5 ms·

Websites. Hyperlocal websites are springing up, from nationals like Patch to tiny town-focused sites. The business models aren't quite there yet in a lot of cas

by bonaldi 16y ago

Websites. Hyperlocal websites are springing up, from nationals like Patch to tiny town-focused sites. The business models aren't quite there yet in a lot of cases, and in others they can't support huge staffs, but this is true of everything from Twitter to the latest MVP here as well. It's the journalism that matters, whether it's printed, posted, blogged or uploaded.

brandnewlow 16y ago
The biz model is the only thing that matters. Until it's there, this isn't a real answer to my question. </guy who runs a hyperlocal web site>
mattmanser 16y ago
How is a hyperlocal website ever going to generate any significant income without classifieds? Who's going to pay for the guy sitting in on council meetings? Or the guy digging through seemingly trivial freedom of information requests? Journalism has always been broken in a way, it's never paid its way, but the internet is excaberating how broken it is. We can pretend that some upstanding citizen will do it, but they won't. We can pretend a blogger will be able to face a massive libel suit or a coordinated smear campaign, but they won't. We were lucky in the last 50 years, classifieds paid for our journalism. Worse still for us here in Blighty, the bbc is massively funded by tax payers, the Guardian by a trust fund, we're soon to be over-run by interest groups while main streams die a death. It's a worrying time, we can't stop it, but any free thinker greeting the present situation for the print media with glee will be waking up with a very bad hangover in 10 years time. In the future where will be the expert in Mozambique when a crisis hits? Or Serbia? How many dissenting critics will we actually have? Who will pay for journalists to be essentially unproductive for months or even years at a time on the off chance a major story breaks? How will a major story generate any revenue anyway? Maybe it will all work out for the best in the end. But it is still a very uncertain time and trusting one man and his blog is very dangerous.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  In the future where will be the expert in Mozambique when a crisis hits? Or Serbia? He/she will be in Mozambique, or Serbia, and will be able and willing to tell us what's happening because he or she lives there. The value of dropping a satellite phone-wielding reporter from a helicopter and picking him up 24 hours later has always been questionable, IMO, and now it's completely pointless. Information may or may not want to be free, but news definitely does.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Serbia is a good example, because whenever anything newsworthy happens in Serbia it's probably some sort of conflict between the local ethnic groups, and if you're relying on locals for information you'll find that their view of the incidents will vary greatly depending on which side they're on. And that's just natural bias -- imagine what happens when you throw in folks who are deliberately sowing misinformation, for one reason or another. It would take hours to sort through all the news reports coming in from Serbia, determine who are the more and less trustworthy sources, and put it all together into some coherent narrative, and I don't have time to do that for every controversial news story that happens in the world! I'd be happy to pay a dollar a day for a relatively trustworthy newspaper to hire journalists to do this sort of thing for me.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      I'd be happy to pay a dollar a day for a relatively trustworthy newspaper to hire journalists to do this sort of thing for me. At which point you're still in the business of having to trust people and seek out multiple points of view if you really want the whole story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair , anyone?
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Oh, I said a relatively trustworthy newspaper, not the New York Times.
- 16y ago

by bonaldi 16y ago

brandnewlow 16y ago

The biz model is the only thing that matters. Until it's there, this isn't a real answer to my question. </guy who runs a hyperlocal web site>

mattmanser 16y ago

How is a hyperlocal website ever going to generate any significant income without classifieds? Who's going to pay for the guy sitting in on council meetings? Or the guy digging through seemingly trivial freedom of information requests? Journalism has always been broken in a way, it's never paid its way, but the internet is excaberating how broken it is. We can pretend that some upstanding citizen will do it, but they won't. We can pretend a blogger will be able to face a massive libel suit or a coordinated smear campaign, but they won't. We were lucky in the last 50 years, classifieds paid for our journalism. Worse still for us here in Blighty, the bbc is massively funded by tax payers, the Guardian by a trust fund, we're soon to be over-run by interest groups while main streams die a death. It's a worrying time, we can't stop it, but any free thinker greeting the present situation for the print media with glee will be waking up with a very bad hangover in 10 years time. In the future where will be the expert in Mozambique when a crisis hits? Or Serbia? How many dissenting critics will we actually have? Who will pay for journalists to be essentially unproductive for months or even years at a time on the off chance a major story breaks? How will a major story generate any revenue anyway? Maybe it will all work out for the best in the end. But it is still a very uncertain time and trusting one man and his blog is very dangerous.

CamperBob 16y ago
In the future where will be the expert in Mozambique when a crisis hits? Or Serbia? He/she will be in Mozambique, or Serbia, and will be able and willing to tell us what's happening because he or she lives there. The value of dropping a satellite phone-wielding reporter from a helicopter and picking him up 24 hours later has always been questionable, IMO, and now it's completely pointless. Information may or may not want to be free, but news definitely does.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Serbia is a good example, because whenever anything newsworthy happens in Serbia it's probably some sort of conflict between the local ethnic groups, and if you're relying on locals for information you'll find that their view of the incidents will vary greatly depending on which side they're on. And that's just natural bias -- imagine what happens when you throw in folks who are deliberately sowing misinformation, for one reason or another. It would take hours to sort through all the news reports coming in from Serbia, determine who are the more and less trustworthy sources, and put it all together into some coherent narrative, and I don't have time to do that for every controversial news story that happens in the world! I'd be happy to pay a dollar a day for a relatively trustworthy newspaper to hire journalists to do this sort of thing for me.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    I'd be happy to pay a dollar a day for a relatively trustworthy newspaper to hire journalists to do this sort of thing for me. At which point you're still in the business of having to trust people and seek out multiple points of view if you really want the whole story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair , anyone?
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Oh, I said a relatively trustworthy newspaper, not the New York Times.
16y ago