Media140: Local Journalism

Joanna Geary: Twitter us another way of finding you local community online and interacting with them.

Christian Payne: Geri Jackson (sp?) – evicted from Zimbabwe, broadcast into the country. Blocked. Now texts into there. 400k texts a month. One third of population left, but leave a mobile there to communicate with family. How get free texts into Zimbabwe?

Paul Bradshaw: Distribution is now journalists’ responsibility. Can you organize users to cover events?

Simon Grice: setting up a local news site. At a local level, people are interested in things that happen where they live. Unique opportunity for local news to harness this medium to serve audience.

Monetization:

PB: tools and services around news
SG: local ads
JG: no-one has the answer. We don’t sell content, we sell audiences. Audiences follow you because you have something to say. We need to look again at what people want from us.
SG: We need to rethink what localization means, when you don’t have a fixed distribution base.
PB: Need to create a newsroom without walls. Connected journalism.
JG: For traditional journalists, social media are a scary lot. Taking meetings face to face cements online relationships.
CP: I’m glad the advertising model is lying kicking and screaming in the gutter.
PB: Publishers not throwing enough money at innovation.
SG: Publishers not looking at the innovation in startups.