The End of Local News

Thanks to the RSS feeds, Podcasts, and news aggregators, local news will soon no longer exist.

It's not because the Boston Herald or WWOR are going out of business; they are just reinventing themselves as national (and international) news entities.

Today the BBC announced that it will launch a global website that will be ad-supported. This is good news for advertisers as there will be lots of impressions available on a trusted brand.

Newspapers and broadcasters are to a certain extent unshackling themselves from being local entities as they reach broader audiences, and they should team with interactive agencies and media experts in re-branding themselves to the national audience.

Since I live in a town with a pedestrian newspaper (The Oregonian), I get most of my news from websites ostensibly serving audiences in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia and London. Sure, I don't care about who became county water commissioner in Suffolk, but many folks will read the best investigative journalism from wherever.

In a few years the best papers should be getting more revenue from online readers outside their jurisdiction than from the papers that land in front yards.