Online Press Goes Local

Dave Cohn, of Spot.us, posted a reaction to Huffington Post's experiment in localized versions of its site. Let's start with there:

Should citizen journalism organizations in Chicago (WindyCitizen.com or Chi Town Daily) be afraid. Hell yea.

I don't really want to defend the larger newspapers - but I do think that if this experiment works and moves to other cities - we might start seeing a reverse of citizen journalism: From small independent organizations to... Open Salons (open.salon.com), HuffingtonPosts and I'm sure Slate will follow. That doesn't solve the old media problem - it might just bring it to a new platform.

Cohn pulls from a post Terry Heaton put up on the PoMO Blog. There, Heaton posts a great screen capture of the Chicago version of Huffington Post. Amidst other news pulled from Chicago-based news sources, a top headline reads, "Tribune Lays Off 40." There's an irony in this as an online publication, like this new Huffington Post, page may be accellerating traditional press, like the Tribune, towards their end. However, the Huffington Post page relies on linking to content from the local traditional press that it may help put out of business.

Following Heaton's thoughts back to an article by Will Bunch on Philly.com, you find a journalist nervous that the experiment in Chicago could quickly move to Philadelphia. Bunch sees the business model as the inevitable part:

On the surface, the Huffington Post Chicago isn't radically different in look or impact from local newspaper Web sites like Philly.com. But there are three critical differences: 1) HPC highlights the best local news from a variety of sources, including not just Chicago's two daily papers but also its magazines, weeklies, business journals and TV and radio stations and 2) it does that with just one -- count 'im, one! -- staff employee and 3) the staffer's work is augmented by bloggers willing to come to the site and post for free.

Now that's a business plan! In contrast, the work that you read on a Philly.com was collected by a large staff of paid journalists, many making at least $65,000 a year or more.

So, traditional press is definitely worried with a bare bones business model that it can't keep up with, but should those crafting the next generation of citizen journalist sites take pause as well? Cohn thinks so and I think pitches a plausible future. My two questions: One, will the localized versions of sites like Slate and Salon pull talent from small citizen journalist sites? Two, will citizen journalist sites be needed more if the Tribune finally goes down and Huffington Post Chicago needs content?