I do know that as people get older and have kids, their physical concept of local becomes very important. However, I am really a believer that as a generation of people raised on the web starts to enter that phase of their lives, they will have a much broader understanding of their locality.

Either way….I agree with both you and Rafat…it is hard, and it is a great opportunity.

And modern media—like the internet—have shrunk the world so that one’s social community is far less defined by locality than it once was.

I’d like to connect with the town and area I live in, and still believe that holds rewards for both me and the community, but one could argue that it’s our societal infrastructure that needs to change—that we need to shift from a village mentality to a global, we’re all in this together on this little planet, hyperglobal, way of life.

What I’m starting to conclude is that local, in and of itself, to use a phrase of yours Jeff, is just a niche of niches. An important, hard to serve, niche of niches.

Over time I have observed the more focussed the blog in Philadelphia on a subject matter and local community of interest - the more passion can be ascribed to it - whether it be Philly Food or the Philadelphia Phillies. Philly Liberal Politics, or the Philly Reading Terminal Market. Philly Web Developers or Philly Alt Rock Concerts.

We have a murder wave in our city and it is *not* registering in the blogosphere the way you would imagine.

I’m not saying that bloggers and independents don’t care about communities of geography - about their city - it’s that in order to gain traction - it needs a community of interest bent - add a liberal or conservative viewpoint - instead of an issue based one - and it will more easily attract a community of interest’s attention.

I’ve gotten some heat from both conservatives and liberals (even if I am a liberal) by trying to have a service that tries to build bridges across communities of interest like these.

Now it could just be PF’s host that is the issue - I look in the mirror daily and ask whether I am managing the service well enough and the answer is always no - but when I look around at other services - and note successes and failures - it seems a general rule that can sometimes, but not always, be broken - the tighter the niche - the more passion the community.

It’s a hell of a challenge to work against that rule.

I’m all for it of course

A disclaimer - in addition to hosting Philly Future, I’m advising Placeblogger.

The best people for doing local news are…locals. We carry a percentage of national and international, like all good news organs, but we place a heavy emphasis on local, and when there’s a shortage of hot local news, we often do more introspective pieces or features on local activities that are available. Of course, it helps to be located in a region rich in potential outdoor activities.

A nearby rival news organ has a reputation for going ’special section crazy’…they’ve helped keep their paper in the black this way, but most of their special sections focus on major local happenings or features in the region - and it’s a strategy that has, for the most part, paid off until recently. It bought them time, and now that their sales are beginning to founder again, like most others, they’ve had the opportnity to expand their online presence.

They have, however, over-reached their local demographic, so once they hit saturation it was inevitable that their subscriptions and sales would experience decline again. For our own part, at the paper where I work, we’re just now developing our online presence and keeping our tangible product small, our focus largely local, and keeping our focus on community and the immediate region.

This is still not going to save us if the current trends away from printed media continue…but after flash and gif animation come streaming video, and the merging of media continues to take place as papers evolve to try to stay alive by taking their act online. I’m already doing storyboarding and keyframing of online ad animations, and at home I’ve installed Adobe Premiere and begun reading the ‘bible’ book on it…for those forthcoming days of video work…

Sometimes our local TV news is just full of stories about roads or school fetes. It’s not interesting, even if it is on your doorstep.

But of course, local news will never be dead. Indeed, all news is local news… providing you live in the right place!

In some cases, the traditional ‘local’ news does cover that, however, the term no longer captures the intentions and interests of younger news readers.

I am not saying ‘local’ isn’t important…I am saying the concept of ‘local’ needs to be broadened to something outside of geography.

I don’t have the stats in front of me, however, my guess would be that the majority of 18-35 year olds check their Facebook newsfeeds many more times a day than they do any other local news source. Just a strong hunch.