As newsrooms take their first steps into social media, as they work to extend their citizen journalism efforts and as notions of community begin to be a part of our internal conversations, it feels to many as though we embark blindly, with only our best guesses to guide us. And, to be sure, we don’t know precisely what form our industry will take going forward, what methods for news gathering and reporting have yet to be forged, or what roles many of us will play as the stage shifts beneath our feet. And yet, I feel confident in saying that what we’re moving towards could be called the communitization of news– that is, a model of journalism by which communities of voices, that need not be attached to any traditional news organization, are responsible in large part for the collection and dissemination of news.

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There are a number of voices asserting that the saving grace for local news will be a transition from the merely local to the hyperlocal. In its most intriguing form, hyperlocal journalism calls for embedded reporters in a market’s key neighborhoods. The idea is that this will allow an organization to cover those stories that most often go unreported. Neighborhood reporters could attend the PTA meetings, the high school sporting events, neighborhood organizations, town council meetings, craft shows, and even, I suppose, block parties.

Of course, a presupposition of a hyperlocal model assumes the Web as publishing platform. After all, this volume of limited appeal news lends itself only to the limitless expressions of the Internet. You can’t stack a 30 minute show with PTA meetings, and there just isn’t enough room in any city’s daily for a story about every craft show. Even if you could, you wouldn’t. The mass appeal just isn’t there. But, of course, hyperlocal journalism isn’t at all about mass appeal. It’s about the Long Tail. The niche audiences that stretch out across the bottom of your Web stats graph, that, taken together, may very well bring you more eyeballs than your mainstream content. At least, that’s the plan.

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