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Comment by alex_young | Hacker News Reader

> ...local news media lose their geographical monopoly

I realize what you're saying, but really, local news will always have a geographical monopoly.

Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues? How will investigative reporting function for say a local office holder or a local environmental problem?

To my knowledge the real problem is that the traditional business model supporting reporting has dried up. Running classified ads or selling marketing inserts is an obsolete practice. This doesn't really change the need for local reporting though.

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And the shift from local news to national news (cable and the internet), and news conglomerates created by private equity buying up local papers and gutting their staff, has largely not broken down any geographical monopolies, it has for the most part simply removed local news from existence.

And no, Twitter and Facebook are not suitable replacements.

> removed local news from existence

Removing local news has created a hyper focus on national news. People forget about their local communities where a ton is happening.

This isn't good for local communities.

We need more focus on the local. Not everything is national.

In the age of the internet local doesn't matter anymore. I'm now part of a community that spans the globe.

Yeah tell that to the mob when they block roads out of your town and come knocking to raid your house

Why would they do that though? As long as I have internet I don't need roads.

This is completely untrue. You still live next a community and their politics effect you in ways they don’t people living hundreds of miles away. The problem is the internet convinces people they are apart of a global community and it’s all that matters. We need ways for communities to connect with each other that are modern and up to date other than following a local Facebook page.

>and their politics effect you in ways they don’t people living hundreds of miles away

They don't effect me very much because the government mainly effects the real world and not the internet world.

What? I’m saying the local government does effect you in every way while it doesn’t effect people in your online community

High housing prices (and resultant inequality and homelessness) is one example of a big problem that is caused primarily by local politics. There are no nationwide or statewide laws preventing the construction of sufficient housing to meet demand -- this is all city-level zoning problems caused by local NIMBYs.

If I buy a house I don't have to worry about housing costs.

Only if you don't give a shit about anyone else.

I just wanna know where the hell local ads are any more, lately it really strikes me how much a megacorporate desert the ads on streaming services are are - where's the low-budget ads for the local mattress discount outlet with the owner dressing up in a goofy costume, where's the furniture chain with a jingle the owner's daughter (who is now the current owner) sang when she was six, where's the spots for local events, where's the local SPCA showing me cute shelter cats, all of that stuff? Those used to be scattered amongst the spots for global corporations. Now they're gone.

> Now they're gone.

No. They all go to Facebook and Google.

Aren’t those all text ads? Images at best? It’s a very different energy from Crazy Joe dressing up like the Statue of Liberty to invite you to the midsummer sale at Spatula City.

Most online ad platforms allow anyone to start a video ad campaign with just a few bucks.

Not sure why smaller businesses don't do so. I suspect the targeting options aren't good enough to get "spatula city" good ROI.

That's why Google offers free "certificates" and "Courses" in adwords, analytics and using their services.

It's more because small businesses do not know how to market or cater online, still. Sure there are a handful of successful ecomm shops that work in niche markets that work on word of mouth, and then there's the enmasse scale giants like Amazon that have their own marking departments.

tl;dr Tools exist, people don't know. Most common small business solution is to engage their web developer to do marketing on fb/ig and SEO.

Most small businesses also don't do well with online advertising. For example, if a kebab shop near me paid $50 on adwords, they would probably only get $10 of extra sales.

Whereas if they print $50 worth of signs and tape them to every nearby street pole, they'll sell $500 more.

Sure, the few remaining quality papers can (and do) introduce local editions for markets other than their "traditional" home base. Unfortunately, the economics aren't much different than they are for the regional paper that previously covered the area.

I say "not much" because there might be a chance that people would appreciate the combination of local news combined with the national and international coverage that would be shared among all these editions. But that, also, isn't exactly new: it's what these "newspaper chains" have been doing for at least 20 years.

My interpretation is people just care about local news far less than they used to? I’m in a semi-major city and the local news is only a small part of my news consumption.

Which is kind of weird, right? In theory if there are local issues, maybe you can get involved. You can't directly get involved in most of what you hear about at the national/global level (even though a national stock market means you can invest at the national level and thus you have an interest there, though your investment doesn't move the needle).

To be clear, I'm suggesting what disrupted the local media revenue wasn't all Google / FB.

And I do like local news. In fact I care more about city level issues close to home rather than following the bad soap opera that is the national politics.

> Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues?

Yes.

The NYTimes has a Canadian desk. Eventually they'll have a Vancouver desk. Eventually they'll have an East Van desk. Eventually they'll have a Main St desk.

> local news will always...

"local news" and "local news media" are not the same. I may pay attention to local news through google, facebook, etc, but never read the local paper or watch local TV news.

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