lokalgood

This blog is all about the idea that what’s right around you, I mean right in your neighborhood, is interesting and useful.  And that, despite being right under your sniffer, all this good stuff is largely unknown and thus worthy of chronicling in ways we don’t do today.

I see myriad nods to the notion all the time… that fruitless web search for a close by home theater advisor, the then hit or miss poring over listserv archives, only to come upon a post done 2 years ago.  The cool art exhibit or community center reading you hear about after the fact.  The  unease you feel from maybe plunking down big bucks on a built-in cabinet project with a guy you found in the yellows (web search didn’t get you far) but can’t get any takes on from local folks who’ve used him.  And there are tons of others…. services, events, teachers, interest groups, vacation rentals, doctors, etc.  All resources right near you that you either didn’t know were there or don’t have any context on if you did know they existed.

We want them and we want them close.  For a lot of reasons… time, gas, reference, convenience, belonging, etc.  In the same moment that distances are rendered somewhat meaningless by the web… they’re also being magnified by it.  I think because we’ve started to get a taste of just how rich and powerful local info and context from others like us can be in living better, choosing better.  Listservs, bulletin boards, local search – incomplete and sometimes frustrating as all these are – they speak to what’s near, what can be participated in, effected.

Here’s a great example, in this case through the news lens.  From a recent article about  the disappearance of media outlets where I grew up, in Loudoun County, VA.  Why is that happening?  Think about it, one of the fastest growing and richest counties in the land, yet sources of “local” news are dropping like flies.  This article says maybe it’s because we want more than just local, we want “hyperlocal”.  I.e. I don’t want to read about what’s happening in my county… I want to know what’s happening right in my neighborhood, my subdivision, my corner of the development.  Regional newspapers, even small ones, can’t do that with the immediacy and context that the local listserv, or community site can.  (We’ve got great examples here in Del Ray, like LesDunBelle Diary, a blog dedicated to the news on 3 streets).  As the title asks.. the question for media in a sprawling, fast growing county like Loudoun is, “How local can you go?”

I’m sure there are lots more reasons for this trend… which I hope slows (my mother is a reporter for, you guessed it, a Loudoun County newspaper).  But at a minimum, this dying off speaks a little more to this increasing need we have for what’s near.  And to the idea that we get it best when information is shared and amassed from the community up (not from national service down)…….hyperlocal.

Let this Del Ray experiment in hyperlocalism begin.