“It’s a strategy, basically, of gradually closing down"

The New York Times has an article about the changes at Tribune Co., that might be most notable for how adeptly the they're able to cover the implosion of the newspaper industry without actually putting themselves in too. It takes a fair amount of gymnastics, but the result is a story about newspapers in a newspaper that never actually acknowledges that that it too is in trouble. What other industry would present information that way? None I can think of.

Anyway, what's going to be cut? How about an order of the usual?

Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels did not address what content would be cut, but Mr. Zell has said before that he disagrees with the heavy allocation of resources to national and international news. Many newspapers have concluded that when a mouse click can collect news of Washington or Baghdad or Beijing from a multitude of sources, local news is their only real hold on readers.

Yes, you read that right: Bring the old "hyperlocal" dog back onto the track for one last race. I'm sure it's still a good idea, right? Oh wait...

P.S. Sorry for the absence, I've been transitioning from one thing to the next. I expect regularly-scheduled updates to continue from here on out.

As one news chain spirals into bankruptcy, the big question is "Who's Next?"

According to a report published today, the Journal-Register Company--one of those third-tier media empires you've never heard of but turns out owns over 300 papers--has brought on an investment bank as it considers filing for Chapter 11.

If the company were to seek bankruptcy protection, as analysts said was possible, it would be a first in recent memory for a publicly traded newspaper company, John Morton, a longtime newspaper analyst, said.

The holdings of the Journal-Register comprise "Greater Philadelphia, Michigan, Connecticut, Greater Cleveland and the mid-Hudson region of New York," and many of their titles seem to be the kind of ad circulars and free shoppers (personal favorite: The Penny Stretcher) that you would expect to be taking a beating in the 21st Century. But they also hold a cubic ton of tiny local papers, the exact kind that the "hyperlocal" argument says should be able to be leveraged to great advantage in the "competitive news environment" we find ourselves in now.

Now I have no doubt, just looking at the Journal-Register Company's website itself, that they weren't leveraging those assets very well online (a quick check at a random title confirms it, though I do appreciate the lead story: "Local canoe challenge will be tribute to legendary canoeist"), but the real question is can it be possible for any company like the Journal-Register to turn their ship around at this point? How can you innovate 300+ papers at the same time, without going under in the process?

I guess the real argument is simply this one: You're going under anyway, why not give it a try?

It's probably too late for the Journal-Register, but the next mid-tier chain should start trying to answer that question before it's too late for them too.

EveryBlock runs circles around other HyperLocal sites after one day

EveryBlock, a local news site, launched today and poses an interesting question:

In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created -- officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs -- but who has time to sort through all of that?

The answer, of course, should be journalists, but that type of super-focused, relevant-to-few beat reporting is a thing of the past. So the folks behind EveryBlock are hoping they can step in to fill the gap using, essentially, the entire Internet as an information-gathering vehicle. Can that type of relevant reporting be done using smart filters? It's too soon to tell, but if this collection of random events from a few block radius around my old home in Chicago is any indication, it's certainly going to become real competition for the ham-fisted "hyperlocal" attempts by the big newspapers.

For comparison, here's TribLocal's coverage of a south-suburban town. It's night and day: EveryBlock offers things that truly seem relevant--what crimes happened, what business licenses were applied for, who's running personal ads in my neighborhood--while TribLocal offers the same sort of "Andrew's cheerleaders take on the competition" pap that puts it more in competition with the local high school paper than something that supplies vital information.

The thing that's most interesting to me about the different approach EveryBlock is taking is that instead of relying on fresh user-generated content, as so much of the "hyperlocal" advocates advise, the site takes exactly the opposite approach: Reprinting and repurposing information from sites as diverse as city departments, Craigslist, Flickr, the department of transportation, and good ol' newspapers. Don't make people come to you with content, the EveryBlock concept says, go to where they're already making it and present it in new ways. It's not a new idea, but those are often the best ones.

hyperlocalism in a way that is both local and hyper

Discussions abound still about the move towards "hyperlocalism" by corporate newspaper chains, the irony of laser-focused local coverage apparently entirely lost on a corporate boardroom that has never seen some of the cities they're dictating changes in.

Meanwhile, as it always does, true innovation in real local coverage comes from--guess who--locals that give a shit about their communities, not about making stockholders happy. A wonderful example of truly hyper localism was referenced today by Gapers Block (a great example of ground-up localism at a slightly-less hyper level): The Marshfield Tattler.

You've got to love any site that begins reports with phrases like, "I haven't had a chance to write about the new family down the street," or, "Yesterday afternoon, I ran into Jesse on the street. I hadn't seen him for a while" (that entry under the title "Guess Who Got the Microwave?"). It's truly what's important to the author about her community, from events to people, to the routine. It's a chance to see her world through her eyes. It's not "real" journalism, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the hyperlocal examples being trotted out by big business and it lets' you know a lot more about the community to boot.