For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and fastest-growing counties.

Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.

“It’s too early for us to put any kind of stamp on it as a success or failure,” said Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, a unit of Washington Post Co. “We’re just going to keep experimenting,” he added.

Despite early fears that the Internet would be a force for alienation, allowing people to pursue individual interests to the exclusion of shared interests and their primary relationships, it seems that the Internet has instead offered ways to collaborate and communicate unimaginable in 1993 when Rheingold published his book.

With the evolution of virtual communities from The Well to Ning and beyond, what problems remain today? What keeps some communities from being more effective or have they evolved as far as they can go? (Please post your comments by 12 pm, June 2).

Related:
The Well: A Timeline
The Wealth of Networks, Benkler (full text, via CC share-alike license)

“There are quite a few bloggers, particularly in larger cities, who do work on a par with any journalist,” SPJ president Clint Brewer told Johnson who attended a recent workshop at DePaul. “We’re trying to sort of hang our shingle out in their world with this first step and let them know we welcome them as well.”

Through The Citizen Journalism Academy, SPJ says it ” seeks to help everyone wanting to practice journalism to do so accurately, ethically and fairly. The Society aims to help participants understand how responsible practices could increase their reach and help them have strong journalistic reputations within their communities and around the world.”

What do you think? Can such an effort improve the quality of work by novice reporters or does it undermine the very idea of citizen journalism?

While this method of interaction might not take-off mainstream, it is interesting to consider how quickly we become dependent on one way of doing things.

1. Obstacles ahead for online advertising—one barrier may be the growing antipathy to the online advertisement itself.
2. e-Reference to replace ebook—while there is significant benefit from digitizing the world, not all texts become more useful or more valuable when digitized.
3. The living room may become Public Enemy Number One—the media and consumer electronics industries should consider how the carbon footprint of the living room can be reduced without the need to revert to antiquated technology, such as CTR tubes and analog transmission.
4. Traditional lives on thanks to Internet TV—the global traditional television sector, despite the occasional shock, should remain in good health throughout the year, and there is a good chance that Internet television will have contributed to traditional television’s fortunes.
5. Overcoming online piracy may not mean the end to counterfeit content—while 2008 may be the year in which the media industry manages to start to control one form of piracy – the overall campaign against piracy needs to be sustained.
6. The movie theater becomes more than just movies—the movie theater’s run of strong performance provides the ideal backdrop for change, with the move to digital implying considerable investment, which is likely best accommodated while revenues are still strong.
7. Time for music to be tangible again—the industry could evolve from offering digital downloads for transfer to a device, to selling pre-recorded MP3 players.
8. Online is moving (slowly) to the front page—2008 may be the year in which it becomes increasingly commonplace for traditional media to acknowledge the existence of the online world.
9. Offshoring gets bigger and more creative—2007 saw one of the first media offshoring contracts worth in excess of $1 billion, covering “end-to-end” full services including IT, operations, finance and accounting, HR and research. 2008 may see further deals of this scale.
10. Converging technology and media – don’t forget the business plan—for the combination of media and technology to be worth more than the sum of its parts, a number of factors need to be aligned, particularly a robust business plan.

I wanted to share a pretty cool site with you all.  It’s called Global Voices Online.  It’s a daily collection of blogs from around the world put together by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

In “The Future of Advertising is Now,” a report from strategy+business magazine, consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton heralds a new era of consumer-centered marketing to replace outdated print and broadcast advertising models. Even so, the report estimates that major marketers are allocating only 4-10 percent of “measured media spending” to online advertising.   As this changes, what opportunities does it create for news web sites large and small? What are the risks?

Please comment on the readings by 12 p.m., Monday, May 19.