Local news in a digital world: Stand up and start up, instead of copy and paste

Abstract

For legacy media companies, the digital world seemed to be the perfect place for scalable initiatives in local journalism. But up until now, the scalability nut hasn't been thoroughly cracked. Media companies have tried to copy the old habits and paste them into a new digital world, without asking themselves what problem - and whose problem - they were going to solve. The profession needs to realize that scaling isn't something that comes automatically with the digital world, but has to be derived from the value proposition of the news product itself. To really internally reinvent the local news in an online world, it has to stand up and start up all over again, before it can scale up and - finally - stay up again.