Metro papers' new recipe for success: hyperlocalism

Closing foreign bureaus won't improve local coverage. It has to be reimagined.

from the March 27, 2007 edition

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Something can be gained, as well, however. In reality, the big metro dailies face real pressures at home.

The home areas they cover have grown increasingly complicated in the past few decades. The role of the metro section has grown beyond the old template of stories focused around city hall or the police department set off with some well-written features. The nation's urban sprawl has turned many metro areas into regional city-states.

Consider the growth of the US Census's Metropolitan Statistical Areas (those are the metro areas as the Census defines them) for some of the nation's largest cities between 1981 and 2006.

In 1981, there were 5 counties in Boston's MSA, in 2006 there were 7. Chicago had 6 counties in its MSA in 1981 and 14 counties in 2006. Houston went from 6 counties to 10. St. Louis went from 8 counties to 16. And Washington's MSA (outside the District) went from 7 counties to 15.

Each one of those new counties means a lot more people and communities to cover. There are more governments, more schools, more businesses. There are more clubs and more neighbor-hoods. And as these metro areas expand, there are indeed more cultures as well – communities over time tend to develop their own identities and idiosyncrasies.

So, yes, there may be something to be said for improving local coverage – even "hyper" improving it. Creating fuller, richer pictures of these bigger super-metro areas would really provide readers something valuable.

But there is one massive caveat that comes with the hyperlocalism argument.

Doing this new, more complex local coverage is probably not going to be a way to do things more cheaply.

Simply closing distant offices or letting go of foreign correspondents won't improve local coverage. Making local coverage better is ultimately going to require a reimagining of the way the coverage is done. And doing it right may be just as expensive – even more expensive – than having a few reporters in distant lands.

Is that what hyperlocal advocates have in mind? That isn't yet clear.

At the moment, the phrase isn't so much a new way of doing journalism as it is a slogan. The question is: Will hyperlocalism lead newspapers to a new, more sophisticated way of covering their bigger backyards or will it simply become a new way to describe doing less?

• Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, writes a twice-monthly column on media issues. E-mail him at Dante Chinni.

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