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Hastings & St. Leonards on-line community newspaper

Meet the HOTTIES:
Open meeting on Mon 24 Sept at the White Rock Hotel, 7.30

On Monday 24 September HOT is holding an open meeting where you are invited to meet the team behind Hastings OnlineTimes – our local community website.

HOT was launched three years ago during Coastal Currents, but it is only in the last year that it has developed an action-packed ‘What’s On’ calendar and a regular stream of stories. HOT journalist Erica Smith said: “The opening of the Jerwood in March resulted in our best daily count of visitors and stories read, and since then our readership has grown steadily.”

HOT started with an initial grant of £800.00, plus support from local businesses and individuals at a launch event in 2009. Since then, HOT has run on the goodwill and donations from the team of 15 or so volunteers who are involved, plus a £100.00 donation from local party organisers ‘Outrageous Decadence’.

The meeting on Monday is an opportunity for you to meet the HOT team, and find out more about the publication. We are very keen to welcome more citizen journalists on board.

HOT has just been awarded a £250.00 grant from Gensing Ward Community Development panel to help train residents of Gensing to write articles for the website. “We have already trained up one excellent new journalist from the Gensing area, but we would love to hear from more local residents who would like to get involved. Learning to write and upload your stories is not difficult and the HOT team are very supportive”, said Erica Smith.

HOT are also keen to talk to any sponsors or potential advertisers. Up until now, there has been no advertising on the site, but in order to become self-sustaining, this will change.

“In the same way that local individuals and businesses paid a small amount of money to advertise in our launch brochure three years ago, we are asking people to ‘sponsor’ the website by taking out a small advertisement for their business”. HOT has a constitution and runs as a small charity with its own bank account. Any money from sponsorship will go directly towards maintaining and developing the website”, said Erica Smith.

If you are interested in finding out more about HOT – as a potential journalist or sponsor – please email: enquiries001@hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk to let us know you would like to attend the meeting on Monday 24 September.

If you’re enjoying HOT and would like us to continue providing fair and balanced reporting on local matters please consider making a donation. Click here to open our PayPal donation link. Thank you for your continued support!

Posted 20:22 Thursday, Sep 13, 2012 In: The HOT Planet

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