purple motes

Localism is now attracting considerable attention in media business strategy. Stephen Gray of the Newspaper Next project observes:

It’s becoming a truism these days that “local” is the core value proposition for newspapers.
The reasoning goes like this: With tons of national and international news and other non-local content available free online, “local” is the one thing a local newspaper can do better than anyone else.

Gray emphasizes compiling a wide variety of local information:

How often do you wish you knew where to buy something locally? What contractor, plumber, doctor, lawyer or mechanic you could trust? What you or your family could do on the weekend for fun? How to help with your daughter’s algebra assignment? What’s the best pizza joint, Thai restaurant, dry cleaner, etc.? Where the cool parties are? (Yes, much of this is age-dependent.) What’s a good elder care or child care solution? Whether there’s a traffic jam right now on the expressway home?

While much valuable information has a local aspect, local information isn't a good concept for bounding a media business. Local traffic data, like local geographic data that Mapquest and Google Maps offer nationally, is associated with objective technical problems of acquisition, database organization, and query services. "Where the cool parties are?", in contrast, is information inextricably intertwined with social relations of the sort that friending functions support in social networking sites. In another business direction, identifying a trustworthy service supplier is a reputation management problem of the type that Ebay and Amazon rating systems address. The way and extent to which local information is embedded in local personal relationships matters a great deal for a media business.

Traditional local newspapers' comparative advantage is in making news. Making news means defining what's publicly important. Putting you, your friends, schoolmates, workmates, and neighbors into the newspaper makes the newspaper more interesting to you.

Citizen journalism is not the same as hyperlocal news reporting. Orato bills itself as "True Stories from REAL People: Featuring FIRST PERSON, Citizen Journalism from Around the World." In a post entitled "The Scoop on Citizen Journalism," Paul Sullivan in Orato's editor's blog observes:

Today, as the Pickton trial begins, Orato is coming off its highest traffic week ever. Most of it, we’re sure, comes from recent media play over our decision to give ex-sex trade workers Trisha Baptie and Pauline VanKoll an opportunity to report on the Pickton trial [the trial of a man accused of killing 26 Vancouver women, most associated with sex-for-money transactions with a large customer set]. I guess you could say we’ve made a great leap forward, but after a 15-second self-applied pat on the back, it’s clear to me, and no doubt, to the small army of citizen journalists who regularly visit and contribute to this site, that we’ve got a long way to go.

This is the sort of story and reporting that would be extremely valuable to traditional national news organizations. Measured with respect to journalistic ideals, neophyte journalists can totally outperforming highly experienced, resource-rich, professional journalists. Among Louisiana folk storytellers, "true stories" is a term of art in the art in which they excel.

Yourhub is an excellent example of innovative, hyperlocal news reporting. In a recent top story, Ann Himel reports:

Cabin fever hits in less than 12 hours for me, but I waited it out without maiming any of my family members in order to venture into the depths of snow today, Thursday, December 21, 2006.

Dateline, Littleton, CO: Ann Himel and her two companions, daughter Catherine and faithful Labrador Rocky, ventured outside in (not quite) the worst blizzard on record to clear a path to freedom. Where will they go?

The best stories from Yourhub are published each week in a printed newspaper delivered to subscribers of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post. This is like the idea of a placeblog, or neighborhood networking, married to an important physical news reporting form and distribution system. It's news provided on real (dead) wood that has endured many seasons of weather.

Hyperlocal news reporting faces some significant challenges. Only a small share of citizens are likely to be interested in writing news stories, although a larger share would be interested in reading them. Professional journalists need to figure out how to expand efficiently the personal scope of their coverage and how to encourage and work with citizen journalists. Generating sufficient volume of hyperlocal news stories and distributing them to interested persons are significant business challenges. In addition, policies for hyperlocal news reporting need to be discussed and considered rationally. These are challenges that traditional local media are best positioned to meet.

Business models and policies for hyperlocal news reporting are just starting to be explored. Localism is a potent issue in U.S. national communications regulation. With new communication technologies, localism in communication is likely to become more important to many more persons and local organizations.

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Early in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther's work rapidly spread across Europe. Luther issued his Ninety-Five Theses in Latin on October 31, 1517. They became known across Europe in about a month. The Ninety-Five Theses and other subsequent works of Luther were widely reprinted. Between 1518 and 1519, there were about 1,350 reprintings of Luther's tracts. By 1524, over a million copies of Luther's writing were in circulation in Europe.[1] An obscure monk in 1517, Luther by 1521 was one of the most famous persons in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

No one directed or controlled the distribution of Luther's work. Luther wrote in Latin and in German. German was the language of most persons in German lands. Latin connected Luther to an educated elite across Europe:

The educated élite who could understand Latin and theological debate was no longer composed only of churchmen and professors. [Luther’s theses] were initially read by a small group of learned laymen who were less likely to gather on the church steps than in urban workshops where town and gown met to exchange gossip and news, peer over editors’ shoulders, check copy and read proof. There, also, new schemes for promoting bestsellers were being tried out. [2]

Without the constraint of legal doctrines of copyright or any other controlling authority, religious and commercial innovators and entrepreneurs freely shared, reprinted, adapted, translated, and sold Luther's work. Their interests and Luther's interests were loosely joined:

The printers at Wittenberg at times even published material that Luther did not want to have published. This aspect of the matter annoyed him no end, but on the other hand he was glad to have their services and had no serious objection to these sometimes overly enthusiastic colporteurs of his message.[3]

Luther's writing and ideas were appropriated and incorporated in works directed at popular readership outside German lands:

very few of Luther's writings were translated into non-German vernaculars -- a few into Dutch, and two or three into English and French. On the other hand, many of Luther's early German writings were translated into Latin and, as the case of William Tyndale so tellingly shows, he was extensively plagiarized.[4]

The interpretations and presentations of Luther's ideas in non-German vernaculars were not authoritative, but they had great communicative effect.

The institutional Church controlled communication much more tightly and communicated much less quickly and much less widely. The Council of Trent, an important response of the Church to the religious turmoil of the early sixteenth century, met three times from 1545 to 1563. Pope Pius IV's bull accompanying the concluding decrees of the Council set out a tightly controlled communication system for the decrees:

that these things may come to the knowledge of all men, and that no one may use the excuse of ignorance; We will and ordain, that, in the Vatican Basilica of the prince of the apostles, and in the Lateran church, at the time when the people is wont to assemble there to be present at the solemnization of masses, this letter be publicly read in a loud voice by certain officers of our court; and that, after having been read, it be affixed to the doors of those churches, and also to the gates of the Apostolic Chancery, and to the usual place in the Campo di Fiore; and be there left for some time, to be read by and to come to the knowledge of all men. And when removed thence, copies being, according to custom, left in those same places, it shall be committed to the press in our good city, that so it may be more conveniently made known throughout the provinces and kingdoms of the Christian name. And we ordain and decree, that, without any doubt, faith be given to copies thereof written or subscribed by the hand of a public notary, and guaranteed by the seal and signature of some person constituted in ecclesiastical dignity.[5]

Interpretative and derivative works were also controlled:

in order to avoid the perversion and confusion which might arise, if each one were allowed, as he might think fit, to publish his own commentaries and interpretations on the decrees of the Council ; We, by apostolic authority, forbid all men, as well ecclesiastics, of whatsoever order, condition, and rank they may be, as also laymen, with whatsoever honor and power invested ; prelates, to wit, under pain of being interdicted from entering the church, and all others whomsoever they be, under pain of excommunication incurred by the fact, to presume, without our authority to publish, in any form, any commentaries, glosses, annotations, scholia, or any kind of interpretation whatsoever of the decrees of the said Council.[6]

By the early sixteenth century, an independent, decentralized, commercially oriented, competitive printing and book-selling business had developed in Europe. The Church organized communication of the decrees of the Council of Trent so as to keep it outside of the new printing and book-selling business.

In retrospect about five hundred years later, the split between Luther and the Church seems to have been mainly a communication problem. Communication problems are difficult problems. For a communicative endeavor to succeed, it must have actually necessary and feasible control within a sufficiently effective communication system.

[1] Hillerbrand, Hans J., “The Spread of the Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth Century: A Historical Case Study in the Transfer of Ideas,” The South Atlantic Quarterly LXVII (Spring 1968) p. 275.

[2] Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press: 1980), vol. I, pp. 308-9.

[3] Hillerbrand, "Spread," p. 275.

[4] Ibid. p. 282.

[5] Bull of Pius IV, February 7, 1564, printed after canons and decrees in The Council of Trent, The Twenty-Fifth Session, ed. and trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848).

[6] Ibid.

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Democracy depends on an active, informed citizenry that is not continuously angry, frustrated, or depressed. Citizen journalism, open source journalism, grass-roots journalism, the fifth estate, pajamas media -- whatever you want to call it -- has many potential public benefits. Not often recognized, but most importantly, it is a vital defender of public good humor. Serve the public interest as a citizen journalist!

(if you can't see or play the video, try here)

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