If you read media blogs with any frequency, you’re familiar with the common perception that we have all the information we already need online. We just need better ways to aggregate and organize it.
I disagree.
People can’t find the breadth or the depth of local information that they seek. It’s not fully baked news stories that are necessarily missing either. It’s shorter takes on a wide range of topics that you wouldn’t normally find in a local newspaper. It’s something I’m calling “blurb journalism” in my mind as I continue to noodle on the concept.
The weekly column on “The Medium” in the Sunday New York Times addresses this opportunity today. Virigina Heffernan, who does a nice job analyzing new online trends, digs into the case of s suicide in her Brooklyn neighborhood and is frustrated at the lack of news coverage – or locally generated citizen reporting – she finds online. (See Narrowcast News.)
This is one example of information that people want, but can’t find. Recently, I had a similar situation:
A father whose children go to grade school with my kids paid the price for standing up for our neighborhood. He was out walking the dog after dark and took exception to some youngsters revving their engines and peeling out in a gravel parking lot at the neighborhood park. They struck back, beating him up and sending him to the hospital for several days with a broken jaw. This wouldn’t have run as a traditional news story in a newspaper or on a local TV news broadcast. But it was hugely important to people in that neighborhood.
The web is the perfect place for this type of information to be created and shared. To date, blogs are the platform of choice, but we need a more generalized framework that will allow citizens who aren’t dedicated enough to power a local blog 24/7 to share with one another news, tidbits, tips and even gossip.
Blurbs. Short, frequent information updates on a specific geographic area. This is the need we are aiming to fill at Serra Media with Newsgarden. The latest version is now live in Gig Harbor. Check it out, and let me know what you think.
Mark Briggs 
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