Hyperlocal Media

Is the future of news going to be in hyperlocal media websites? Apparently, several entrepreneurs think so. There are a number of sites springing up that can give you news about what's happening in your little plot of the world, according to a recent New York Times article.
These include OutsideIn, Placeblogger and Patch. The Knight Foundation is backing several local web experiments. I guess I should be cheering any attempt at bringing news to more people and people do seem to want local news. I can see having some centralized spots where people can blog about their communities.
I guess my cranky reaction to all this stems from the fact that I don't see blogs replacing local reporters. That is, I don't think blogs offer the same objective reporting you can find in newspapers and I don't care so much about what the guy down the street thinks about my little patch of the world. But to be fair, maybe I would turn to these sites if they were all that was on offer. (We have two small weeklies in town so it isn't) and if they expanded enough to really offer some interesting perspectives.
The sites I looked at also didn't have anything on Princeton, N.J. This isn't surprising since Princeton isn't exactly a major city but I'm a little less interested in reading about South Orange or Newark. Of the few sites I looked at, Patch seems to have the most content. Surprise, surprise, Patch, which was stated and funded by the new AOL Chief Tim Armstrong, has reporters working out of its New York office.
Most of the sites seem to rely on local newspapers for content and obviously that will be a problem if those newspapers go out of business. So that brings us back to square one and the demise of the newspapers again.
The article also points out that the hyperlocal sites have the same problem as newspapers: finding a way to fund their sites. They can try to get local businesses and I guess they can pick up the local businesses from newspapers if they die. (I was going to say when they die but it was too depressing).
One ofthe sites, Placeblogger, can connect you to bloggers all over the world: Milan, Paris etc. and has a link to a New Jersey political blog, politicsnj, as well as a blog about Livestock and something called The Jersey Exile.