Hyper-local journalism in Lincoln
– I intended to post this as a comment on Shane Croucher’s post on hyper-local journalism in Lincoln, part of the discussion theme going on at LSJ Bloggers. But it ended up a bit too long for the purpose, so I decided to make it a post on its own.
In his post, Shane makes a couple of good points:
- Lincolnshire Echo, BBC Lincolnshire and Lincs FM (bigest media outlets in the county) do not have enough manpower to cover every city council meeting or residents’ association forum
- The most beneficial of hyper-local coverage in Lincoln would be the West End of the city
However, my vision of hyper-local journalism in Lincoln is not particularly focused on a certain area of the city (though this is the whole idea of the concept) but on the whole city itself.
Let me explain: Lincoln, the admin HQ of the county of Lincolnsire, can barely be called a city. Lincoln has a population of just over 100,000, which is basically the size of a neighbourhood of a large city, such as London, Birmingham or New York.
And in these large cities hyper-local journalism makes sense, judging by the numbers. You just wouldn’t get enough page hits from a total of 20,000 inhabitants of a certain area (according to Shane’s approximation of the population of the West End) in order to sustain financially a hyper-local publication serving such a place.
Hyper-local journalism makes sense where a neighbourhood in itself has the population of Lincoln (such as the cities listed above), a number which would be able to sustain enough page hits to finance a website serving the area.
What I believe would work, related to the idea of hyper-local journalism in Lincoln, would be a blanketed city-wide coverage, which would be able to bring in enough page hits to sustain financially such a site.
A functional hyper-locl site would work like a Lincoln-only newspaper (not like the Echo, which has county-wide coverage). This site would cover most of the residents’ associations and city council meetings (2 staff), local cases at the crown and magistrates court (2 staff), police and fire brigade cases (2 staff). That would be 8 staff members in total, including an editor and sub-editor.
Such a site would generate enough traffic every month to be able to sustain itself financially through advertising and affiliations, such as event listings and syndicating content to county-wide media outlets (be it text, audio or video).
Realistically, for a Lincoln ‘hyper-local’ website as envisioned above, I would estimate around 100,000 impressions per month with around 15,000 uniques — enough to sustain financially a small team of journalists (with the right equipment, which is another topic that I won’t get into now).