How do you learn about local news? You know .... news or content that's particularly relevant to you in a specific geographic area? Perhaps about an event that has taken place or one yet to happen or maybe a local store grand opening.


Would a Google alert work? Might your personal network of friends, colleagues, and family connect you with the news? Would local news .... print or broadcast .... push it out to you? Twitter might, or not, depending on where local is and whether you follow the right source and #keyword. A humble flyer might, depending on whether it describes what's relevant to you.
When you step back and assess the task, isn't it impressive how disparate, separate and isolated the actual options are? Think how many of these sources .... ones we depend on to regulate our lives and connect us with a community .... are unrelated and unreliable. On top of that, think how few preserve information, enable interaction with readers, or even make the information equally available.
Consider these examples.
I have a 7.5 year old daughter in first grade. This is our first year in the public school system, and .... we've discovered .... our first year truly plugged into the local information conduit. We receive flyers in her backpack [of course, to get them I need to check through the backpack]; four class moms communicate with us via email and phone; the school system has an email and text information system.
Apart from these communication tools, we rely on our library and borough hall to post announcements onto 2 signs fronting both buildings. These are brief messages, sometimes cryptic, visible in one direction [each direction will have different messages] and not at all for those on the other side of town. The library .... essentially our community center .... also mails out to residents a quarterly booklet and posts announcements of upcoming events on its website. You need to remember to check, though, and I haven't found the information consistently searchable through Google.
We have no local town paper. The next best option - Suburban Trends and its free sister publication Argus - covers several towns and offers incomplete local news. Not all stories appear online either.
Suburban Trends has a Twitter account, inconsistently used, and a weekly email snapshot of the most salacious local headlines, linking to online articles. I look forward to these updates as they help me feel plugged in. I understand why traffic came to a standstill on a certain day and why mama bear only has two cubs when she had three a few weeks ago [one got hit by a car]. These headlines, though, don't create a sense of local community.
Our high school covers some hyper local news via its public access cable news reporting program. Do you know, though, that none of these stories is digitally searchable nor visibly retained, and no programming schedule readily available? If you miss the relevant broadcast [which you may find out about via a school text/email announcement], it is gone into oblivion! And so is the effort.
Finally, you'll notice outdoor placards and posters placed at high traffic locations to remind residents of upcoming events like the pancake breakfast or the high school musical.
In this audit of available local community communication tools, I've touched on the mail, the school system, the newspaper, the library and borough hall and their websites and outdoor signage. Some sources overlap, but few are fully accessible online where many - if not most of us - start researching.
How to find relevant, local information then? How to bridge or integrate all of those systems into the equivalent of the old party line telephone operator who knew everything about the community and could direct you to the best source for more information? Today, the equivalent is known as Google. But, how do we put that information into a form Google knows about?
The best solution I've discovered is via an online self-publishing platform .... i.e., a blog .... a humble yet powerful social media tool that represents an umbrella aggregator, distributor and focal point for relevant and related information. In fact, I've been experimenting with a hyper local blog [somewhat similar to the New York Times' The Local, except mine predates it], capturing local history and anecdotes only available through word-of-mouth or from unpublished or out of print sources; documenting local traditions [e.g., Santa arriving via helicopter] and happenings [the first ever Local Business Fair]; adding dimension to events our library sponsors; sharing information on our unique local resources [e.g., hiking trails, German style wheat beer brewery and how to use the online New Jersey library search tool], and adding links to any relevant source that I find.
What I've learned in the process is that, as small a community as we have with approximately 10,000 residents, different groups don't communicate. Not out of spite. Rather because we are all busy and not necessarily thinking about the relevance of information to those outside our narrow group. The existence of the blog means that we now have a platform for capturing and sharing all of that information. However, until residents become educated about trusting the blog for information, I use traditional means to get the word out by talking to people, getting mentioned in community newsletters and Suburban Trends, being visible covering stories, and ensuring that stories relevant to the community appear on the blog.
I've discovered that a majority of our local activities and businesses cannot be found online. Many businesses don't have websites and their owners haven't created an online presence. Sadly, even when information has been captured digitally it isn't consistently 'findable' .... it's too deeply embedded and buried in a website. With the blog, I've created a first-ever digital trace for local businesses and improved the digital visibility of our local events, as well as an archive for our traditions.
As with all of the social media based experiments I'm involved in, the build is slow. It takes time to demonstrate credibility and relevance online through the stories I publish, and then in person as I meet subscribers [in one case, a reader rescued me from getting temporarily lost in the woods] and those who 'find' the blog via Google. I welcome contributors and have luckily identified fellow enthusiasts in the children's library. I need more, though.
What is true here, as with other experiments, is that the sharing of knowledge .... in this case about my community .... generates conversation. Through this conversation, I've uncovered more knowledge that I can't wait to share.
There's also the realization that this relatively simple tool called 'blog' is a powerful aggregating marvel: available 24/7 and when convenient for readers, searchers, customers and residents. If attended to, the information is current and relevant. And, if current and relevant, those interested will subscribe. Continued relevance comes from continued feedback and interaction, building on itself and reinforcing the sense of connection and community.
This humble social media tool, then, represents an optimal means for small towns .... as it does for businesses of all sizes .... to capture local flavor, tradition, history and events to generate conversation and demonstrate value. It solidifies a sense of community and commonality. To work, it requires that all of those separate sources of information and bits of paper .... about school closings, roadwork, pancake breakfasts, changes in library hours and department of recreation registration .... feed into the common platform. Not impossible, but different and yet infinitely more effective for connecting residents with the relevant local information that they seek.
Think of the benefits: relevance, connection, efficiency and community.
What do you think?