Is local news journalism?

For a while now I've been lingering around the periphery of local news. My first business visions for Epilocal were about solving problems specifically for local news. Originally I thought I would be solving problems with the technology used for publishing itself, increasingly I've moved more into the backend, operational side of things, solving analytics and reporting problems for local news, but also for others publishing online content.

That is to say, that I've become familiar with the space over the last 2.5 years. As someone who comes to local news as an outsider, with no journalism background, I definitely have a different take on things then lots of insiders. One of the things that I'm beginning to increasingly question, which surely runs against the grain of traditionalists, is whether local news should be built around journalism at all.

There's this romantic vision that sticks around for lots of insiders of some valiant reporter at city council or school board meetings exposing corruption with hard-hitting journalism. But this type of coverage was always subsidized by lighter lifestyle and sports content as well as advertising partnerships with local businesses.

In today's media landscape, I think starting from a journalism angle is the wrong way to build a new local news outlet. Instead, it's about creating the lifestyle content that people want to read about their town, and then working together to make your publication a hub of commerce for the area. And then only once that's sustainable, maybe you could think about playing a civic watchdog role in the area. This is the model that 6AM City has taken very successfully to date, and I think it could be replicated with similar success in smaller cities and towns. It just might not come from the traditional journalists that we expect it to.