fnLOCAL

The Innisfail Advocate recently announced that they would be switching from publishing their paper three times a week to just twice weekly. The Advocate has been around since the fifties (or earlier?) and, love it or hate it, I think it’s a good community paper. A bit on the thin side but hopefully dropping down the frequency will make it a bit beefier. It is well known locally as “the two minutes’ silence”.

The internet and the word wide web has been widely used now for over a decade. More and more people are getting their news online and placing their classifieds on sites like ebay. How long will it be before the Advocate prints only once a week? It seems inevitable. There are reports of long-established newspapers in the US that have stopped printing altogether.

The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the 146-year old newspaper, Seattle’s oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.
http://www.seattlepi.com/…

For a full body count of dead papers go to… www.newspaperdeathwatch.com

News is being delivered online and websites are becoming “Hyperlocal”.

The phrase hyperlocal has been around a while now – a google search brings up references dating back to 2006. It refers to news or media coverage of community at a very close up grass roots level. I’ve collected a few quotes on this subject. I don’t think I need to write any more – they’ve said all that needs to be said.

“Newspapers are in a tough spot. They publish once a day, so they are usually 24 hours out of date in terms of breaking news. TV, radio, and the web can react faster. Magazines have the advantage of being published once a week or once a month, so they take a longer, more in depth look at news events. So newspapers are stuck in the middle…too slow for the breaking news, not in depth enough to compete with the news magazines.”
http://dondodge.typepad.com/…

“What needs to be understood… is that journalism and community news doesn’t disappear with the local paper, it just switches to a different medium, a medium that is more efficient and in many cases may provide more news and give voice to more people than the paper ever did. That medium is the internet. Hyperlocal websites will boom in 2009, and the voice of local communities will become stronger because of it.”
http://www.inquisitr.com/…

So will the Advocate adapt and create an online hyperlocal presence? Or are will FnLocal beat them to it?
Ha… possibly not, but we can try.

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