The uncertain future of local news online
The future of local news has been in doubt for decades.
Newspapers and magazines, once the beneficiaries of local advertising and reader demand, have been hit particularly hard by the emergence of tech giants, primarily Facebook and Google. Local TV has faired slightly better economically, but still seen its role in the news increasingly filled by social media.
With fewer media outlets able to economically sustain local coverage, the hope has been that local news can work online. There have been ambitious experiments -- most notably Patch -- but nobody has quite figured it out. Yet.
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Few know this topic better than Jim Brady, whose newest startup caters to the city of Philadelphia and is preparing to expand to Pittsburgh. He joins Biz Please to talk about his work at the Washington Post and AOL, as well as what people have been getting wrong about making local news work online.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
