WickedLocal.com is an ambitious effort to wrap a full-fledged online community around a traditional news organization -- the Old Colony Memorial newspaper of Plymouth, MA.
Sponsoring news organization: Old Colony Memorial
Founded: 1822
Location: Plymouth, MA
Owned by: Gatehouse Media
Community engagement initiative launched: April of 2006
Wicked Local Online Editor: Courtney Hollands
Software used: Content Management: Prospero CommunityCM; Search: PlanetDiscover; Photo Galleries using mdSpotted by Morris Digital
They didn't know it when they started, but WickedLocal.com is about to become a test case of what happens to innovative online local community initiatives in the era of the media buyout.
Spearheaded by online VP Bob Kempf, WickedLocal put together three commercially available enterprise-level software products -- one for search and to produce an online business directory; one for online community; and a third for a social photo uploading and gallery application. A month later, the Old Colony Memorial, along with its corporate parent Enterprise NewsMedia, was swept up in a major buyout by Liberty Publications of Illinois. Liberty also bought Community Newspaper Company, a chain of 80+ newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts. Once together, the chain changed its name to GateHouse Media, and it now controls virtually every local daily and weekly in Eastern Massachusetts apart from the major dailies in Boston and a few scattered others. In August, Kempf jumped to Boston.com.
So what will GateHouse do with the experiment it has inherited? We don't know. But what happens to WickedLocal.com may be a bellwether for citizen journalism. Many pundits believe that contributions from nonjournalists will be most useful and most common at the ultra-local level. But will technological innovation be able to survive the wave after wave of buyouts that has been the default setting for the very local weeklies and dailies that some say are destined to be the home of citizen journalism?
We'll see. In the meantime, the people behind WickedLocal.com have continued to pursue their experiment in online community, producing regular videoblog segments, attracting a small number of community correspondents, and providing a place for newspaper staffers to blog about things that might not find a home in the paper.
One of the most distinctive aspects of WickedLocal.com is the videoblog created by the site's online editor, Courtney Hollands. We were unable to find a feed that provides a composite of staff and citizen submitted items from the site, but the videoblog is worth a look on its own. The most recent videoblog entry appears below.
Most recent vlog from Wicked Local Girl, the videoblog of WickedLocal.com editor Courtney Hollands:
Recent entries from WickedLocal - Life in Plymouth:
