The limits of hyperlocality

The wonderful froth of engagement

Wow! A froth of engagement here at Wandering Rocks, and for that I thank the Berry students. Great discussion on the RIAA’s oligopoly, on the importance of entrepreneurship in the future (and the present) of undergraduate communication curricula, on the discomfort of seeing so much of the physical world so quickly migrating into the virtual ether of Second Life, and on the balance between small “j” journalism of hyperlocality and big “J” journalism that seeks to meaningfully cover the world.

Carly asked a valuable question: Could a news organization focus so much on the local that it fails in its reponsibility to inform its readership of important news and events beyond the local sphere? Curley responded to this himself when he posted to his own blog about the FastCompany article. He agrees with Carly, actually, in saying that an emphasis on Little League and even the high school prom does not excuse a newspaper from covering, for example, Darfur.

Stefanie, in fact remarked on Curley’s rejoinder, saying she appreciated his elaboration of the multiplicity of things an online newspaper could do to present hyperlocal news, and she cited her own local paper’s blanket coverage of high school football. There really is so much more local papers could do to “out-local” the competition.

Which brings me to Tricia’s warning, that perhaps there IS such thing as overkill. Too much content in too many places can confuse, and confusion results in the loss of readers. Agreed. This dramatizes a point from earlier in the course, that navigation isn’t a feature of a Web site, it IS the Web site. So both Tricia and Rob are correct. There is no such thing as overkill, provided it is organized and arrayed in meaningful, easily navigable ways. Excellent point, and I think Tricia for it.

Alrighty, then, how much is the right amount? Laura helps us out here: Listen to your audience, another refrain from throughout the course. (You guys are good!) Perhaps the fact that Curley’s “Nerdery” listens to its readers was the most valuable takeaway from the article. Allow our audience to inform how much content, what kinds of content, what applications and even frequency of update. This is ant theory: Where is the sugar? Follow the pheremones. What are people interested in? What are they talking about? Another excellent point.

See how this works? I drop a little sugar into the blogosphere. We all find it, start dropping the pheremones. Others follow the trails, easing the intellectual workload of us all, and the de-centralized network informs us all. I’m actually sitting here reading your comments getting smarter! This is awesome. Information really does want to be free.