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.