While this sounds like good news to me, as a current fan of NPR, what exactly does hyper-local mean and how is it different from just local? Usually these stations cover metropolitan areas, so how local can you get?
I think the idea behind "hyper-local" as espoused by the EveryBlock guys (who also received a Knight Foundation grant) was that local news lost much of its focus as it increasingly focused on the "big" story. IIRC hyper-local news would include grassroots coverage of things like Little League games, neighborhood crime, etc.
Most NPR stations I've listened to don't spend much time on local news. Instead, they play syndicated NPR or CPB-related programs. Same with the local TV news networks. Lots of time spent on entertainment and national stories, but very little time spent on local issues.
It's hard to tell if that's because there are no customers/advertisers or because it's too expensive to produce...
By crowd-sourcing the task, the cost equation is mostly out of the way for them to see how much of a market there is.
While this sounds exciting because I love NPR and I think hyper-local news will be big, it seems a little strange to me that 2 large non-profits are giving a "grant" to another large non-profit. Granted, CPB gets its funding from the gov't ... it just seems like NPR would be on the giving end of such a grant ... and the receiver being a smaller, state broadcasting group or municipalities.
