"Hyper-Local content. This word makes me want to vomit.
And here's why: It's about doing your ... job,
writing about the living history of your community.
It's old-school journalism."
 

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive's Rob Curley makes a compelling case for the professional news industry to go back to basics and embrace the new realities of the digital marketplace.
 

"The Washington Post has 800 journalists on staff. The local television station has only 30.  How come they were kicking our butts online?  Because if a church is burning down, we put up a four-minute documentary reflecting on the history and meaning of the institution in the community and the TV station just posts footage of the flames."
 

The point of the story? Multi-media is a must. Good journalism is both show and tell. Curley said if newspapers want to win the war for people's attention, they'll have to use new technologies like database-driven coverage, video storytelling, evergreen content and platform-independent delivery. "Your content has to be designed to work on any device, from large screen TV to iPhone."
 

Curley said newspaper editors need to change their thinking, too. "This is a dialogue, not a monologue.  Many editors tell me they're just not comfortable with comments on their site, and I just think I'm glad I don't work for you. We're are all going to have to get comfortable with having a seat at the table and not at the head of the table."
 

Curley talked about some the innovative sites he's helped launch at the Washington Post, from the simple, yet powerful narratives of onBeing, the highly interactive info-rich LoudounExtra.  This new WaPo hyperlocal venture covers county fairs and proms with Pulitzer Prize intensity. "We cover kindergarten like it's Capitol Hill," said Curley.  When AOL [one of the county's largest employers] announced it was moving it's executives from Virginia to New York City, Curley's team pulled together a definitive page about the company, including links to every article the Post ever wrote, every blog entry, a timeline and financial history. Although Curley acknowledged that with all of the bells and whistles on LoudounExtra, it's the blogger (Living in Loco) who attracts the most number of visits.
 

Curley added that newspapers can't ignore importance of social networking.  "The fastest growing local community Web site in your hometown is Facebook. I use Facebook 10 times a day. I love it!  Facebook gets one million new users a month.  WashingtonPost.com is one of 10 most visited Web sites in United States with 300 million page views a month.  But Facebook gets 40 billion page views a month. They get more traffic on the first day than we're going to get for a whole month.  And the average person spends an hour on Facebook, but the average washingtonpost.com visitor:  just three page views."
 

So, Curley said that news Web sites have to work the way the internet works.  He shared an epiphany his team had a few months ago. "How many of you who take video of a parade and publish it on your site? No, you put it up on YouTube. Most people post to Facebook and flickr.  So we wrote a program to go to those sites and find all Loudoun contributed content, our editor previews it and we link to the citizen-generated material that way."
 

Rob Curley's final word? "Widgets." He said these little freestanding programs that run on your desktop are the next big thing in online interactivity, and journalists should be thinking about how to use them.