

Ask HN: Feedback on my Knight News Challenge Proposal - Memetrackers for local news - brandnewlow
http://generalprop.newschallenge.org/SNC/ViewItem.aspx?pguid=54e1c82d-5dd9-4918-aae6-4634fccca5a0&itemguid=bd8a0d9d-9c26-4e0b-bf9c-0c216ef2acd4
Summary: I want to make memetrackers for major U.S. cities to give a fluff-less view of the local news.  These would include local neighborhood sites and blogs in addition to mainstream news sources.<p>There are loads of sites aggregating local stuff that can show you what's happening near you (Everyblock, Outside.in etc), but no one's showing you what's "interesting" from the sea of mundane local info that's published each day.
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brandnewlow
Summary: Local news sources are going down the toilet.

Meanwhile neighborhood blogs are popping up all over the place.

Let's build memetrackers calibrated to the peculiar rhythms of local news that
will give you an unvarnished, fluff-less picture of what's news in your city
right now, who's linking to who and where you can read about it.

I've been running a crude test version for a few weeks now in Chicago and on a
day when the top story on the Tribune's web site is about how to sleep soundly
at night, the memetracker showed that every outlet in town and a few blogs had
covered a stabbing on the west side. That story was buried on the Trib's site,
and was much more interesting.

Thoughts?

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sanj
Interesting! Did any other HN folks submit to the Knight Challenge?

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vaksel
the problem with local news is that there really isn't that much of it. Most
of it is very mundane, that most people really don't care about.

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brandnewlow
On one level I agree. There's a point at which no one cares about the news.

That's kind of the idea for this though, solving that problem. A
memetracker/content recommendation system done right would just give you stuff
that editors/bloggers/social media folks find interesting, so you'd get the
local highlights every X minutes.

