bloggers.

It’s interesting that they’re using this method of pulling together mum bloggers in one place but I wonder whether it’s just a plan to cut out the leg work and not get truly involved in the mum blogging community.

I’m really looking forward to introducing Louise to the various mum blogs and networks and I think as a real mum with a passion for healthy baby food she’ll fit right in; after all, as we always say ‘no-one likes a broadcaster’.