WordCamp New York City 2009

Ted Mann

The term “hyperlocal” is popping up more and more on the interwebs lately. When you hear it, what do you think of?

– Town-based blogs?
– A reinvention of journalism as we know it?
– Big media’s latest desperate ploy to save their eroding business?
– CitySearch for the ‘burbs?

All true. All fair ways to describe what has become one of the hottest trends in the media industry in the past year.

Everybody from AOL (Patch.com) to MSNBC (Everyblock) to the New York Times (The Local) is attempting to get a piece of the hyperlocal pie. And whether or not you think one of these sites holds the promise of becoming Facebook for small towns — or the misfortune to become Microsoft Sidewalk 2.0 — it’s clear that they’re helping cover city council meetings in a way they haven’t been in years., and at the same time, bringing the power of the blog format to citizen journalism.

There is one problem most of these sites face, though: How do you empower the community and get them to join your blog, while preventing the whole thing from devolving into a forum-like free-all-all? (Apologies to all bbPress and forum enthusiasts out there.)

There are options, sure — moderating posts, making membership invitation-only, and so on. But the most elegant solution may just be the most simple of all: BuddyPress.

At least, that’s what I found when we launched InJersey.com, a network of hyperlocal blogs in New Jersey, last summer. For us, BuddyPress was initially a way of future-proofing our town sites in Cherry Hill, Collingswood, Flemington, Freehold, Madison, Somerset Hills, and Vineland. But what we found out is that BuddyPress is one of the most unintentionally ingenious ways of mobilizing and educating a team of citizen journalists possible.

Since launching, the InJersey site editors — all of whom are full-time reporters for Gannett New Jersey’s six daily newspapers — have employed all of the features of BuddyPress (messaging, wire, profiles) to communicate with and send assignments to the people who’ve signed up to become contributors on the site. And more importantly, it’s helped elevate the level of discourse — in part by just having users use their real names.

In my session — “Hyperlocal Journalism with BuddyPress,” Saturday, 5 p.m. — we’ll look at how we built out InJersey, and specifically what sorts of tools and plugins helped make it a reality. We’ll focus especially on ways to help manage a site featuring open registration, and what you can do to manage a burgeoning user base, while still keeping everything as open as possible.