Major hat tip to Steve Yelvington who inspired this post.
I absolutely love this image from Steve on the three primary roles your local website should play.
I think his subsequent blog post hits it right on the head.
The only thing I’d add are some thoughts on this notion of “town crier.” I believe Steve is right when he describes it as: “the quaint colonial-era village character who walks around ringing a bell telling you what’s happening.”
But it can be so much more than that.
Having recently come across “The History of News” by Mitchell Stephens I learned a bit more about the “town criers” of old. Funny enough – I think the future of news is going to be a throwback to how journalism and news traveled in the past (except…. on the internet).
The town criers of old were independent and commissioned by the public. Think about it – there was no means of doing advertising back then – at least not as we know it. If you were a “town crier” that was actually your job – and you had to get paid for it. Often your time was spent going from village to village sharing the latest news.
If we go back further – the European tradition of town criers seems eerily similar to today’s blog networks. Coffee shops and taverns across England, France and Ireland played host to the locals who would come to discuss local news and politics. There was no television – so after dinner this was the only way to stimulate your brain.
Town criers would go from coffee house to coffee house giving reports (often in song as “minstrels”) and then ask the listeners for money to compensate them along their travels.
So as to appeal the local residents coffeehouse owners would establish good relationships with the traveling minstrels – to showcase them. ie: next time you are in town come this way and we’ll give you the good treatment and our customers are good tippers.
Now replace coffee house with blogs. Take a look at the image above. I see coffee house/blog as the town square – a gathering place.
Now imagine a world where we have a few dozen bloggers in each local town – or hundreds in large cities like New York. Or we have a few dozen bloggers who are experts in specific topics (niches). Each is an expert on their own topic. They report in their own coffeehouse – but often go beyond their corner of the web to report the news to the locals at other coffeehouses (blogs).
That is the modern news ecology as I see it. I think newspapers can play a part – by acting as the town square (much like blogs) and they can play host to bloggers and manage those relationships wisely.
Hey, I appreciate the media theory, but I think you have conflated the separate histories of town criers and minstrels. Or, at least, the mashup of the two is way oversimplified.
It is overslimplified – but it wasn’t me who conflated them.
They both are referenced in the book “History of the News” – granted the book transitions between the two much better than I do (I just sorta lump them in) – but after reading the chapter on the book that discusses them – they both come from the same tradition – although somewhat altered in the United States Colonial times – “town criers” are the direct news decedents of minstrels.
@Kent Didn’t have a problem with conflation–seemed pretty straightforward to me–then again, I appreciate a historical narrative.
@David Liked the post. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how news, particularly local news, gets disseminated.
The state where I live (Maine) is seeing it’s daily newspaper operations dry up and become irrelevant. There are a few weeklies and alt weeklies that still practice journalism. The town over from where I live is dealing with some pretty consequential local power run amok issues. A small band of “concerned citizens” started up their own site, The Lisbon Reporter (http://www.lisbonreporter.com/), and have been going great guns with information that holds these local official accountable. That would fall into that town crier category. The Jan 24th post should give you a flavor of how they keep the local daily honest, which never gets its facts right, or seems to care that they don’t. Hence, I go to the LR before I read the local daily (which I no longer subscribe to).
Interestingly, there is a local coffee shop inhabited by the older crowd, most of whom don’t do digital. Printed copies of the blog posts are regularly passed around and information about the latest municipal scandal gets spread.
The town crier effect is certainly in play in this community.