Hyperlocal journalism: build a community, be useful

Let’s take a quick drive-by of hyperlocal journalism, because the principles behind it infuse so much of what we think about and do in this class.

I told you how Backfence failed. This postmortem from co-founder Mark Potts explains why. The key thread running through his analysis is that Backfence failed to generate sufficient community, conversation, and creation on the part of contributors. (Lots of C’s in there.) That’s important to remember as you build a case study for the midterm: Beyond merely tech wizardry, what is your target site doing to build and sustain community?

Let’s suss out some of the most salient points from Potts …

> Engage the community. This may be the single most critical element. It’s not about technology, it’s not about journalism, it’s not about whiz-bang Web 2.0 features. It’s about bringing community members together to share what they know about what’s going on around town.

> It’s not journalism — it’s a conversation. Actually, it’s whatever the community wants it to be. The magic of hyper-local sites, be they Backfence, other startups, Yahoo Groups or local blogs, is that they provide a forum for community members to share and discuss what’s going on around town. The back-and-forth of a good online conversation can be as rich, deep and interesting — or more so — than traditional journalism. In fact, the role of journalists in this process is overrated — except maybe by journalists! The less involved site managers are, aside from lightly moderating the conversation, the better.

> Leverage social networking. The rise of MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and the commercial version of Facebook — virtually all of which have happened since Backfence launched more than two years ago — demonstrates the power of social media. Local communities are social beehives anyway. Why not take advantage of existing local connections and the virality and marketing reach of social tools such as member profiles, “friending” tools, widgets and the ability of members to exchange messages with each other? This was an element we unfortunately were unable to get off the drawing board at Backfence, because of business issues and other priorities.

But, the success to hyperlocal goes beyond community alone. It means having a site with real utility that helps people accomplish things in their local area. As Publishing2 points out:

Hyperlocal is about “community,” sure, but on the Web it’s more about utility — hyperlocal is where we lead our daily lives and all the things we need to get done. We need to know where to live, where to find the zoo, where to eat out, where to play golf, where the local YMCA is, and where to see a dentist.

The problem with all the thinking on hyperlocal is that it’s focused on what we think people need, i.e. more local news reporting, not what they want, i.e. help getting things done — web publishers figured out 10 years ago how to give people what they want, and then Google stepped in and took care of the rest.

That doesn’t mean that hyperlocal can’t evolve in the 2.0 era — but it needs to do so with a keen understanding of how the Web works, and not a nostalgia for how local newspapers used to work.

Much more out there on the promise and peril of hyperlocal journalism. So, how do we do it right? Hopefully, we’ll have some answers at semester’s end.

Keys to successful online news sites

To help you prep for your midterm paper, we need some metrics by which to evaluate online news sites in the Web 2.0 environment. What makes a site stand out?

Take 15 minutes to read this post, follow the links to see examples, and come up with your own synthesis of what matters. How could you use this to critique the site you’re analyzing for the midterm?

Okay, Ready? My Coordinates for a Successful News Site (PressThink) … about this post, which first appeared here, a news exec said: “It comes as close as anything I’ve seen to a roadmap for the near future.”

(The focus here, of course, is news, and so if you’re looking at a non-news site, some of these won’t apply … and, yet, on another level they do — for all they’re all about engaging reader/participants in creating information that has timeliness, relevance, and value. So, what’s your case-study site doing to collaborate, contribute, create in a truly value-added way?)

Think:

• What key features make a news site “sticky” for you personally?
• Can you come up with some “coordinates” that might have gone missing from this list?
• To what extent could/should these ideas be applied to mobile platforms?
• How do these coordinates fit in the context of digital culture, Web 2.0, and the like?
• What could your target site learn from this?

Now, turn to your partner and for a couple of minutes tell ’em what’s working and what’s not with the site/blog/etc. that you’ve chosen for the midterm case study.

Then, post a quick synopsis in the comments section. That will help me see where you’re going with this assignment, and allow me to give you some feedback where needed. (Check back later today for my comments in reply.)

Explanatory Journalism

As we discussed in class Monday, Journalism (with a big “J,” in talking about the field generally) could improve dramatically by using the Web for what it’s good at: not only going deep and plumbing the depths of a topic, but using links to put the day-to-day drip-drip of news in the context of something simple and basic. In other words, explain it. (Just like Uncle Jay!)

As Jay Rosen wrote:

What’s basic? If the providers of information aren’t providing thebasic explainers that turn people into customers for that information, they don’t deserve those customers and won’t retain them. So as we think about new models for news we need to think about expanding that little what’s this? feature you sometimes see on effective web sites. That’s not about web design. That’s a whole category in journalism that I fear we do not understand at all.

Rosen highlighted this weakness as he described his own “discovery” of the story on the subprime mortgage crisis this summer through a brilliant piece of explanatory journalism, a This American Life radio piece dubbed “The Giant Pool of Money” — the “greatest explainer ever heard.” (A shorter version was aired on NPR.)

More from Jay Rosen after the jump.