Much of the original everyman appeal of the internet was the ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, and while that’s still a fascination and a valuable personal and professional benefit, there’s also the urge to get local. After all, local information often has a more direct and immediate affect on our daily lives.Two online efforts to snag the local audience — or maybe the hyperlocal audience (can it get any more hyperlocal than the example in the graphic? — click it to watch it plump) are outside.in and everyblock, but there are plenty of other online options. For instance, I’m on my neighborhood association’s Yahoo mail list, and there I learn about crime in the neighborhood, zoning issues, pets lost and found and various events. I also learn that my neighbors can turn almost anything into a political argument, that some of them are engineering impaired (“Does anyone know where I can buy an octagonal window shade?”) and that word-of-mouth recommendations can be disastrous. As an information source, it requires a lot of filtering and corroboration, and often it needs some moderating when it starts getting a Lord of the Flies vibe.  As handy as all the online local information is, I worry that some of it comes at the expense of basic journalistic principles– and consequently, at the expense of local media, specifically newspapers.  In my advertising past, I helped craft two campaigns for our local newspaper, and we focused on themes of immediacy and incomparable local coverage. They worked well, but because newspapers live and die based on advertising, they would print on their rack cards things like “Over $100 in coupons in Sunday’s paper!”In the old model, advertising paid for professional reporters and editors. In the new model, I’m not so sure who provides the content and who reaps the advertising revenue. Whether in print or through a computer, I tend to think there is value in the principles of journalism beyond the advertising.  Interestingly, according to this presentation from the Newspaper Association of America, we expect and want advertising with our journalism. I particularly like the position that newspaper advertising is opt-in. Of course, as any good editor will tell you, “consider the source.” Still, I think there are sound arguments therein. The NAA site, too, has plenty of interesting and useful material. I especially liked this quote from a top ten list of good ad layouts. [Read more →]