Joe Think: Tales about relevance, context, storytelling, and local journalism

Stumbled on this at Peter Van Dijck’s weblog
Sites that put “community” in a separate tab most likely think of community as an add-on to their business, not as core to their business.

It’s cute that the Post wrote a story about its new ‘hyperlocal’ effort (
In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com). But, in an article clouded by links on a page cluttered with them, nowhere is there a link to the site-in-mention, LoudounExtra.com.

Now I’m not saying everybody oughta be perfect. But, with one of the […]

“One member at a time” is not the same as “your subscriber base,” and should not be approached in the same (one-)way.
This paragraph matters big-time to the one-way media, and so does the post behind it:

Strong social sites build value one user at a time. If one user finds value, then they’re much more likely […]

The trib launched a community site today, triblocal.com. It looks like what a newspaper thinks would work for the model of community participation, and in the write-up the Tribune gives the site they mention TribLocal takes its cues from YourHub. The article also includes choice phrases like “taking a tentative step into a brave new […]

Each time I see that last question I wrote I dislike it more. Out with bad ideas, in with new ones (and give the new ones a couple weeks until they’re allowed to be called bad).
This question aims at the idea that newspapers are in a unique place online. No other legacy medium publishes so […]

This list is aimed at online newspapers and the newsrooms that love them.

“Local” means it matters. Take advantage of it.
Newspapers harness and print tons of information. Do more with it.
There’s an amazing amount of information available in the community. It’s time to harness it, and then reward the community for participating.
If you’re not interacting with […]

Newspaper-dot-coms aren’t living up to the promise of the internet. Yeah, and I don’t live up to plenty of my promises either. Big whoop — but, big difference. Unlike me, there’s a newspaper in every city, a newspaper that most residents of its community can name. It’s a commonly-known product, and the longer the lag […]