What happens when you get gurus of local media to write essays? The latest Nieman Reports.

In the introduction Melissa Ludtke writes, “With constantly updated international and national news reporting and commentary just a click away, hometown readers need different reasons to go to their local newspaper, in print or online. In this issue of Nieman Reports, we will explore what local news reporting can look like and what a hometown focus can mean for journalists, newspapers, Web sites, and those who consume this news and information.”

Nieman Reports from Harvard University asked the question “Is local news the answer?” and has gathered more than 20 answers from academics, journalists and newspaper executives. Their collective answers: It depends on what you’re seeking the answer to.

What local can mean for newspapers is depth, rather than breadth – something that has paid off for newspapers like the Seattle Times and The Birmingham News. For newspapers like The Des Moines Register, it has meant bringing home stories on global topics – the local spin on the global environment, for example. For many other newspapers, it has meant growing audience and revenue in their own local market, while saving costs by closing the D.C. bureau or not sending anyone abroad – instead choosing to rely on the AP and Reuters for foreign news.

All the writers have some positive thoughts about local – that it’s important and interesting for readers. But, the writers are divided on whether local will be the financial answer for struggling newspapers.

The Cliffs Notes Version
If you only have time to read a few of the thought-provoking essays in the Winter Nieman Reports, start with these:  

The introduction by Ludtke will provide a decent framework and context.

Newspapers’ Niche: 'Dig Deeply Into Local Matters' by Brett Blackledge
In his essay, Blackledge, a reporter at The Birmingham News, writes, “Local reporting by newspapers, more than any other journalistic offering, has survived it all—the advent of radio, television, cable and even the Internet. It’s what we do best. And it’s what readers love most. But it is becoming increasingly more difficult to hear the soft, steady voices of daily newspapers among what has become a shouting crowd growing in today’s digital media…. This is exactly why strong, local reporting—and devoting the resources necessary to do it—is so important to daily newspapers.”

The ‘Local-Local’ Strategy: Sense and Nonsense by Rick Edmonds
“So it stands to reason that nearly any newspaper’s franchise—now and in the foreseeable future—will be local news, probably with distinctive variations in print and online. Smaller circulation dailies, which only this year are beginning to feel the advertising pinch, made that call years ago and have, relatively speaking, prospered as most metros became distressed,” Edmonds wrote in his essay. “As of the end of 2007, here is my scorecard on hyperlocal. Does its content, for the most part, merit being called “news” in the way journalists have understood the word? Maybe, but often not. Will it work as a business? Maybe, but there is little encouraging evidence yet. Meanwhile, thinning the traditional print report, even if financially necessary, runs risks of its own—like losing the attention of loyal print readers even as advertising on the printed page is likely to provide most of the advertising revenues well into the next decade.”

Forgetting Why Reporters Choose the Work They Do by Will Bunch
Bunch acknowledges many journalists who grew up watching “All the President’s Men” didn’t exactly expect to still be covering “local” when they reached mid-career. It’s a stumbling block for many journalists. But, Bunch wrote, “For the rest of us, journalism will die if it does not become more local, or even something called “hyperlocal.” The theory goes like this: readers seeking out world or national news on the Web won’t bother with local sites or their city’s daily newspaper when they can go directly to global sites on the Internet.” Sobering, but true.

In addition, Rob Curley, Kyle Leonard and Geoff Dougherty take us behind the scenes of their respective paper’s local efforts with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive’s Loudoun Extra, The Tribune Co.’s TribLocal and ChiTownDailyNews.org.  

MediaShift blogger Mark Glaser has a really great, informative “Digging Deeper” post up now about journalism, the business thereof and how journalism schools are (finally!) teaching students about the economic side of digital media journalism. Glaser talks to Jeff Jarvis, who is teaching an entrepreneurial journalism course at CUNY; Paul Grabowicz, who is teaching a class on launching an entrepreneurial business with journalism school Assistant Dean Marcia Parker at the University of California – Berkeley; and Glaser talks to Jay Rosen of NewAssignment.net and New York University in addition to others.

The underlying theme? “As the editorial and advertising lines blur online, journalist-entrepreneurs need to balance business needs and income with the integrity of their editorial operation,” Glaser wrote.

Here's a quick update on ACAP -- the Automated Content Access Protocol project in which many newspapers and other online publishers are involved. Basically, ACAP is a new way for content creators (online publishers, etc.) to tell search engines exactly how to crawl the site -- what's searchable, what isn't, for how long, etc. (In full disclosure, NAA is a member/supporter of the project.)  

I told Howard Owens yesterday that I was seriously considering declaring RSS reader bankruptcy: Clicking through everything just to get “rid” of new items, which have been nagging and growing since last week. But, guilt got the better of me, and instead, I spent a good chunk of this morning going through all of them and my e-mail (also woefully behind on that) – here are a few gems I dug up....

The Newspaper Association of America and Nielsen Online this morning announced the unique audience for newspaper Web sites grew significantly in 2007. From the press release: "Average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by more than 3.6 million in 2007, a record year for the industry and an increase of more than six percent over 2006 numbers....  

Hooray for a journalism-related, database-driven map mash-up that really shows how it should be done!

EveryBlock launched this week in Chicago, plus New York and San Francisco. The site “filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city,” according to the site.

Here’s an excerpt from the site’s launch announcement:

“’What's happening in my neighborhood?’

“For a long time, that's been a tough question to answer. In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created -- officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs -- but who has time to sort through all of that?

“Our mission at EveryBlock is to solve that problem. We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We're a geographic filter -- a "news feed" for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.”

But instead of just doing a Google maps mash-up with local news stories from mainstream media outlets or user-contributed content, the EveryBlock team has gone into government databases (think real estate, building permits, crime, restaurant inspections, etc.) and Flickr photos, “missed connections” from craigslist, reviews from Yelp and more. And, of course, they have more to come.

I searched around my old stomping grounds in Chicago (zip code 60616, near the intersection of 18^th and Indiana Ave. just south of downtown). When I expected a map to come up after clicking ‘search’, I got a list – a really long, but very easily readable list – that included one restaurant inspection, 17 recent crimes, four business licenses, seven business reviews (all of these had addresses, by the way). Plus, the page included listings for similar categories from yesterday and several days past. Some days had listings of Flickr photos and news articles, too.  

Clicking on a crime item led to a page with a map (of course) and details about the incident. Clicking on the news article led to a page with a map, a summary of the story and a link to the story on the original Web site (probably a key negotiating component for EveryBlock). You can also click on the date to get back to all the EveryBlock content from that day, click on the map to find more stuff and more.

Though the list format seems to be the default choice when you search on a zip code or address, the easily accessible map tab brings you to a map with dots – click on a dot to find out more, and click on the categories on the left to switch what’s shown on the map.

This is more powerful than other map-based journalistic applications I’ve seen because of the number of layers here – it’s more than just news and Google ads like YourStreet; it goes far beyond crime (one of Adrian’s earlier projects was ChicagoCrime.org, and several newspapers have done similar projects); it does more than reviews. But even with all the layers, the navigation makes the information manageable and interesting. This site is capital-I impressive.  I’m a huge believer in the journalistic power of databases (thanks to some influential thinking from Rob Curley, Levi Chronister and Rich Gordon), and this is a great demonstration of that.

Holovaty, who worked on this project thanks to a Knight News Challenge grant, is the subject of a Poynter.org Al’s Morning Meeting today.  (The interview is a quick-read.)  

It’s not entirely unrealistic (ok, perhaps aside from expenses…) for a dedicated group of developers and journalists to build this for their own news site – the relationships with the local government should already be in place, and there are a ton of business opportunities here: advertisers can purchase dots, for example, that link to coupons.

I got to work with Adrian Holovaty and a little bit with Wilson Miner in Lawrence, Kan. several years ago – they’re both unbelievably smart and truly nice people. I don’t know Paul Smith and Daniel X. O’Neil, but if they hang with Adrian and Wilson, they must be really talented and cool people, too.  Congratulations to all of them on the launch.

I was in a small-group meeting today (related to the Newspaper Association of America’s ongoing strategic planning process), and the print vs. digital debate came up: Should all NAA reports be online-only, or is there value in printing some reports? Do we (or should we) have criteria on which to base those distribution decisions? Does it have to be either-or? (Rob Rubrecht intelligently brought up the times when newspapers have cut the television book only to find some subscribers really wanted it in print.)

Anyway, no one agreed on anything – heck, I couldn’t even agree with myself: It would be nice to be all-digital from an environmental and financial standpoint, but, frankly, sometimes print just gets more attention. (Example: The survey for the NAA Online Operations Performance Report got plenty of responses through e-mail and the Web, but we got even more when we faxed the survey.)  

Then late today, a publisher from a small-town member newspaper called me. He had read somewhere that we had reports from Rich Gordon of Northwestern University. (We do; they’re great, and the reports are available here and here.*)

I knew exactly the reports the caller was talking about, and I suggested that he go online to our GrowingAudience.com site to find them. “No, no, no,” the caller said. He explained that he did not want to “deal with” the Internet. I offered to e-mail him the links, but he wasn’t interested in using e-mail, either. 

To be honest, it took me a few seconds to come up with this solution: I’m going to print them out and snail-mail them. (What’s funny about this is that Gordon’s reports are about creating a sustainable increase in the online audience.)

So, there you go. In the face of an increasingly digital world, there are still people who like to get ink on their fingers. I'll freely admit here to being one of those people. I'm online all week at work and I love it, but by the weekend, my desire to look at any screen is pretty low. I guard my Sunday mornings fiercely, and I spend them with my dog and the newspaper -- yes, the print one -- and some caffeine.

If you’d like to weigh in on how you like to get your NAA publications, reports and more, feel free to do so in the comments here.

My favorite person of the day: Kevin Anderson. He wrote the following as part of an essay in response to Craig McGill‘s recent question, “What is an online journalist?”

In today's Online Publishing Update, I included a quote from a column by comScore Chief Research Officer Josh Chasin. In his column, which ran in the Washington Post this weekend, Chasin argues in favor of the "engagement" metric for measuring Web sites.

For a while now, we’ve known that most teenagers will not go out of their way to find news – for many, it’s just not part of their daily habit. However, if news is presented in places they already go online, news consumption increases a lot.

The following is a letter from Donna Stokley, chair of the NAA Digital Media Program Planning Committee for our Marketing Conference, and managing director of sales for Tribune Interactive....  

Is money holding people back from using their mobile devices for entertainment and information? Maybe. The people most likely to use their cell phones for more than talking and texting are the Millenials (generally teenagers and early 20-something) – the people who are least likely to be paying their own cell phone bills. However, the Millenial generation is filled with early adopters, and whether charges are the main hurdle for adoption among older generations is still subject to some debate.   This conclusion and others came from consulting firm Deloitte & Touche, which released the second annual “State of the Media Democracy” report late yesterday at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. 

Yesterday, NAA announced the winners of the Media Innovation Awards! (This does not include the Digital Edge categories -- those will be kept under wraps until the Marketing Conference in late February; the finalists for Digital Edge Awards are listed here).

The Media Innovation Awards honor creativity, strategy and impact in newspaper marketing, advertising and promotions. Several of the awards went to digital media entries, which I'm listing here. For the full list of winners, please go to www.naa.org/AboutNAA/Awards/MediaInnovationAwards.aspx.

Here are the digital media highlights:

Growing Audience Through Circulation, Marketing and Newspaper Media Promotion: Best In Show
Austin American-Statesman for StatesmanShopping: Promoting our Online Shopping Channel (print circulation level: >250,000)

Editorial Promotion - Award of Merit
The Courier-Journal: You've Got Mail Content-Driven E-mail Series (print circulation level: >250,000)
 
Promotional Partnership - Award of Merit
The Palm Beach Post: Live at SunFest Mobile Pix Promotion (print circulation level: 75,000 - 250,000)

Niche Product Success - Award of Excellence
DallasNews.com: The Dallas Morning News' HSGameTime.com (print circulation level: >250,000)

Co-Op Advertising Innovation - Award of Excellence
Cox Ohio Publishing/Dayton Daily News: Independent Restaurant Online Carousel (print circulation level: 75,000 - 250,000)

The January edition of PRESSTIME magazine should be hitting your home or work mailbox soon -- here are the digitally-oriented articles already online.

8 Trends to Track in ‘08
The top newspaper media trends to watch in 2008 includes measuring total audience reach, multimedia branding and outsourcing. Read more about these and other trends in 8 Trends to Track in ’08. 

Online Surveys: Approach with Caution
Major trade associations are working to tackle problems inherent in online surveys. The Advertising Research Foundation has established committees to examine a range of issues, including biases inherent in online surveys, forming definitions of quality appropriate to online research, and metrics for measuring the quality of such research. Get advice from Trends & Numbers columnist David Asher.

Digital Edge: Your 2008 To-Do List
Hire a programmer. Ask ‘What if?’  Have a “hallway conversation.”  Read about these and other innovative-driving ideas for the new year from the Digital Edge. 

2007 was the year of social networking – starting with Google’s really expensive acquisition of video sharing site YouTube and ending with Facebook’s advertising controvery.

Just two days into 2008, it looks like this year will be heavy on social networking, too – especially for newspapers. This year, I think, will bring the launch of many new forays into community collaboration, social networking and citizen journalism on newspaper Web sites. 

Robert Niles of the Online Journalism Review posted his five lessons from 2007, and four of those had to do with readers: post a breaking news blog, create widgets for sharing, engage readers with the intensity of the sports section and ask readers for information (not necessarily full articles).

Then, Howard Owens of GateHouse Media posted a blog entry on the importance of effective online community managing for newspapers – and he noted his strong support for requiring non-anonymous registration.

Also this month, U.K. journalism blogger Paul Bradshaw wrote his fourth in a series of posts about the new journalism business models. The entry argued that news is turning into a “push-pull-pass” commodity – something to be published, collaborated on and (most importantly) shared.

Three’s a trend, I say. 

In December, NAA released a Digital Edge report focusing on newspapers that have experimented with social networking – what works, what doesn’t and why. By mid-February, we’ll have an extensive report from Rich Gordon exploring newspaper-based online communities. So this is something NAA is focusing on, too, to help our members navigate through the transition to making their Web sites two-way conversations -- a “hub” rather than a “node,” as Gordon would say in his talks about social networks and where newspaper sites fit in.

Submissions to the “Most Innovative Visitor Participation” category in this year’s Digital Edge Media Innovations Award increased greatly – almost 1/8 of the total Digital Edge award entries were in that category. (See the list of finalists for more information.)

This year will be a challenge, of course, for newspaper companies as the economy weakens and (for most newspapers) print revenue declines, but those award entries tell me there is still a lot of innovation and experimentation with newspaper’s digital media offerings. Here’s to keeping that momentum going in 2008!