Next American City welcomes the proliferation of hyperlocal media in the Washington, DC area:
Washington’s dozens of hyperlocal online news sources—those that cover a narrower audience than traditional media outlets, whether a neighborhood or just a portion of it—are filling important information gaps left by mainstream media. As local print newspapers have folded and news media in general have become more interactive, hyperlocal digital media have stepped in to cover issues that matter at the neighborhood level. In the process, they’re changing the way we interact with the cities in which we live…
All these platforms and projects share one thing: a passion for the places where Washingtonians work and play, love and live, vote for their City Council representatives and run for the PTA. And new media are doing things to galvanize community engagement that other media aren’t, especially in urban development processes…
…as a test case, Washington’s hyperlocal media show how a wider variety of residents can become more engaged in processes that have often been left to a much smaller group of individuals. As blogger David Alpert observed this summer, “A blog can get a lot more people to be participants.” And as urban populations swell, diverse input in urban planning can’t be a bad thing.
See also:
Governing: “Growing America: Demographics and Destiny”
…the Internet’s rise allows every business–indeed every family–unprecedented access to information, something that militates against centralized power. Given Internet access, many lay people aren’t easily intimidated into accepting the ability of “experts” to dictate solutions based on exclusive knowledge since the hoi polloi now possess the ability to gather and analyze information…