Monday, June 23, 2014

The digital local news

It is very obvious that the offer of local news has badly suffered from the digital revolution.It seems now that websites dealing with national or international news can live and even prosper as is the case of  Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Vox or, in France, Mediapart. the same is not true of local information. Regional newspapers, in the US, France or the UK have not found yet the magic potion that will push a signifant number of internauts to subscribe. Pure players have not been successfull either. Most of them had to stop for lack of financing.

There are many reasons for this sad situation: the local news are costly to collect and advertisers and internauts are not eager to pay. The audience is limited and free information is generously provided by local government and specialized sites dealing with entertainment, food or sports. It seems that people are just happy when they get the alerts and the very specific informations that are useful for their everyday life.

Is there a solution ?   My opinion is that pure players are much easier to manage than digital sites connected too closely to print newspapers. Also, a digital offer must include connections to a wide variety of very specialized sites covering all the activities of the nearby city and propose help to any newcomer.All ideas are welcome and each site must find its own economy with the support of the network. However, an isolated local news website has no future.