When hyperlocal news really shines
Cory Bergman May 14th, 2008
Just take a look at this post on WestSeattleBlog.com and the subsequent comments after a shooting broke out in the neighborhood. While police searched for suspects — a chopper swirling overhead — readers in the area posted comments with observations and questions, which the West Seattle Blog (WSB) worked to answer. “Thanks for the late night work WSB. My wife and I aren’t able to sleep,” says one commenter. “I live so close, info like this is invaluable,” says another. A new level of interactive journalism, folks. (We wrote about the West Seattle Blog earlier, right here.)
6 Comments Add your own
1. Dan | May 14th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I’m wondering why local newspapers don’t have bureaus in each section of the city, like networks have them in major cites. The bureau could report and post everything it knows and the big newspaper would just use parts of it for the main newspaper.
Why wouldn’t that work?
Not that I want the WSB to go away. They do a great job.
Since I live in West Seattle I go to their site many times a day. That and icanhascheezburger.com
Dan
2. Z | May 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Some still do. Others farm that out to community papers that are owned by the mothership, and they often have the full story while the mothership prints something more blurb-like.
At least around here.
3. Mila Kunis | May 14th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Yea, i like Dan’s idea
4. Jumpin Jack Flash | May 14th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
“The news is a conversation”…
Interesting thing about web 2.0 news done right.
The ongoing comments are more interesting than the original content. That means people visit the same article over and over again.. which produces more and more revenue opportunities.
-Tell me again why media 1.0 are so afraid of this???
5. Anonymous | May 15th, 2008 at 3:25 am
I’m not clicking on anything. I’m the atypical Nazi websurfing anomaly your mother warned you about.
I hate overlay animations too.
6. Anonymous | May 15th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Cory- This is interesting. I thought I would share an experiment of my own. I moonlighted by running a community-based Web site in a top 10 market for 1.5 years. I covered all the news that effected a specific suburban community of about 40,000. I went to community association meetings, attended school board meetings, attended Wal-Mart meetings (they moved one in the area), etc. I also benefited from access to an assigment desk where I worked (shhhhh). I was astonished by the growth I saw. The site quickly grew to about 2,000 uniques a month after only 6 months. Pretty healthy for a one-man-band. It may not be a threat one it’s own, but an aggregate of sites like this could quickly amass considerable traffic. Most interesting, because it was a smaller community and lacked ‘news’, I did a lot of evergreen stories. Well, the newspapers ripped off two of my stories. While flattering, this was also frustrating, because I was doing their work for them. Ultimately, my experiment proved to me that this is a space media companies should be in. They should be working to build local neighborhood-based blogs/sites to enrich their coverage. If they don’t, someone else is going to do it — maybe me. Based on the growth I saw it could be very disruptive.
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