on hyperlocal news

Again thanks to Casey: a CNN article about hyperlocal newsites comprising news articles that are mainly written by volunteers. There's good, there's bad, but as Jane McDonnell, executive director of the Online News Association, says, it's now a moot point. What I wonder is if, while these new sites provide a way to cover the neighborhood, they place too big a burden on the reader in terms of ascertaining whether or not the reports are credible.

To which many critics might charge that journalists are too caught up in their own sense of professionalism. To which I might ask -- what's wrong with that?

From the article:

The shift "means that there's less journalistic oversight over what is being disseminated and distributed and created," [McDonnell] said. "That raises all the natural questions about how valuable the news is going to be -- how credible it's going to be. I kind of think that argument is moot at this point because it's happening."

McDonnell said it's important for news consumers these days to be savvy so they can spot conflicts of interest and assess the reliability of what they're reading.