The story argues that if newspapers go under, Everyblock will have a hard time. This is a very weak point as EB's main selling point is all the non-newspaper info and data that it makes available. They could remove all the news and blogs tomorrow and the people I know who use it wouldn't notice.
Also, its a bit of a fine point, but Patch.com is the only real "hyperlocal" site mentioned in the article. The rest cover entire cities rather than specific neighborhoods or communities.
Agreed. Newspapers aren't generating the content that the 'hyperlocal' sites are focusing on; how often does a school board meeting story come off the AP wire? The 'trivial and irrelevant' blogs are what the sites are feeding off of (except everyblock of course, which the writer appears to entirely misunderstand).
How much of your traffic and content at windycitizen revolves around major news sources, Mr. Flora? Do you think that your community would be considerably less rich without them?
(Also, what was the address to that journalism startup aggregator that you built? I seem to have lost the link. Many thanks!)
http://www.jstartup.com is the aggregator. Click the 'startups' category to see the best collection of links to journalism startups.
To your question: A great deal of the links that people share on the Windy Citizen are from major news sources. 40-50% is quite possible, with the rest coming from obscure local blogs, youtube, flickr, craigslist and places like that. So yes, we'd be affected if the newspapers "went dark" tomorrow...though in the opposite way that people expect.
yeah its called yahoo groups. there are thousands of little neighborhood groups out there using yahoo groups, google groups, etc. you don't need a dedicated site, all most people really want is a mailing list with a web ui
Also, its a bit of a fine point, but Patch.com is the only real "hyperlocal" site mentioned in the article. The rest cover entire cities rather than specific neighborhoods or communities.