We are doing something similar in lavozdelanzarote.com(Spain), serving contents to a small community where is not viable to have a tradiotional print newspaper. I agree about the interest of it and the strong participation. The most difficult part is that is very difficult to afford a good platform for contents, classifieds and social tools, as income are limited by the size of the market. The solution would come if a bigger organization would promote the alliance of a lot of hyperlocal agents, receiving all their specialised contents for a wider purpose, but respecting their identity in the local area. Traditional newspapers try to avoid this and prefer to pay huge money to the press agencies instead of developing local alliances that can perfectly be a great complement

In fact, the Front Porch Forum model turns much of Web 2.0 conventional wisdom on its head… just where much of our membership seems to like it.

If you have focused content (serving some specific community of interest), you should be thinking about integrating with other content providers whose target markets overlap or compliment yours and with whom you can share revenues, technical resources, market knowledge, etc. Consider it very much like traditional content syndication.

bob wyman

Over 5000 of us nationwide, we’re all independent contractors but have the benefit of the larger company promoting us and giving us some of the benefits traditional newspapers have, such as the ability to use AP photos. Having the Examiner name to invoke also helps as I’ve found I can get quotes from PIOs a lot easier than when I was just a lone blogger.

I just keep thinking, Jeff, the Examiner is much of what you’re always talking about.

Certainly, news which has primary relevance to one or another market is important to those who live in those markets and it makes sense to have news production organizations that focus on the gathering and dissemination of such news. However, the news or information needs of readers extends far beyond those which are defined by geography alone. Each reader belongs to a broad variety of “communities of interest” — only some of which are defined by geography. Other communities of interest include those defined by occupation, hobbies, political points of view, cultural heritage, form of arts, etc. The full range of opportunity for journalists and the needs of the market lie in addressing all of those communities of interest — many for each reader. And, just as “hyperlocal” is a legitimate field of specialization for some journalists, so is each of the other communities of interest or specializations.

One thing that has impressed me greatly ever since getting into the computer business over 30 years ago is that “integrated” systems typically are much more successful in the long run than are “beast of breed” specialized systems. Thus, I’m concerned that in seeing the great value in hyperlocal news, journalists will tend to build products or sites that are exclusively focused on hyperlocal news when, I would argue, what the market will eventually settle on as “best” is sites that combine hyperlocal news with news that covers other focused communities of interest. Readers will tend to prefer a site that gives them “good coverage” of a larger number of their interests. In fact, they will often be willing to accept lower quality of coverage in individual areas if they can get a broader range of interests addressed.

So, what I argue against is not the building of a news organization that dedicates itself to reporting on events local to “Broadway between 84th and 86th Streets” but rather I warn against building a web site that only covers such hyperlocal news. What we *should* have is a means for those who who cover that tiny portion of Broadway to share a platform with others who cover not only the rest of Broadway but also a broad variety of other communities of interest that are relevant to those who live on Broadway. For instance, I, as one who lives near Broadway and 85th, should be able to go to my “preferred news site” and get news not only about local stuff but also about the computer business, the newspaper industry, international affairs, opera news, etc. — the things I care about.

What I think will work best, over time, is a small set of news platforms that specialize in the business of delivering a customized and integrated view of news which has been gathered and prepared by a larger set of news bureaus that each focus on some particular specialty (community of interest). In addition to your mantra that news organizations should “link to the rest,” I would also argue that they should not try to “stand alone.”

Hyperlocal news is great. But, I think it is not sufficient to build a sustainable stand-alone product. The product delivered to the user should model the user’s needs — not just the capabilities of the producer.

bob wyman