Last week the Newspaper Association of America held its annual Marketing and Digital Media conference (see presentations) in Las Vegas. Discussed there were many issues and ideas that strongly affect the news business.
It’s a no brainer that, at a newspaper conference, participants will fight the idea of the “death of the newspaper.” However, it struck me that in one session, moderator Tom Mohr (founding director of the New Media Innovation Lab at Arizona State University) broached the thesis of the death of local as an organizing principle in an interactive world.
“People flock to task sites like MySpace, and today all ‘locals’ meet at the task,” he said. “‘Local’ is indefensible online.”
Mohr believes that newspapers can’t perform the same functions online as in print due to the lack of network effects, no scaled platform, missing bargaining power and no favored status at the key gates. His suggestion — that only a newspaper consortium that joins forces with big allies could survive on the Internet — wasn’t discussed in depth.
I think this idea is worth discussing here — but I want to give the question a slightly different spin: What’s the future of local?
Will local news really only survive as a subcategory of the big sites in the long run? So far, this hasn’t worked out on many portals, due to the lack of depth in local content. In contrast, “local” seems to flourish in national social networks which tend to organize local meetings.
What do you think? Please comment below.
