I actually hosted a hyperlocal community website back from 2003 through 2015 in which I used crowd-source news gathering backed up with direct reporting on local government/ police, etc.
Among the attractions ‘donated’ to the site was a lady who literally transcribed the police band reports and others who, often gave wrenching descriptions of accidents like the guy pulling a wheelie on a motorcycle and losing it in traffic.
During a 100-year storm where flash flooding in the community was really rather widespread, we did a live net-cast that garnered nine-hundred concurrent viewers, many of whom were also sending us photos and calling in with reports.
The site had 25,000 registered members and a paid membership back then of about 1200 residents.
The issues that led to the collapse of the community was local jealousy, and, national jealousy (AOL’s “patch” network discovered my site, and literally spent $200,000 literally paying folks like the realtor whom I had extracted a $100 commercial membership who had used that membership to write about real estate and sell his properties. The other guy simply paid him to do that making it easy for him to switch.
Another factor involved was this site was created in the largest county in Georgia’s 14th Congressional district which, if you look at the folks sent to DC (Yeah-MTG) are known for their radical political views. One quote I got from MTG’s predecessor was, “I don’t believe in compromise” which was so ignorant a statement by a sitting congressman that the comment insulted my intelligence and I refused to cover the dumb ass.
I have a background in democratic politics and ran for office as a democrat in the county in 2014 as I was struggling to save the site. Hell, a decade earlier before the GOP went off the deep end, the locals tried to recruit me using the logic, the democratic party is the ‘n****r” party.
As I was, by 2015 (retirement age) an old white guy, my effort to rally democrats was confounded by the understandable reluctance of the majority of democrats in the county (about 15% African American) who considered me a hold-over from the traditional Georgia democratic party. No traction there.
Still, some of the highlights included remove video via smart phone and even a more elaborate remote netcast using cell phones. I remember successfully producing the ribbon-cutting for the new local hospital from the middle of a field.
I should also note my prior experience was as the local newspaper editor and I had spent years in a variety of media-type jobs (advertising/marketing for an ad agency) and even syndicated a fishing/outdoor program. I was a news and sports editor back in the ’70s as well, so came to the field with a variety of associated experiences that led to relative success. I.e. in 2007 the effort earned recognition as one of 15 “21st Century Newschallenge winners” of a Knight Foundation project to recognize such efforts.
The ultimate problem was that people who do community journalism have to be dedicated to the community. Effort like Patch ultimately fail despite their substantial financial backing because you don’t get the type of commitment needed from hired folks.
Before I end this I should point out that of the 25,000 registered users, over half actually made a post and at the height of the effort, the average visit was over 22 minutes. It was really rather dramatic but this was a self-funded effort as financial types, well, they wanted national/international reach to a centralized entity that can maximize the profit to feed the greed.
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