Is there anybody out there?

We received our first non-Spam reader mail today. AJ in North Carolina writes:

Is there any "centralized" or single list of bloggers doing local news? I would love to read local news NOT from our local jokes, er, papers, but have tried to look for them in the past, no luck.

The first part of the answer is mostly a "no." At least not that I can find. My theory is this: 99% of the blogosphere is commentating on news reported by other outlets, not actually reporting news. And, with the dearth of good local news coverage, there isn't enough good, linkable material to drive most amateur blogs. Add to that the angle that most bloggers are traffic-whores, so they want material of the widest national interest possible. (I know that's something we've found on The Scrolldown.)

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Here's what little I could find out there. Advance.net (Newark Star-Ledger, among others) made some splash this spring about selling a local blogger network ad buy. Since I can't find the blog links on their site, let's assume that it didn't take off.

In AJ's (and my) native state, there seems to be a strong local blog community in the Piedmont Triad, as evidenced by the local heavy-hitters who showed up at a recent blogger symposium. I have a theory here too-- Greensboro has a tradition of strong local interest in media and politics, led by the rascals at the Rhinocerous Times. That leads to more conversation (and blogging).

I my search for this, I found some scuttlebutt about "hyperlocal news blogs." Exactly what we plan to do, but with trained professionals. Interesting to note that Google is improving ad localization.

Finally, my search yielded this gem from Tim Porter, posted earlier this year. (Note to self: potential presentation gimmick-- weave together entire business plan from other folks' commentary.)

...Newspapers will live or die on how well they reflect and connect to their communities, something that can only be measure in the amount and quality of local reporting.

Of course, readers want celebrity news and national sports and business news, but the news and commentary and information and interaction they cannot get from most other media sources - at least for now - is decidedly local, everything from the heavy-lifting, transparent society stuff like watch-dogging the scalawags spending the public dollar down at city hall to the chicken dinner snippets about soccer teams and pets.

Editors perennially wonder what it is readers want. Ask them and they'll tell you: Local news.

Read that in the context of yesterday's analysis of the DMN's resource deployment.

Comments

[Tom]

I'm attempting to read all of your posts in order, so you may have figured this out later, but thought it would be worth commenting anyhow.

There are a bunch of blogs reporting local news, including The Barista of Bloomfield Avenue, which covers Bloomfield, Montclair, and Glen Ridge, NJ. NJ.com's blogs, of which I do one for Bloomfield, can be found at nj.com/weblogs.

[Publisher]

Yup. Thanks!