The newspaper industry has had a steady decline in recent years. The internet has flattened the industry, no longer do you need to live in San Francisco to easily read the San Francisco Chronicle, just go to their website. Also, if you’re looking to buy a new car or rent an apartment, you now turn to Craigslist, where listings are free and up to date.
The next phase of the local news is going to be neighborhood specific reporting. I live in West Seattle, and we have a fantastic local blog called WestSeattleblog.com. Despite the poor design aesthetic, the site is awesome. They understand the ways to leverage the internet, not as a single layered resource, but as the multi-layered resource that it is. They are available through Facebook, Twitter, email, and their own website. It is the first place I turn when I hear a weird noise, see a new sign, or get stuck in traffic. Just about every time, they are faster and have more news than every other local news resource for the simple reason that they rely on neighbors looking out for each other. Don’t get me wrong, they are always on the news path, covering obscure and non obscure events.
I dread the day when we have no local newspapers. Their place in a functioning society is paramount. Without them, we all lose. Regardless, the new generation of local neighborhood sites springing up is a good sign.
Hi, Brad, thanks for the mention!
Sorry about the “poor design aesthetic” – we launched the site with the intention of it being something completely different (and much less than it is) and so it is still running on the original WordPress “theme” we picked three years ago – just upgrading to something new “out of the box” isn’t as simple as it would be for most sites because of our humongous archives and other needs.
We are currently reviewing much-improved designs to take our huge database and coverage volume into the 21st century someday soon, so hope you will be patient with us. Our main goal at the moment is to make sure that a design change doesn’t “fix what’s not broken” … since what it’s really all about is THE NEWS :)
Thanks for your support and do let us know when YOU are the one to spot the crash, weird sign, whatever … as you observe here, that’s what truly powers what we do/facilitate.