THIS is incorrect...

THIS is:

The model works only if a bunch of salespeople pound the pavement, or if a company like AOL with a network of large advertisers offers them geo-targeted ads as part of a bigger package, said Greg Sterling, an analyst who blogs about these issues at Screenwerk. “I suspect The Washington Post maybe made assumptions about acquiring advertisers that didn’t turn out to be true,” he said.

Soooooo....this means that WestSeattleBlog, QuincyNews.org, Baristanet -- all the asterisk-marked news organizations on the Jurnos wiki are what.....faking it? really living off lottery winnings? being supported by a rich uncle?

This article in the NYTimes -- Washington Post Ends Hyperlocal News

Experiment -- has been sitting in a row of Firefox browser tabs for a week while I decided whether to say something about it. I do my best to ignore bad reporting like this. I try to focus on creating new methods and structures to ensure that journalism's vital role in our communities continues. But traditional media doesn't seem to do much else except bad reporting about this subject. I'll just put the transition to conversation-based and niche news in with the categories of coverage of the runup and first two years of the Iraq War, the U.S. financial crisis, and crime reporting.

There are some issues and developments that whole cultures (cultures within news organizations, cultures within governments, etc.) deny, even though they occur right in front of their eyes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb described it in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Ori Brafman and Ron Brafman did the same in Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.

The crack that formed between traditional we-talk-you-listen mass media and conversational niche media over the last couple of years has grown to a chasm. What much of traditional media doesn't grok yet is that great swaths of niche media are going their own way, while traditional media marches on into irrelevancy. Sad, very sad.

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Comment by Dorian Benkoil on September 11, 2009 at 7:03am: Good points, Jane, and glad to see the discussion pushed forward like this. Big question for all on the journos wiki list -- or in the mainstream newspapers -- is what the financials are, for real. What do the books show, and is there an apparent path to self-sustainability, if not profitability.

Comment by Kathleen McCoy on September 5, 2009 at 2:41pm: Hi Jane! Met you at Stanford Knight program in 07. Fun to find you here. I just discovered rji. Good to reconnect with your blog./ Kathleen McCoy

Comment by Jane Stevens on August 27, 2009 at 9:00am: Unfortunately, the Washington Post never supported or put the commitment into Loudon, and then they -- and the Times reporter -- take a brush to all geographic-based niche news sites and say they don't work economically. WestSeattleBlog is into the six-figure income level, which supports two people. That's better income than most TV reporters, and many print reporters. QuincyNews.org just missed that, after just a year of operation. BaristaNet supports three people. Look at the data -- hundreds of niche news organizations are employing thousands of jurnos. The Washington Post just screwed up.

Comment by Taylor Walsh on August 27, 2009 at 7:35am: My guess is that The WaPost (my daily paper), and others, have specific business requirements for any of their investments. If they don't trend according to plan...Next Batter. (To say nothing of the ad reps who forsaw extended near-term periods of low sales and thus low income after whatever their intro deal was. They won't stick around long in that case.)

The problem with all this is that the potential for locals of any variation is dependent on (assuming their quality) their infusion into people's daily info diets. That take time well past normal investment trend lines. Baristanet is a good example. If it has become part of the info/news diet for folks along Bloomfield Ave. it is because the baristas stayed with it for several years. A labor of love, a community contribution, before a means to earn a living. If it is even that now.

Despite the Post's action, it appears that we are in for a period of deals, investments, blendings of some kind between local MSM and the local bloggers now encroaching on the edges.

Comment by Polly Kreisman on August 27, 2009 at 6:44am: jane- i have to agree 100% ...while i wish i won the lottery to support theLoop (www.theloopny.com) maybe in the end we all win because we are creating the new new media????
polly