Is online journalism better the more local it is, and what does that do to growth?

This isn’t my ques­tion — but it’s what a bunch of trans-continental, anglo­phone types will be pon­der­ing across this month’s Car­ni­val of Journ­al­ism.

Per­son­ally, I don’t have a lot of time or interest in geographically-based, local journ­al­ism (see Local Schmokel). I sub­scribe to the New Yorker des­pite the listings.

There’s noth­ing local about our online Car­ni­val of Journ­al­ism. And the ‘loc­al­ness’ that defined Brit­ish journ­al­ism ended in the 1980s, when Fleet Street was aban­doned as the phys­ical and social centre of UK national newspapers.

Whilst the Wash­ing­ton Post (Loudoun­Ex­tra) has attemp­ted to loc­al­ize its online journ­al­ism, Rupert Mur­doch has decided that the edit­or­ial future of the Wall Street Journal (per­haps the world’s most geo­graph­ic­ally spe­cific pub­lic­a­tion) is at the national and inter­na­tional level.

And as for growth, well it’s shrink­ing rev­en­ues, con­tent and jobs that everyone’s fight­ing these days. Craig New­mark has ended up serving local clas­si­fied mar­kets in the US and sup­plant­ing the role of news­pa­pers as a local mar­ket for inform­a­tion on services.

Enthusiast-produced con­tent will con­tinue to flour­ish online, and loc­al­it­ies may well have their advoc­ates and chron­iclers. But issues and interests unite us more effect­ively than ZIP and postal codes.

Online journ­al­ism is bet­ter the more inter­est­ing it is, and interest gen­er­ally implies rich­ness (intel­lec­tual, emo­tional, social, etc.). Whether that rich­ness comes from the super-exertion of a pas­sion­ate indi­vidual or from the pro­fes­sional work ethic of a salar­ied journ­al­ist is really not of great moment to the end-user.

Pas­sion, how­ever, is its own reward. Pay-cheques tra­di­tion­ally require things like sub­scrip­tion and advert­ising. In the future, journ­al­ism may well sur­vive as inform­a­tion advocacy. It’s already head­ing there with some NGOs. And yes — in the future — all journ­al­ism may be not-for-profit.

So people will take it where they can get it. This envir­on­ment is what Charlie Beck­ett calls net­worked journ­al­ism. It’s here. And in con­front­ing it, some of us may wish to die on our feet, but to the sur­viv­ors I sug­gest we get used to walk­ing on our knees.