Media

Journalism Students Create Hyperlocal News Sites, Learn Hyperlocal News Lessons

Chuck Ansbacher | Monday 4 April, 2011 16:04

Remember when “hyperlocal” news used to be called the far less sexy but probably just as accurate “local” news? But then “local” became synonymous with “nobody reads this shit” and in order to lure student journalists away from the fast paced and exciting world of gossip blogging they had to invent an exciting new prefix to make local seem cutting edge and fast paced instead of geriatric and arthritic? Those were the days!

The rebranding has been so successful that getting involved in hyperlocal news is practically the new inventing a fart-sound app for the iPhone — everybody wants in on the trendy action. Especially, it would appear, one of the student journalists blogging over at the informative if not gimmicky Wannabe Hacks, a site where five (you guessed it) wannabe journalists document the courses they are respectively charting to achieve this ambitious goal. One of these wannabes just spent three weeks playing actual journalist at uberhyperinsanelylocal news sites Islington Now and Hackney Post. The goal of this exercise was to “bring together all of the skills we’ve learnt over the past six months and put them to work in a working news room.”

The takeaways from this exercise were varied, not at all specific to a sooooooooofuckinglocal news setting, and maybe even a bit fascinating. At the very least, far more informative than the last time we explored the topic of journalism at Snipe.

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