NDSA:Community and Hyperlocal News

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At Risk Content: Born Digital Community and Hyperlocal News

Establish Value: The reporting of local and community news has increasingly become the domain of "hyperlocal" news operations. Focused primarily on geo-specific news (neighborhoods or communities) or specialized reporting on local business, government, arts, real estate, etc.), community and hyperlocal news fills an important gap in mainstream reporting as traditional news outlets continue to shrink. The vast majority of content is born-digital. Though the formats and models are more complex than mainstream media, the value of the content is evident when comparing it to its 20th century print counterparts (community newspapers; birth, marriage, and death announcements; society pages; advertisements, and opinion pages).

reference PEW REPORT (?): http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/how-community-news-is-faring/?src=prc-section

Recognize Opportunities: As opposed to Citizen Journalism, the production and distribution of community or hyperlocal news often has an organizational basis (commercial or nonprofit institutions). Many community reporting sites have evolved from, or are a component of, traditional media organizations. Other sites have emerged from startup companies, information aggregators, community organizations, or journalism schools. This presents an opportunity to reach a targeted (though diffuse) set of stakeholders to raise awareness of the need for preservation and to test collection and preservation models.

Target Audiences: These audiences share multiple levels of local, state, national, and international interest:

Local communities: public libraries and historical societies; local newspaper publishers; genealogical societies; county and local governments; K-12 educators
State-wide communities: Academic researchers; lay historians; university students and professors; archives
National and International communities: Trending researchers; political scholars; economic analysts

Educating Stakeholders: The NDSA seeks to communicate the role that citizen journalism and community or hyperlocal news plays in community history to stakeholders through multiple venues:

Content creators: Online campaign to bring awareness to importance of preservation; targeted messages.
Funders: J-lab and Knight Foundation (fund community news –see pew report)
Journalism schools – set up community news sites
K-12 educators: ?
Public libraries and historical societies: Educate and partner with public libraries on local news preservation (local organications select, NDSA members or regional centers collect; workshop presentations at district library association meetings; conference calls with public library directors. (some of this language is from newspaper one)
Historical researchers, professors, and students: Connect at historical association meetings and conferences; panel presentations at archivist society conferences; vendor booths, brochures, and flyers about digital preservation at relevant conferences.
Standards: Follow digital preservation standards and provide education to stakeholders about the standards.

Obstacles and Risk Factors: Possible risk factors and obstacles in citizen journalism and community news preservation.

Identification and selection of content in local communities is a challenge.
Obtaining permissions to preserve and provide researcher access can be a challenge.
Public libraries may not see the value in collecting
Public libraries and historical societies in local communities likely don’t have the resources or skills to preserve born-digital content.
Community news sites just trying to “stay alive” – preservation is likely not on their minds
Funding for digital preservation may not be readily available.
Most newspaper preservation programs across the U.S. right now do not include born-digital community news content.

Actionable Items