Our hyperlocal music site, TexasGigs.com, broke a million pageviews in only five months, only covering local bands in the DFW area. While we’re highly dependent on user-gen content, our small staff makes sure that there are new stories posted daily, and actively engages with every user who comments on the site. We also know that in many cases, tagging a photo in Flickr or posting a comment is the most “citizen journalism” you can hope for — and try to feature that content prominently.

Finally, one key point that gets lost in a lot of the cit-j conversation: 75% of our traffic is on “data,” not news. Long-tail concert listings, band info pages and the like. The digital medium is surely a way to distribute news and commentary, but it is a sure fit for actionable data. We look at it this way: The data brings them in, and the stories are the extra pageviews.

That said, we certainly haven’t yet proven there is a business. And I seriously doubt there is a business bringing hyperlocal content to an individual community, except in small markets isolated from a major metro. We think that the opportunity is in creating a conversational environment where you can get your major metro news and your hyperlocal and your niche local news in one place.

To that end, we’re launching PegasusNews.com (hopefully) Monday. I’ll be interested in hearing the feedback on our new baby

With Google and Yahoo seeking to form alliances with newspapers for their local content, I think it is only a matter of time before they find that in some markets their best partners may not be newspapers but credible, independent online local news sites staffed by pros aided by citizen journalists.

As newspapers continue to cut staff and their news hole, more and more journalists will be encouraged to take their labors online for their own betterment and the betterment of their communities.

Without the burden of maintaining presses and everything that goes with the printed product, lively local online sites that can deliver news, classifieds, multimedia and all kinds of localized digital content with unlimited space will attract eyeballs and advertisers–and become viable businesses.

Gordon Joseloff

True, the way that sites are chosen are a little scattershot. The report doesn

Traffic spiked on election night to just under 1,000 unique visitors. I’m seeing the 1% rule in effect too, though. With maybe a little less than 1% of visitors being active on the site.

You need good content and comments to attract comments, though. And more than one voice. I definitely see the need for a paid staff. Doesn’t mean it has to be set-up like big media’s new ‘information centers’ though.

That’s all I got for now. Back to work…

-kpaul

A couple of points though–the viablity of a “Web 2.0″ site isn’t necessarily its comments. As many recent surveys have pointed out, 9 out of 10 readers to any blog or interactive site are lurkers. So, a site may have a thriving community of readers with little comments. Subscription rates and stat counters that give hits and pageviews give a much better picture of a site’s readership…

Visible comments also do not account for emailed comments. Blogs at Conde-Nast newspapers–that use a software put together by Advance–did not have comments until recently, yet many of the bloggers received regular email from readers.

In general, some people are just more comfortable sending email vs. posting a comment (even if anonymous.)

And speaking of software that doesn’t do much for citizen journalism, your comments regarding YourHub are spot-on. I’ve been watching YourHub since it was rolled out, and find that it’s a lot of lip-service to the idea of citizen journalism and Web 2.0. A lot like the Advance sites. Some of that has to do with the papers who are contributing to the service (same thing with Advance) who are choosing to closely montor/control what citizens contribute–and give the impression that citizens can’t be trusted to write more than fluff under the direction of editors (who do most of the writing anyway.)

I would think, though, because YourHub is so closely tied to various local papers, that it would fall under a different category of citizen journalism than many of the independently produced sites. The motivation for the independent sites is far different than what appears to be the motivation for a newspaper adopting a tool like YourHub. Perhaps it’s time to differentiate “citizen journalism” in a highly controlled, newspaper-sponsored environment (“astro-turf journalism” is a pretty good term) vs. citizen journalism that is produced by citizens as community services. They do, indeed, function quite differently.

You raise good points about the “build it and they will come” idealism that infects community-based journalism, but the form is still evolving, and I suspect there are structural predispositions that hinder some of these efforts.

It’s not a magic bullet for the news industry, but it’s also in the early stages of development.

I’ve been running a community news website for about 7 months now. It’s had modest success. Here’s some things I learned:

- Don’t depend on contributions. They either come in the form of advertisements, press releases, or poorly written editorials. You may have good intentions, but readers may not.

- When I started, my only reason for building the website was to start an online discussion forum of news in my town. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of comments, but the readership is there. Two local newspapers read my site daily, a local land development firm checks in daily, City Hall, County of Los Angeles, and even the water agencies look at the site a few times a week. I consider that a success. If the content on my site is of such quality that these different agencies and companies spend 5 minutes a day on the site, then I’ve achieved my goal.

- Reporting for the site is also marketing for the site. I’ve attended at least a dozen events, press conferences, social gatherings, charity events, and even an astronomy club meeting. Just as a real journalist would do, I check ahead of time to see if I’m welcome. Once at the event, I had out my home-printed business card with the website on it, then I get to work, taking pictures, talking to people, and getting interesting stories. The people I talk to generally become readers and sometimes commenters, creating accounts the next day. Reporting is a social job, it’s not something you can do just behind the computer screen. Get out and talk to people and the readers will come.

- Differentiate your content: iBrattleboro chose a good content management system, GeekLog. The system allows managers to post stories under specific categories -denoted by icons in the post- unlike a lot of blog software. I emulated this with my website, which is based off PHP-Nuke. Readers see an icon, they know what to expect. Opinion will be just that, but something with the news icon or Featured Story icon will generally have an inverted pyramid structure

When the Los Angeles Daily News and YourHub opened up a citizen journalist website for my town, Santa Clarita, I thought my site was finished. But in the two months since ValleyNews.com/Santa Clarita has opened, I’d guess that 7 out of 10 articles posted there are either advertisements, press releases, or uninteresting posts. Despite their marketing muscle, I get more comments on my stories than they do.

So even if my site is a Potempkin Village, at least the movers and shakers in this town check into it every day. I’m getting a few invitations to cover events (a wine festival organizer let my wife and I in for free!), I’m finding interesting content that may not otherwise be exposed, and I’m having a lot of fun.

So far I have two volunteer writers who understand the idea of the website and produce quality content. If I can get 20-30 stories a week, I’m going to redesign the site. I hate scrolling too, and there are templates and themes available that look like legitimate newspaper websites. The only reason most of our sites use so much scrolling is that we don’t get enough content to refresh an entire front page everyday.