There’s been quality commentary about local journalism and citizen journalism lately due to the difficult (but hopefully not insurmountable) developments at BackFence. I was drawn to this story by Mathew Ingram’s post that kindled good discussion amongst experts, one of which I certainly am NOT!

What I do know is that from a consumer perspective, hyper local blogging works. We are proud and grateful to be powering notifications via IM, Email and SMS for a very vibrant local community called Hoboken411.com (they were nice enough to post about ZapTXT here) that has many of the qualities that Mathew alludes to in this quote: “I would agree with Frank that in order to draw people in, a local site has to live and breathe the area it covers, and have lively personalities and content.”

Hoboken411.com services the Hoboken community with blow by blow, almost real time commentary on News, Events, Reviews, Accidents and Recreation, getting north of 50 comments on many many posts. Sample this post that generated over 350 comments that any blogger or publisher would be envious of.

I for one really want local journalism to work. Backfence sent me invaluable information about a shooting one day when I was at work and my wife and 11-month old son were at home, blocks away from an incident that took place in our nieghbourhood. I have received many other useful posts coming straight from the police and fire department via BackFence.

This stuff works for consumers folks. Please find a way to make it work for the bottom line too.

Happy Zapping, Sameer

Tags: Cool ZapTXT uses, ZapTXT publishers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.