WILLIAMEDIA

The state of your local news options are in a flux. What is their place to the local citizen who now reads most of their news online. Do you know the web address of your local news institution when the weather goes bad and you don’t have a TV ready beside you, thats right just google it. This is a leading problem to local news bureaus around the United States. The Internet is viewed as international and a large amount of internet news readers go to CNN.com or places like Digg.com.

Some proof of this troubled environment for local news organizations has to do with portal sites like Yahoo.com when they link to news sites outside their own news network they link to national news organizations stories and are less likely to link to your local news website. Where do you get your local news, is it through a local news site like Dallas own WFAA.com or friends text message chatter through services like twitter.com.

Last night as I sat in front of my computer and caught up on stories of the day I read recent twitters, short 140 letter text messages, from friends as they warned fellow twitterer’s of the coming weather. This was not the instant chat rooms of the 90’s internet where weather would almost always come up in casual conversation this was almost instant mentions of what was going on with them at that moment which happened to be the extreme weather.

This type of community driven news has to be dealt with carefully because if the local news station was to just to start a twitter account and add you and me as a friend I would not necessarily add them back and read their posts. For me I follow a persons blog, twitter.com, Myspace, or Facebook if a I have an interest in what they have to say and who they are or what they do. A local news group such as a local broadcast station has to figure out where people online expect to find that information like the local weather. Its a really a hard question as the localized news industry struggles to find a place in your new digital life.

One idea is to separate the information where people want it. Do you need a full on website with every topic imaginable given room on the front page along with the plethora of ads. Maybe this organizational decision should be re-thought and individual sections should have a larger degree of separation from the main news homepage. I usually get lost looking for the technology sections on my local news sites and give up the search.

How about the growing online video content that local news studios have been posting online, is it embeddable for people to more easily post to their own space on the internet, for most sites I have found the answer is no. Sure most of the video content from these sites have “email this story” or “link to the story” but how effective has that been in spreading their news article around the local internet. I know when I visit my local news site I am flooded with too much information along with their numerous blinking advertisements to stay long enough to pass news stories and videos on to my friends.

As of todays local news climate there is still major room for local news organizations to be innovative and to find a place in their local viewers now digital directed eyes.

Top Photo Credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/adambales/2165381676/