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Scope Considerations for Local Online Hubs

How ambitious should these local community hubs be in practice? As illustrated in Exhibit 3, we might consider this question along a number of dimensions, including scope, cost and potential government involvement.

Exhibit 3. Considerations Regarding Possible Breadth of Local Online Hub Concept

Like other recommendations found in the Informing Communities report, Recommendation 15 is quite aspirational in character and does not provide many details about the scope, cost or potential government role associated with creating local hubs. However, in terms of the “full array of local information resources” discussed in Recommendation 15, the report listed seven potential ingredients for any local online hub. In Exhibit 4, I have grouped those items according to the primary function they each serve and also reordered them from what I regard as the least to the most controversial (if local governments were looking to subsidize or incentivize these ingredients of a local online hub, that is).

Exhibit 4. List of Possible Local Information Resources That Might Be Part of Local Online Hubs

Exhibit 5 offers another way to visualize the potential ingredients of a local hub and categorizes the array of possible local information resources into three types of community information: Community Government Information, Community Connections and Community News and Commentary.

Exhibit 5. Visualization of Possible Local Information Resources That Might Be Part of Online Hubs

In the following sections, I will discuss the feasibility of including each of these three types of community information as part of any local online hub or portal. Throughout this report, I will refer to three models for local online hubs and use the rough parameters seen in Exhibit 6.

Exhibit 6. Three General Models for Online Hubs

As noted many times below, however, the world is changing rapidly and it is exceedingly difficult to pigeonhole existing portals into such analytical models. If there is one over arching takeaway from the time I have spent studying these local portals it is that there is no one best model for any given community. A thousand flowers are currently blooming, and ongoing experimentation will help us determine the benefits and drawbacks of various approaches.

For example, Michele McLellan, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and her colleagues have done terrific work in creating a taxonomy of new local news sites. As seen in Exhibit 7, “Michele’s List” documents myriad examples of high-quality online hubs across America.

To be clear, online news sites are not necessarily synonymous with online hubs, but her seven-part taxonomy also makes it clear that there is a great deal of diversity even within the realm of local news portals. These models can vary widely in terms of focus and financing. And it may be the case that some of them will serve as models for online local hubs since they might facilitate community connections that support civic engagement. Again, the boundaries of the hub or portal notion can be amorphous.

Exhibit 7. Michele’s List: Taxonomy of Local News Sites

1. NEW TRADITIONALS: These sites are dominated by original content produced by professional journalists. These sites tend to have more journalists on staff than community or micro-local sites. Many embrace digital connectivity with their users, but traditional journalism is their bread and butter. Most sites are powered with grant funding and searching for viable revenue models, perhaps one that mixes grants, donations, sponsorships, syndication and advertising.

2. COMMUNITY: These sites often rely on professional journalists but they tend to be boot-strappers [self-funded entrepreneurs] who also focus on community building—actively seeking user feedback and content, writing in a conversational tone and fostering civic engagement with practices such as voting, calls to action and partnerships with local organizations and activists.

3. MICRO LOCAL: Sometimes called “hyper local,” these sites provide highly granular news of a defined neighborhood or town. They may have a tiny staff—one or two people plus interns or citizen contributors—usually supported by highly local advertising.

4. NICHE: These sites focus tightly on specific topics—restaurants and entertainment, health and medical news, environmental or political coverage, consumer and shopping information. Revenue may come from advertising, subscriptions or syndicating content.

5. MINI SITES: These sites typically are run by one or two people. They tend to be idiosyncratic in the selection of stories they cover and not highly aggressive in finding revenue.

6. LOCAL NEWS SYSTEMS: These are highly local, low cost sites created with a regional or national template, often by a corporation. In taking the temperature of the news ecosystem, it is important to note that corporations are interested in micro local news and the local advertising they may draw.

7. AGGREGATORS: These sites curate links and headlines from other sources.

Source: Michele McLellan, Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri School of Journalism,
http://www.rjionline. org/projects/mcellan/stories/community-news-sites/index.php