The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

How TBD could use hyperlocal journalism to kick the Washington Post’s butt

Update, Aug. 19: TBD’s cur­rent cov­er­age is a long way from what I pro­pose below. The Alexa Web traf­fic mea­sure­ment ser­vice is hardly sci­en­tific, and besides, TBD has just started up; but if the ser­vice on the mark, the new site is far from an instant suc­cess. I lack access to TBD’s inter­nal stats. – D.R.

My first edi­to­r­ial in my high school news­pa­per called for a traf­fic light at Gum Springs Road and Route One near Alexan­dria, VA.

You see, my school bus chugged along that way. And I could eas­ily imag­ine an over­grown truck smack­ing into it, maybe right where I was sit­ting. But only after pas­sion­ate pleas did my alarum reach print. Why bother with such a tri­fle? Didn’t stu­dent gov­ern­ment count more as a topic? Safety risks be damned.

My high school edi­tors from decades ago might as well be run­ning the local side of Washingtonpost.com today. The Post is stel­lar in many ways at the national and inter­na­tional lev­els, but not as a hyper­local or even local news source for the fast-growing sub­urb of Alexan­dria.

And I sus­pect that many other D.C.-area res­i­dents find Washingtonpost.com to be as sub­limely use­less for them as a home­town paper. I myself spend far more time nowa­days read­ing the New York Times than the Post.

With­out decent local cov­er­age, and with chaotic Web nav­i­ga­tion com­pared to the Times, what’s the point? A gap­ing hole exists for com­peti­tors to fill.

So TBD.com—the local Web start-up owned by Allbrit­ton Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and tied in with the company’s WJLA-TV—could con­ceiv­ably use geo-targeted Web pages and other strate­gies to kick the Post’s butt at the local level. I’d also sug­gest a mix of more Web savvy, local and hyper­local data­bases and crowd-sourcing (even, with due pre­cau­tions, in the tricky area of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism). The right busi­ness strate­gies wouldn’t hurt, either.

Washingtonpost.com offers an Alexan­dria page, but much of this home­town news first appeared days ago, includ­ing the June 26 account of sex charges against a 72-year-old T.C. Williams high school teacher. Would you believe, that’s the news item at the top of the screen­shot above, taken today, July 9. The next antique down is 5 North­ern Vir­ginia men con­victed on ter­ror­ism charges, given 10 years in prison. They’re from near-by Fair­fax County, where I grew up, and the date on that one is June 25.

Miss­ing from the top of the Alexan­dria page is Fair­fax board to revisit plans to trans­form Bai­leys Cross­roads, a story dated July 8, just yes­ter­day. For civic-minded Alexan­dria res­i­dents along the Fair­fax County bor­der, all kinds of ques­tions arise about the 530-acre plan. Will Alexan­dria share in the eco­nomic ben­e­fits? What about the traf­fic, air pol­lu­tion and per­haps spill-over peo­ple mov­ing into Alexan­dria itself rather than Fair­fax County? Another bur­den on Alexan­dria pub­lic schools? Or is this a Good Thing? Should every­one cheer, and should Alexan­dria get ready to pig­gy­back on the Fair­fax effort? Bet­ter in the end for prop­erty val­ues and qual­ity of life? Within the Post’s Vir­ginia sec­tion online, as I write this, you will find the Bai­leys Cross­roads story, but it’s under­played, even con­sid­er­ing it’s lit­er­ally yesterday’s news; and why the devil can’t it also show up near the top of the Alexan­dria page? This is the Web, Ms. Wey­mouth and Mr. Brauchli, not print.

Now imag­ine TBD let­ting read­ers choose an Alexandria-focused online edi­tion that would link not just to the Post story and those in other papers such as the Alexan­dria Times and Alexan­dria Gazette Packet, but also to blog­gers pas­sion­ate about their neigh­bor­hoods. And sup­pose there could be forums and com­ment areas in the actual TBD edi­tion, with sim­i­lar mate­r­ial linked or directly repro­duced from affil­i­ate blogs in my city? Instead of the Post broad­cast­ing the news to me, so to speak, TBD would be serv­ing up a truly community-oriented and com­pre­hen­sive site that blended news and dis­cus­sion, far more skill­fully and com­pletely than does Topix.com.

On the pos­i­tive side, TBD is wisely cement­ing rela­tion­ships with sports blogs, hob­by­ist blogs, hyper­local din­ing guides and other spe­cial­ized sites, the very kind of nar­rowly tar­geted con­tent that so many adver­tis­ers could poten­tially cher­ish, espe­cially if TBD skill­fully aggre­gated the good­ies. On the neg­a­tive, will this by itself really be good local jour­nal­ism? You also need to report civic news, like development-related top­ics, and that’s a chal­lenge when so many local blog­gers are dri­ven by nar­row pas­sions and don’t want to write about their neigh­bor­hoods per se—just about din­ing there, for example.

TBD will either have to hire more than the approx­i­mately 50 staffers planned for the start, or try even harder than now to find the right local bloggers—or per­haps it can start or buy par­tial inter­ests in local blogs or use a mix of these approaches.

Yes, to TBD’s con­sid­er­able credit, it already is try­ing to offer detailed local and sub­stan­tive cov­er­age. When I last checked, just 22 or so of the blog­gers were using a civic– or gen­eral neighborhood-oriented approach. Since then TBD has added at least sev­eral more blogs within that cat­e­gory,  not just hobby blogs, and efforts are ongo­ing. But for now we’re still not talk­ing about cov­er­age of civic affairs as thor­ough as I have in mind.

One par­tial solu­tion would be for affil­i­ates to turn to invite read­ers to send in heart­felt hyper­local com­men­tary and even videos. Look at the above YouTube and the explana­tory arti­cle from New York City’s West­side Inde­pen­dent, about which I wrote on July 2 while dis­cussing TBD and the civic blog­ging issue.

• Solomon Scandals hyperlocal series so far: A list for latecomers
• TBD’s Washington area news startup: Niche blogs wooed—but no signs YET of a hyperlocal nirvana
• Hyperlocal journalism: Georgetown publisher robbed—and eager to tell neighbors about it. Lesson for the Washington Post?
• Hyperlocal journalism and TBD: More coming on what makes a great ‘hyper’ site
• Smile! You’re on TBD TV—at least if you’re an affiliated blogger with Skype and the news gods beckon