About us

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Our mission is to provide easy access to a comprehensive range of regularly updated local news and blog sites focused around specific geographical areas in a simple and easy to scan format: to profile a diverse range of local independent voices and help them gain a wider audience by directing web traffic to them and so facilitate debate around local issues and strengthen local online communities.

What we do We maintain lists of third party websites which we preselect for their value and relevance to our audience in each geographical area. When new content is published on these sites it may get aggregated depending upon its relevance determined by the rules set in our automated filtration systems.

Dispassionate We aim to be politically neutral and provide links to a range of news and opinion websites whose views may not reflect our own. We are not responsible for the unedited extracts of displayed aggregated content, or for you choosing to follow the hyperlinks we provide or for the complete content on the source sites.

Fairness We aim to take an ethical and transparent approach to aggregation by selecting only a small extract of unedited content to indicate what a story is about, then provide a direct deep and specific hyperlink off to the source website which we aim to credit in full. We do not claim copyright of aggregated content. We do not accept payment for aggregated links but we do accept payment for advertising.

Privacy We do not collect information which can identify the individual personal details of users accessing our sites, or identify the personal details of individual bloggers aggregated on our sites, beyond what either choose to make public or actively give us. You can read how this site uses cookies here.

Your involvement as both readers and producers is important to us and we welcome your views. The development of this free aggregation service is largely dependent upon you telling us about new websites or blogs. If you find your views are not being represented and you have something to say about your neighbourhood, then get blogging or send us a link to a local blog’s RSS feed. You can find more about being aggregated in our guide for bloggers here.

By reading this site you agree to our terms here.

Mark Blackstock established the Walsall YamYam in March 2009 so he could keep in touch with what was happening in his home town, and the associated websites have grown from there. He has lived around the West Midlands and London for the past 30 years working in print and broadcast journalism. He spent ten years at the Telegraph where he was managing editor of the UK’s first online newspaper – launched in November 1994 as Electronic Telegraph. Mark currently provides consultancy on editorial systems development, most recently for NGN and Times newspapers.

Paul Daniel is a freelance Yahoo! Pipes consultant who built and maintains the network’s feeds. Paul worked for a number of years running regional events such as the Ideal Home exhibitions before moving into IT.

Tim Brown is a freelance developer who built and maintains the network’s infrastructure and oversees all technical development. Having worked in banking and national newspapers he is now a director of Careimages which provides a royalty-free photography library for local authorities and the third sector.

Lee Jordan has a background in web development and produced the original themes and site structures during migration of the site to WordPress in 2009. He provided consultancy and implemented social media optimisation (SMO) for the new sites. Lee is a keen photographer and engages with the online community around Birmingham and the Black Country.

The YamYam, The Staffie, The Brummie and The PeepingTom websites have been helped by a range of other community bloggers, tweeters and readers who have given time and resources but most notably production developer Trevor Rees who co-produced the site for a time back in the days when it was edited by humans.

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