Is the Long Tail of Hyperlocal News Long Enough?
My students did a great job of running the APME National Credibility Roundtable today on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s coverage of the Intersection of Education and Religion.
The reviews in this public forum were mixed. Some of the approximately 20 paricipants like the paper, a couple hated it. But, as I mentioned during the Roundtable, the criticism and praise as a whole sounded similar to what I have heard over the nearly 30 years of my journalism career–save for my years at Minnesota Public Radio, which had its niche audience that were for the most part fanatically in love with it.
For its part, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is an impressive regional newspaper. The people in the room loved its Faith and Values section. Tuck said the paper is trying harder to meet the needs of its readers.
But today here is what I also heard: you concentrate on the bad news, you are too sensational, you cover a football player burning down his wife’s home day after day on the front page, but hide stories inside about the 1,000 deaths a day in Rawanda. And, of course, there was someone from a church group asking how they could get more coverage of their events in the paper.
That caused me to ask about hyperlocal journalism, but Angela Tuck, the public editor, said they were not there yet. They had to be guarded about what got published in association with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s name. So they are relying on more zoned editions.
Still there must be a mechanism, just like what I am doing now, right here, where a few photos could be keyed to a few comments. Heck if Northfield, Minnesota can do it, why not the Atlanta Journal-Constitution?
From a traditional news point of view, our Roundtable was not news, but it is of interest to the 20 plus people in the room. And if one of them, wanted to do the work, like I am doing here, what would it cost the Journal-Constitution to have a link to it and to the dozens of other small events happening every day that have limited interest.
Maybe in the aggregate, the long tail of all those little homegrown stories would add up to the high interest stories. And since eyeballs count to advertisers, why not see if it works.
What would it cost? Almost nothing.
