links for 2010-06-19

I am pessimistic about the ability of a lot of newspapers to survive. So I'd like to suggest that, however you feel about newspapers, it's important that we generate ideas for replacing the local watchdog functions discussed in this post. Are there any readers who've observed viable replacements for the beat reporter in your community? Does anyone have ideas that are as yet untried?

I do not see councils as ‘using’ hyperlocal sites because they are not there to interfere nor moderate/own the hyperlocal websites. They hyperlocal websites belong to citizens and they are the ‘users’ of hyperlocal websites. Councils are unofficial contributors to useful information that can help citizens within that particular area. So you can view councils as being just another member of that community sitting side-by-side with citizens, reaching out on citizens level without any barriers or judgements. This type of engagement will hopefully break down the barriers or walls that currently exist between councils and citizens and increase citizens trust towards local authorities.

A hyperlocal business model requires community participation. The one-way broadcast “newspaper” model of Topix local news + advertising is just a variation on the old Web 1.0 model. ONE THING IS NOT EVEN BEING MENTIONED IN THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT HYPERLOCAL ADVERTISING – Local advertising revenue models may not even be viable once local merchants discover that they can reach and market to their community through Twitter. Free. Of course, this is based on the assumption that Twitter continues its rapid adoption by the masses, which in one form or the other (see Facebook/Friendfeed) should happen.

Therefore the failure of other media to do this, creates a hole which must be filled. Yet the very reason why local papers don't divert their resources to it, is an imbalance between the resource needed to do it and the rate of return of readers. In short, I'm not sure there is a demand for that level of engagement; certainly not enough to build a business on it.