From the Local Democracy blog in the U.K…
There’s a really good, detailed bit of reporting here from Friday’s Guardian about the near-collapse of local newspapers in some areas.
The starting point that Stephen Moss chose was my old local paper when I was young – The Long Eaton Advertiser.
This bit stood out for me:
“For the older generation, these things matter. “They want to know who’s passed away,” says the barman at the Corner Pin down the road, “and to check it’s not them.” But the younger generation don’t much care. Carl and Katrina Smith, a married couple in their mid-30s, not only didn’t know the paper had closed; they didn’t even know its name – and they were born nearby and have lived in the town most of their lives. They did, though, occasionally buy the Nottingham Evening Post – mainly for the jobs. For this generation, Long Eaton as a place has almost ceased to exist, lost in a more amorphous Nottingham-Derby conurbation.
“It’s only the older people who think of communities now,” says Carl. “For us it’s more a place to live than a community.” He was an electrician’s mate and worked all over the country (until he was laid off two months ago – people are as vulnerable as papers in the slump); Katrina works in Leicester. Long Eaton is a dormitory for them; they rent a house and say they have no idea who their neighbours are.”
That’s a problem. Front Porch Forum and other efforts are part of a solution.
According to new study from the UVM Center for Rural Studies, 66% of Vermont households surveyed report having high speed internet access. About 79% said that broadband was available where they lived.
Overall nearly 82% of polled households have an Internet connection. Of connected households, 18% had dial-up, 24% had a cable modem, 42% had DSL, nearly 7% had satellite Internet, 6% had a wireless Internet service, and 3% had fiber-optic or some other service. Generally anything faster than dial-up is considered to be broadband, although speeds may vary.
Lots more detail in the survey results… e.g., 73% of “respondents were in favor of an effort exclusively in fiber-optic infrastructure.”
Clay Shirky’s much blogged about essay about newspapers is — surprising for a topic so over analyzed — fresh and mind-opening…
… there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.
It’s a thrill to be deeply involved in one such experiment… Front Porch Forum.
From MeetUp.com‘s Scott Heiferman’s blog…
@JoeTrippi: “I live in a world in which BILLIONS of people live on less than $2 a day yet many of us will pay 99 cents for an IPhone app that makes our phone fart. But I don’t write this out of guilt or to guilt you. Its just a fact that I find really strange… I am not much of an idealist any more — at least not in the way I considered myself an idealist before I found my way to Africa last year — but I still believe in the power of people conducting simple acts together for the purpose of achieving what is right.”
That’s my approach to Front Porch Forum. It’s not single-handedly finding a cure for AIDS or reversing global climate change… but it is connecting neighbors and leading to increased civic engagement. And there’s something profound about helping humanize the guy next door, while directing people’s attention to local issues, conversations and actions.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more