Reading Gilmore’s article made me think one thought: “Whoa! This guy is really behind the times!”
I think it’s interesting that Gillmor thinks the newspaper will be the place people go to first to interact with the news. Internet media agencies that have no earthly ties (as in having to actually print something) have a huge financial advantage over traditional media. ‘Hyperlocal’ blogging by normal citizens, draw audiences that most papers would kill for. The West Seattle Blog attracts 66,000 views a month. It’s two years old. They may well hit the 80,000/month mark within a year.
Let’s compare this to traditional local media:
My local paper in Coeur D’Alene has a staff of around 200 people, a half million dollar budget and doesn’t approach the West Seattle Blog in terms of viewers. My local paper has a huge region covering multiple communities with only 40,000 views per month on average.
Here is the key differential between the old and new model: the West Seattle Blog is run by three people, with a budget of $500 a year. If that doesn’t turn heads at major newspapers then I feel they should rightfully go under the bulldozer that is called ‘citizen journalism.’ Many newspapers are going to have to find what skills they have that are truly special such as in depth reporting and special access, and use them to do what ‘hyperlocal’ citizen bloggers are doing but even better.
Gillmor talks about farming out news reporting via a cooperation between local papers and citizen journalists. The problem here is, what does the newspaper offer in return? A clumsy website and user interface riddled with advertising and snippets of AP articles? I’m sorry, but many citizen blogs and websites are much more elegant, focused and attentive to their audience than the traditional, overworked, underpaid, under-equipped, often unprepared newsroom. It is not only the cost and efficiency of citizen blogs that seem so compelling, it is also their fresh and focused web design.
Questions:
1. How can local media engage their community better? Is the future of national print media to do more in depth reporting on local news rather than cover the whole field?
2. How will local and international print media be consolidated in the near future? Is there room for multiple carries of international news stories?
3. How can a news organization afford to pay its reporters when you can get multiple reports to choose from for alomst free as in the case of OhMyNews.com?
Hi, just an clarification for anyone who picks up your post from search (as we did). Our site doesn’t get 66,000 “views” per month … last month that’s how many “unique users” we were up to … but with each user (a unique IP address — could be multiple people at that IP address, Internet metering hasn’t sorted that out yet) averaging a little over 2 pageviews, we totaled 138,000 pageviews for the month. So far this month (with one week to go) we are up to 148,000 pageviews as of a few minutes ago. Anyway, that aside, the questions you pose are important ones. We tend to think, perhaps because of what we do, that for future success, a publication, website, broadcast station, whatever, does have to find its niche. The days of generalization are waning fast. Hyperlocal, or simply local, is one form of niche. People have to want your content because they know exactly what they can get from you. It’s just not like our childhood where even in a big city we had four channels of TV and “the news” was The News — or one or two papers per city and “The Paper” told you everything. Your question #3, of course, is the $64,000 (and then some) question. We hope that micropayments catch on, online, sometime. X cents to read this post, deducted automatically via cookie-ing. The subscription model hasn’t worked too well yet (look at Times Select or Salon Premium) but maybe micropayments can help supplement ad revenue.