The electronic fedora

One of the things that has struck me lately is that for all of the talk about how technology is changing the demands and needs of journalism, what a lot of us are talking about is using technology to enable a return to certain old-school methodologies and standards.

Maybe I'm too much of a romantic, but I think there's something to be said for the "old days" when local news was the end-all-be-all for local newspapers. Where one group of reporters worked geographic beats and had to report in daily come hell or high water.

Sure, there's a fair amount of technobabble in our business plan. But we aren't a technology business. We just happen to see some intriguing tools that will enable us to cost-effectively do what newspapers used to do -- things they've been cutting back on because of the economic constraints of the old business model and the public finance market.

Newspapers are cutting back on staff in the newsroom to produce original local content -- we say use technology, open-source journalism and clearer focus to produce more.

Ol' Bender (above, with apologies to Matt Groening) may be a good symbol for us -- old-school technogeeks. And like the stereotypical reporter of old, Bender can put away the hooch.

Aside from our vision of news, I intuit a cyclical peak in societal hunger for a connection to ideas and styles of yore (even if it's not your father's yore.) As the "electronic fedora" concept gelled in my mind, I ran across this Camel ad in Entertainment Weekly. What it says to me in my "when you need a hammer everything looks like a hammer" mindset is that we want our bluetooth AND our bell bottoms (and maybe some "pleasure to burn").

Technology is doing many wonderful things for us. The Internet, in particular, is bringing the world closer together.

But what's it done for your neighborhood? What should it do for your neighborhood?

I'd suggest that it will do very little, unless content comes from within the community. Google, Yahoo and AOL are all "going local." But, like much of the internet, there are no feet on the street. And others are trying to generate local content, but I can't think of anyone who'd ever made a scalable local run purely depending on the kindness of readers. (Better yet, the "engagement" of readers.) There's nothing that's more of a deal-killer than a user-generated content site with no content.

So what to do? Is there a way to leverage technology in such a way that you can afford professionals to enable journalism at the community level? And is there a way to then monetize the community engagement that results?

Stay tuned...