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The newspaper industry has taken quite a hit in the last couple of years with many papers, especially smaller ones, folding. This leaves smaller communities and suburbs without their traditional main source of Breaking News Phoenix, redirected here,.
On the contrary, a brand new trend of local-themed internet sites has sprung up to try and fill the void. It is called "hyperlocal" news, with some examples including sites like EveryBlock, Spot.us, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch. The goal: provide readers with the kind of information that will not make it into a major metropolitan daily, such as city council meetings, school events, secondary school sports, crime reports, street repairs and human interest stories.
Unlike traditional press entities, hyperlocal news sites don't rely exclusively on professional journalists. Instead, many of the sites use a blend of freelance and in-house content to fill up the web pages. The belief is the fact that sometimes the best-informed residents of a community are not employees of a news organization - the community's residents are the true experts. This is part of a wider shift in news coverage and even the very definition of news itself.
Hyperlocal sites also vary widely in look and function - some are closer to a traditional news organization with a full-blown news staff that produces stories and interviews. The look and feel is very much like a regular newspaper, with the only exception being there is absolutely no printed product. One example is Patch hires reporters and operates community-focused sites that feel very much like a regular news site (they're even still hiring if you're looking for one way to get more involved). Outside.in takes an even different approach, presenting the user with a list of nearby crimes or events after typing within an address.
Other sites create something closer to a community calendar that highlights local happenings and activities. Rather than hard news coverage, the site may contain a whole lot of human interest features and profiles of various community members. Placeblogger, alternatively, is a collection of local blogs about your community. The site organizes the blogs by similar content and functions as a guide to help you find interesting blogs to read. EveryBlock, in the meantime, aggregates content by individual neighborhood, including listings for not only events but real-estate, restaurants, businesses, and even other odd items like pothole repairs.
Whichever format wins out, it's pretty apparent that local news, especially in suburbs or smaller communities, is moving to the net. Combine that with the explosion in social networking tools, and news is a much more scattered and dynamic category than it used to be. While it means there's a magnitude of content available for consumption, it is currently spread across the web at a number of sites. So what that means for users is instead of answering the question of "what's going on within the neighborhood?" through opening the local paper, several sites are harnessing the power of the net and user-generated content to inform residents. While the loss of long-standing news organizations is undoubtedly nothing to celebrate, it is exciting to find out a wide variety of forces converging to fill the gap. And for you this means more of the chance to shape how news is covered in your community.
