We live in an world of increased media fragmentation, where the advertising business model is in the process of collapsing, particularly at the local level. Local newspapers contain less and less local news and information and more generic content and advertising, thus becoming less relevant to local readers. However, “the end of local print newspapers doesn’t necessarily mean the death of local online content“.
Place remains important. While we communicate online we also live real physical lives in real environments. News about the streets and suburbs near our homes and our places of work and leisure is relevant to us. Focused, relevant online news and information about places is often referred to as hyperlocal news. Blogs and other online forms of non commercial, user generated or citizen journalist content have emerged as an alternate source to commercial media for hyperlocal news and information.
The advertising business model, often used in review aggregation sites where entrepreneurs use the free labour of thousands of contributors to build their own media empire, is a model based on making money, not providing a quality service or experience for content creators and audiences. For the most part, the aggregation of user generated content in commercial sites is a form of assimilation and exploitation. The Melbourne Leader, for example, offers a very poor experience and ridiculous terms and conditions for potential contributors.
In contrast, there is value in content syndication where respect is shown to the contributors, where their work is not exploited and where syndication leads to increased readership for content creators and increased usefulness and convenience for audiences.
Effective hyperlocal news sites are community services, not businesses. This site does not accept traditional advertising. It has no business plan. It has no income and no direct costs (hosting is provided via existing surplus facilities and the software is free). The only real cost is labour. This local site will undermine the advertising business model of commercial publishers by becoming an extremely efficient bad competitor and freely giving audiences a better product than competitors will try to sell.
There’s a lot of local information available, but the “anarchy of annoyingly unreliable and disorganized local information” is difficult to consume. Not every good blog is well indexed in Google. By syndicating the work of quality contributors producing content relevant to particular places, hyperlocal news sites can be created that add value by providing convenient access to a coherent body of place related content.
Collaboration can be powerful but, based on observation, not everyone has the intelligence, literacy, technical skills and initiative to create quality content. Much user generated content is of low quality, and the standard will continue to decline as the web becomes more pervasive and accessible by the kind of people currently starring in reality television.
It is doubtful whether automated aggregation based on keywords alone would work; it could produce a stream of useless babble. So while the process of aggregating content for this site is automated, the selection of the content to publish is manual. What is required is “a layer of professionally curated information sitting on top of the amateur Web 2.0 layer… smart local publishers should focus on their core expertise — the organization and curation of information…”
Hyperlocal sites function as online local newspapers or community guides. By collaborating, multiple contributors build a body of expert information and opinion about local issues. The site becomes a source of this information and a place to voice opinions about local topics, like “a virtual town square“. Fitzroy is a viable place to develop a hyperlocal platform about because it is a “natural community“. Residents and visitors have a strong understanding of its unique culture and value its combination of art, style, commerce, community and politics.
Businesses are not excluded. If businesses wish to contribute, they are welcome to do so by publishing content in compatible open source standards through RSS feeds and ical (ics) calendar files. Instead of buying a graphical advertisement on a site, a business can publish a blog and post a story about a special offer. The posts of local businesses can be syndicated alongside local user generated content. Their content would be judged by the same standards as the other user generated content chosen for syndication. Local businesses are part of local communities and should be encouraged to participate as locals.
