With so much loss of local news sources is it time to relook at hyperlocal news using livestreaming, podcasts, local weather, etc?
There seems to be a grassroots movement around this again. I'll admit I bought a domain back in the summertime to shine a spotlight on my local area. While I have yet to pull the trigger to make this idea a reality, I am seeing others across the country taking action and going all in on hyperlocal.
What do you think? Is it time to revisit the idea of hyperlocal? Sure this was done before with limited success, but it could be the first iterations back in the 2008-ish timeframe were too early. Perhaps, much like podcasting, this is an idea that's time has come.
I think this is something with great potential. I heard about a village podcast the other day where they interview local people. Around here we have some Facebook groups and a couple of actual magazines that cover a few villages. They have reports from the schools, churches and sports teams with some articles about other things.
We used to get local free weekly newspapers, but haven't had one in years. I think there are some you can buy, but I wonder how they compete these days. I expect they made most of their money from property ads, but those will all be online now.
If only I could get more people on Hive I'd try and get something going here.
I am watching what Adam Curry is doing with hyperlocal. This week he put out an explainer post: http://hyperlocalpodcasts.com and spoke about the hyperlocal concept on the Joe Rogan podcast.I don't listen to Rogan. That will partly because stuff has to be really good to justify 3 hours of my time! Most of what I listen to is under an hour and you can say a lot in that time. Maybe when I retire in a few years I'll have time to do podcasts myself again.
I'm not a regular listener either. However, when someone I am interested in following is on the show, I'll take the time to watch. In this case, Adam mentioned that he had spoken about hyperlocal on the show and had gotten such a good response that he created the informational page. Since hyperlocal has been on my mind since this past summer, I'm leaning into learning more about how to make it something that can benefit the community and be self-sustaining.
We have a local "news outlet" in our area. I was surprised. It's run by a bunch of people in the area. I found out about it when someone was doing a neighborhood party for National Night Out. They told them about it and they showed up and wrote a piece. I think it's just a Facebook page (no other website), but they will write articles and even do video coverage sometimes.
I don't know anything about them, so maybe they are former or hope-to-be reporters.
That's what made me jump into blogging and podcasting back in the day. I could talk about anything I wanted and no one could stop me. I think it's great that folks take it upon themselves to cover their local communities. With any luck I will soon be shining a spotlight on the local businesses, community gathering places, churches, and people in my neck of the woods.