The New York Times is running an article looking at "hyperlocal" web sites as replacements to traditional newspapers. The catalyst for the concept is obviously the fact that some newspapers have been dying off, at least in print form.
The piece looks at web startups EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placebologger, and Patch, which "collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources." It is an interesting look into some possibilities for local news options beyond the local paper.
Some bloggers take exception to a couple of things implied in the article however. Matt McGee, who has a blog dedicated strictly to local blogging, pulls the following excerpt from the NYT piece:
One hurdle is the need for reliable, quality content. The information on many of these sites can still appear woefully incomplete. Crime reports on EveryBlock, for example, are short on details of what happened. Links to professionally written news articles on Outside.in are mixed with trivial and sometimes irrelevant blog posts.
That raises the question of what these hyperlocal sites will do if newspapers, a main source of credible information, go out of business. “They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear,” said Steve Outing, who writes about online media for Editor & Publisher Online.
"Inherent in those two paragraphs is this idea that there’s some kind of separation between so-called 'professionally written news' and what local news blogs are doing," says McGee. "This Just In: Professionally written news articles are also sometimes trivial and irrelevant. This isn’t just a blogging thing. But that’s an attitude that continues to thrive in some traditional media circles."
Matt makes a great point. It's not a new point. It's often made in the whole blogger/journalist debate, but he phrases it well.
So I ask you, what separates a blogger from a journalist? I've seen plenty of credible and non-credible bloggers, as well as credible and non-credible "journalists." Where is the line? Your thoughts? Comment.
Update: Steve Outing, who the NYT quoted in this story has commented on this article below saying that his opinions were misrepresented by the Times. Kind of ironic, given the subject of discussion.Join the discussion.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for telling us how you really feel. Kind of ironic that the New York Times misquoted misrepresented your position here isn't it?
I'd be happy to throw an update on the article referring readers to your comment here. I totally agree with your niche-topic blogger point.
Chris
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Out of context quote
That quote from me was presented out of context and was part of a longer conversation, so what I was telling the NYT reporter was more nuanced, and what (little) she wrote from me misrepresents my position.
What I told her is that those aggregators who don't produce any of their own content will suffer as newspapers continue to die off, but that the speed of newspapers' decline means that replacement news entities will rise faster to fill the holes. Placebloggers will be but one source of hyperlocal news; others providing local news will be the growing wave of for- and non-profit news start-ups. During the transition we'll have a weaker press and less important (investigative, watchdog) journalism that newspapers used to do the bulk of, but this will be resolved in time.
Also about the quote from me: It appears to contradict what I believe, which is that for many niche-topic bloggers, they know far more than the journalist who's parachuted in to cover a story without being an expert. E.g., some of the Mac bloggers know so much more than the business reporter for a newspaper who has Apple assigned as part of his/her beat.