Is the future of newspapers Hyperlocalism?

According to the Knight Citizen News Network there are over 450 U.S. citizen media sites providing local news in communities from Juneau, Alaska to Coconut Grove, Florida.

So is this the way newspapers have to go in order to grab new readers and create a brand for themselves? Does this mean that newspaper will cut back on their coverage of international news?

These are the questions that PBS FRONTLINE: news war recently tackled in Part 3 chapter 23.

My take is more local news is a step in the right direction, especially if it is done in a way that encourages readers to send in user generated content to turn the newspaper website into a forum for conversation in the community. Newspapers can use "hyperlocalism" to allow readers to interact with each other through their websites in new ways to combine their resources and make sure important news stories see the light of day that are often ignored.

Focusing on the more local news gives newspapers a chance to stick out among all the media organizations as the best place for news on their hometown. To give readers and advertises that the place to go for local news in Washington D.C. is the Metro - washingtonpost website. Since most major cities like Los Angeles only have one or two major local papers this is an easy way for only paper in a particular city to compete with the other local news outlets for advertising and for an audience. In the battle for local video advertising the newspapers are beating TV stations.

Since hyperlocalism are popping up every day newspaper are now competing with local blogs, and citizen journalism sites as more of their readers move online to get their news. The big fat cat print monopolies have to adapt to the changing market being a good local newspaper is not enough you have to have a great website to act as forum of the community.


The new design for USATODAY.com is attracting more people to register on the site since it give readers a chance to see how many people recommend and commented on a stories and to actually read the comments of their fellow readers. At the very least the other major newspapers should follow the USA Today's lead and give readers a chance to see readers comment on stories and search for the stories with most comments. Focusing on local coverage is one unique way that newspapers can better serve their core audience and argue that in the information age that their is room for local newspapers in American.

The one down side of this is some people thing that only to beef up the local news is to shut down international bureaus and cut foreign correspondents. After all do you really need more then one newspaper reporter in Baghdad covering the war in Iraq at the same time?

My answer to them is yes we need several.

Especially in such a dangerous place where everyone is trying to spin the story for their advantage. The fact is the media have made several mistakes in their coverage of Iraq and the lack of security throughout Iraq makes it very hard for any one reporter to do the hard hitting investigative pieces that will allow readers to see what is really going on on the ground beyond the number of casualties from the latest suicide bombing.

What do the average Iraqis think they can secure the country without the U.S.? Are leaders throughout the Middle East denouncing the violence or are they secretly encouraging and funding it to deliver a blow to the America's ego? You need several reporters competing together to answer these questions from ever angle.

Europe thinks newspapers are not dead.

Those crazy Europeans they think that Newspaper is not dead. Meanwhile all the big newspapers corporations in America with any sense believes that only three papers (USA Today, Washington Post, NY times) are need for the U.S. and the Chicago tribune ain't one of them.

How can newspapers survive in the age of Internet with no classified section? fulling ad revenue for the print edition? And fulling circulation?

Bruno Patino, director of online projects at France's Le Monde said that the Internet would allow newspapers to focus on in-depth investigations as the web site focuses on audiences that demands up-to-the-minute-news: translation: to find who is the dad of Anna Nicole's baby the minute they announced it check the website to find out more about how the Veterans hospital system is failing our soldiers when they return from combat read the first in a series of articles on the website updated every so often as we get it. On the Internet 10,000 words costs the same as 10 words. TV and radio still really heavily on newspaper to provide in depth analysis on major stories and so do the readers of newspapers.

like the U.S. Europe is facing fulling newspaper circulation;

The most recent figures available from the World Association of Newspapers showed that daily paid newspapers in the European Union saw a 0.61 percent drop in circulation in 2005, and a 5.26 percent fall over the five years through 2005.


Europe's largest newspaper Berlin based Axel Springer will spend $2.67 billion to expand its digital offerings both in Germany and throughout the world.

Zach Leonard of the The Times of London said that writers will need to learn to write better headlines since search engines tend to reduce stories to their first 200 characters. The Times also encourages journalists to fill out articles with video and audio content.

Another drawback of reading the newspaper online. the computer reads the headlights for you and it does know about everything that you are interested in unless you add 30 or 40 unique topics to the Google News.

Ad revenue online is rising too:

Advertising online is a strong lure for newspapers. In Britain, for example, online advertising rose 41 percent in 2006 to reach more than 2 billion pounds, giving it an 11.4 percent share of the market, just higher than that of the newspapers. That compared to 7.8 percent in 2005, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau report which was compiled by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Center.

So if you will not throw away your subscription to the Chicago Tribune I will not tell my mother to stop her subscription with the Los Angeles Times. News Paper is not dead we just need to figure out how to move the ads from print to online. In the end content, in dept content is king. this is what makes us unique and what will keep us going well into the 21st century. those pin heads who say only three papers should exists hate capitalism because they are against competition and have lost sight to the importance of local news.

Watch PBS: FRONTLINE:news war: part III Chapter 21 on my precious Los Angeles Times that I grew up with.

Why blog when you can Vlog?

Mefeedia just realized there first "State of the Vlogosphere" report which found that the size of its index gre to 20,913 Video blog in January 2007 from just 617 in January 2005.

Go Vlogs! with the rise of Youtube people around the country are uploading great vblogs. You know the motto of the Internet "The more the Marier" Vlogs are cool. the add the visual element to lameo bloggers who just a create a little text with a few links. here are a few examples of vlogs Atlas Shrugs.com she talks about everything from the new HPV vaccine to the New democratic congress




to the New democratic congress


of you can watch the vlog Ask a ninja answer random questions about thinks like net Neutrality for example.

The Wisdom of the Crowd

The Current-Cambrain House Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing-opening up work threw the Internet to be completed by a large number of people over the Internet who either do it for free or a small fee. Think Wikipedia, Obamapedia or The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).


Open-sourcing is the nearest cousin to crowdsourcing, generally referring to crowdsourced work on software source code that is available for others to change, add to and build on, as with the Linux operating system.

Corporations and non-profits social services organizations are working with free-lancers and consultants beyond their organization to help them with research using crowdsourcing. AssignmentZero launched by Wired in March 2007 is the first attempt by the mainstream media to harness the power of the crowd to find and add to news stories.

InnoCentive will pay people to solve real research challenge for companies like Procter & Gamble.

Weather Crowdsouring is the Next Big Thing? in Citizen journalism or not is hard to say. For some websites and big new stories it would work very well. If you did a history of Chicago's transit system for example crowdsouring would be great but for small quick stories crowdsourcing would only complicated things.

There is also NewAssignment.Net started by NYU Journalisms professor Jay Rosen that will let readers help decide the topics to cover and how by signing up to pursue part of the story. the first story will cover crowsouring. Several newspapers are looking at different ways to turn into Information Centers that collect info from citizens in the streets as well as there reporters.

Topix lets citizen post local news online

Topix is one of a growing number of new aggregators that has began to let citizens upload local stories giving readers the opportunity to search for stories of a small town written and produced by the people who live there.

Seizing on growing interest in Internet-based "citizen journalists" — stories and images posted by the public — news site Topix.com will introduce an area where anyone can post or edit reports, commentary and photos about local happenings.

Site visitors can find the items about their locality by entering a ZIP code or town name into the site's search engine.

The users' material will supplement Topix' current service that collects and posts news from 50,000 traditional newspapers and blogs.

If you look at the page for Chicago you will see that the page is also edited by citizen journalists from Chicago. While many of the stories are just short blog entries with links to local newspaper articles this site has created forms where people can edit, update and point out related news in new ways. Now every story can be reported on by a thousands of citizens on connected by the Internet. This is the evolution of the news story. From a dead article in a newspaper filed by the reporting of one person to a living story with several contributors that can be debated in a public forum for the world to see.

Topix laid out its plan of attack on April 1st. The center for Citizen Media has created a informed page on the principles of how to be good citizen journalists.

The University of Maryland has ten new projects in community community news such as :

New Castle News Forum. To create a weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by local volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.







Who needs mapping software when you have My Maps. Google just create a new feature that lets you add place marks and lines to their maps.

Video blogger freed

After serving seven months in prison for refusing to turn over video he shot July 8, 2005 of a protest in San Francisco's Mission District against the Group-of-Eight summit. During the protest a San Francisco police car was set on fire injuring a police officer.

As part of a deal cut with the prosecutors Wolf posted the footage unedited on his blog The Revolution Will Be Televised.


Wolf also swore in a new court document that he neither took part or could identify those responsible for the car's damage or the officer's injury. In exchange for this document prosecutors promised that they would not compel Wolf to testify before a grand jury.

The president of the Society of Professional Journalists who organized supporters of Wolf and the President of the national press club had "mixed feelings" about the plea deal. While they believe that it is good strategy to make the video available to the public rather then just to prosecutors
they both think that it is similar to a reporter being forced to give up all their notes n a particular story.

While it is good that this footage is out in the public the government should not be able to force Journalists to turn over everything they have for a court case because the lets more information out to the public before it has been fact check and edited. This also create a situation where journalists are force to unwillingly act as an arm of law enforcement. If law enforcement is able to use the footage of Journalists to prosecutor offenders then they are unwilling acting as a arm of the law catching criminals in the act. This seriously challenges the ability of journalists to work with the public to criticize the government. How can journalists take on the government if law enforcement can take their foootage and use it against their sources?

I am happy Josh Wolf is out but I am afraid that it is only a matter of time before another Journalists is arrested for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hey but look at the broight side at least we are not making citizen journalism illegal like France.

Busing the internet to the poor

To give people in poor villages throughout India the company, United Villages, uses buses to provide Internet access to about 110,000 people in rural India and several other countries.

Each village that they serve has computer kiosks set up for villagers to compose emails, read the news and buy products from online stores. The only catch is that the web pages are not served in real time. Two WI-FI equipped buses visit the village four to six times a day to collect requests from the computers and transport the data to United Village hub in the city. The city hub then sends the messages out, processed searches and transfers any requested data back to the bus.

Seoul, Korea has had wireless internet Buses that allow people to access the internet while they are traveling in the city for about a year. Showing once again how they are miles ahead of the technology available in the U.S.



My Question is why oh why don't they do this in the rural parts of the U.S.?

According to Pew Internet.org in 2004 only 55 percent of all Internet users or 34 percent of adult Americans have high-speed Internet connections either at home or on the job. By the end of 2005 only 24 percent of rural American had high-speed Internet connections at Home compared to 40 percent in suburban areas. In rural areas 38 percent were listed as non Internet users. However the report called Rural Broadband Internet use from February 2006 said that Rural Internet users use the Internet for things like searching the news, checking blogs and participating in fantasy sports at about the same rate as urban users.

The easier and cheaper you make Internet access the more people will use it. Opening up access to the information highway so that nothing can stand in the way of person from becoming an expert in a variety of subjects if they are a little curious.

Another report called Wireless Internet access said that 34 percent of Internet users have logged onto the Internet using wireless connections either from their home or office.

The Internet gives people a choice in how they learn about the world and view the news. Instead of listening to the local radio, watching TV, or reading the local newspaper they can choose from thousands of newspapers. The number of choices on the Internet often overwhelm and overload us with rumor and inaccurate information. They also make it nearly impossible for the mainstream media or the government to control what the public knows.

They provide a sanctuary for citizen Journalism and unedited Journals through blogs. The education of the public through the Internet can slowly but surely spread democracy. This is why China is working with Google to control the Internet. They are fighting a losing battle over information. Its too easy to broadcast the truth and get it to the Chinese public you cannot fool the masses anymore.


Sky News report on discontent in China over development.

The truth is out there. Curious people just need the tools to find it and spread the word.