From the Guardian

Where the hell do we go now?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/16/regional-newspapers-redundancies

More than 900 regional journalists have been made redundant since July - with further cuts to come. What does the future hold for them, those still in work and the
next generation of journalists?
.....................................................................................

What if..?

What if it was possible to create a new type of local news service for the whole of the UK, one that enabled journalists out of a job to still derive part of their income from journalism, and maybe allowed jobbing journalists to try to develop stories their local newspaper would never run, and possibly even bring non-journalists in to the mix, in fact anyone who can tell a good story or add their knowledge about their bit of the country.

Let's call it UK.local.news

First off, we have to admit to ourselves that this new service would not be able to sustain the journalistic workforce that currently is employed by the printed press - far from it - and the pain of losing one's job and therefore security is not something to make light of. But for exactly these reasons it is essential that we need to be thinking of ways to create new opportunities for this important UK talent pool.

How might it work -

From the user's point of view it could all hinge on a system of dynamic maps of the UK which would enable users to see at a glance the latest stories, the type of
story, the biggest stories (most read or most rated) and the 'most local to you' stories. Stories would be categorised along a number of lines and useful feeds
would be set up so that targetted news could be embedded in any site or delivered to other platforms such as mobile or interactive TV service.

Stories would primarily be written by journalists that would be paid and there would be various formats or types of story that would require different amounts of
effort and engagement - they might include 'investigative stories' that might need a number of journalists to work on for some time, Q&As with important local figures might be made not by journalists solely but by a mix users of the site who might have an 'in' with that individual, 'council watch' stories, 'Local campaign alerts', 'Event reports' and so on. 

The site would be supported by advertising - a mixture of classified and business ads relevant to the locality of the story. If we make the assumption that those wanting news stories around Hartlepool probably live or work around that area, then there should be a premium in getting a relevant local advert to that user's eyes but it wouldn't, of course, preclude national advertising. The site could also take sponsorship from some enlightened company, perhaps a communications giant that would pump the service and its stories out on their particular content platform.

Journalists would be paid a share of the incoming revenues with some kind of profit splitting mechanism. The journalistic environment would have an aspect of
competition to it - the more readers a story receives the higher percentage of the ad revenue the author receives. Perhaps a monthly tally is made of revenues in which is then distributed out using some kind of hybrid metric including how many readers a story gets as well as how many comments, rating and so on. Hopefully this particular kind of incentive would mean that journalists would feel more inclined to uncover bigger and more important stories - they could take longer to break a complex local corruption story because they know that if it is likely to be a big hitter, grabbing the attention of many readers they'll be recompensed more than the type of 'throw away' story they may have had to write to keep the printed locals' pages full.

Some local stories have to go national, some might even go global - most stories start somewhere. So maybe, as nowpublic.com have done, there would be a way to sell the story assets (images, leads, story, comments, data) in to large news agencies like Associated Press which could add to the overall pot that is payed out to the journalists and editorial unit.

Users should be able to suggest new stories they'd like to see covered by the 'journalists', much a like a 'stub' in wikipedia - users could add the various bits and bobs they know already about the story - this kind of page could be called a 'lead' - they would have informative merit in themselves although would not take the form of story based journalism, more like a fact and rumour gathering place. This would replace some of the editorial function that newsrooms employ but would also need to be supplemented by other ways of aqcuiring and setting leads for new stories.

Journalists that take part will be encouraged to collaborate, both with other journalists and with users. Users might be asked to participate in straighforward but compelling fact gathering - maybe collecting data on local; crime, shop prices, traffic, nature, speeding hotspots, pollution etc. Or perhaps more opinion based surveys to help a story build up a bank of great examples - views on the best schools, reviews of local facilities, where's good for young mums to hang out - right the way through to more contentious but powerful areas like politics and religion.
 
The site should try and make use of public data sets and be able to have that data be visible on the same dynamic maps that form a a core part of the navigational structure of the site. For example the Metropolitan Police's Crime Map should be viewable - perhaps with crime stories visible and linkable from it. School and health data might be possible, even perhaps house price data for those still interested.

Without doubt the trickiest question aside from whether it could create enough income to attract journalists in the first place is how to run the editorial control and oversight functions. Journalism has required a central control system to organise itself for good reason - telling stories about who we are and where we live is a precarious business, it can go very wrong. Newspapers allow themselves a degree of bias, but they know that the audiences trust is paramount, they would cease to become a source of information of users continually doubted the veracity of that information.

So, how would this service ensure best journalistic practise, how would it ensure balance where necessary, how would it verify facts and sources. My feeling is that there would need to be an editorial unit that worked with the journalists - they would have to be paid with a different model perhaps and would form the core responsibility unit for the service.

So could it work? What are the flaws, how could it be improved? Is it hopelessy naive or already out there fully functioning already?

Justin