6:00am | I was recently invited, along with a group of other Long Beach news sources and publications, to a Leadership Long Beach meeting dealing with the government and media. I hadn’t planned on particularly writing a piece regarding it because I had (rather wrongly, I fully confess) assumed that the dialogue would be relegated to a surface-level discussion of our operations.
However, the gathering — between the media asked to attend and the leaders of Long Beach chosen that year as representatives of the organization — brought up an interesting point of conversation that I would like, in the least, to share with my readers and, in the most, create and engage in a dialogue regarding media here in Long Beach.
For the crowd of attendees, digital media remained their overwhelmingly main source of news; this, of course, shouldn’t be a shocker given the advent of the Internet. However, amongst agreement with all the media hosts as well as a majority of the attendees was the fact that humans are deeply entrenched with the concept of tangibility — we love to hold things in our hands as well as enjoy the feeling of something being “ours.” And it put forth a discussion about how to reach people and with what type of news.
Here at the Post, we only print once a month. Of course, many people who criticize us for this; I believe one gentleman’s comment was, “Month old news that we already read online weeks ago.” The commenter, however, missed three key points: 1) the simple cost of such an endeavor — the most glaring point of all; 2) the fact that not everyone reads their news digitally; and 3) even if they do access news digitally, if they have not heard of us, it gives us the chance to introduce ourselves in the case they randomly pass by a stack of our prints.
What this all amounted to was that which separates us from larger news sources and media outlets: nimbleness. We as news sources cannot survive if we are stretching ourselves too thin. It would be incredible, particularly for a word-nerd such as myself, to print weekly or daily; it would also be highly detrimental to our existence, if not flat out extirpate it.
In tangent with this idea of being nimble, it was agreed that what makes local news sources great is just that — their locality, the fact that we’re Long Beach and little else.
It was at this juncture that each media host was asked to gather a group of attendees and discuss the future of that particular media source. And it was also here that all of my attendees were Long Beach Post readers (or perhaps they were just being kind) and offered insight into both their likes and dislikes of the publication. Being local was one of their most emphatically expressed enjoyments; the fact that the Post doesn’t deviate away from Long Beach gave them a comfort in reading it, despite whether they agreed with the views being expressed.
However, the crowd was clear about the fact that they wish they could have news tailored to their likes, an option we are increasingly incorporating into our new site. Bilingual folks were eager to hear about the possibility of a Spanish-driven version of the news. A gay man was ecstatic to hear about a possible LGBT branch being offered. Instagram and Hipstamatic addicts were thrilled to hear of being able to upload photos instantaneously from their phone.
“Hyperlocality” — this concept that news needed to be highly adaptable to individuals and tailored to them — consisted of two key components: the user being able to choose which news they receive — say, for example, in their e-alert or on push notifications — and where their news comes from — say they are only interested in news that is happening in their district.
Of course, a fear that news of significance would become inaccessible and people’s “blinders” would become activated set over some. One woman quipped, “No, no, do not give me the option to tailor my news — I’ll never happen to read something I would have stumbled on before.” Despite a rather simple and well-argued point, the majority still leaned towards specificity-driven news access.
In more succinct terms, it seems readers want the micro instead of the macro. And on our new site, we are aiming for just the same. We want you to be able to manipulate the site for your taste, your comfort zone, your news.
However, questions from both myself and others still remained, despite our support for hyperlocality. It is here that I pose some of those questions to our readers and ask humbly for their responses:
Is “hyperlocality” essential to Long Beach media? Do you think national and international news should be relegated to larger media conglomerates?
Does tailoring the news to fit one’s personal preferences allow them to “blindside” news that might be of importance? Does news have an obligation to enforce certain stories into your feed?
Do media outlets whose main reach is digital have an obligation to print (at least partially) to cater to those who do not have access to the Internet?
In other words, what do you think?