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The Power of Proximity -- the possibilities of hyperlocal journalism in South Africa

By Harry Dugmore

The Power of Proximity

Newspapers everywhere are being forced to rethink their role as mere providers of the 'news of the day'. There is (and always has been) an appetite for immediate information and 'news you can use' that is not just 'hyper-local' but also more detailed and granular, to use an increasingly popular word for the kind of gritty features implied.

Take crime for example: newspapers might learn of a dozen small incidents taking place in their particular town but might only cover a few deemed newsworthy, based on a set of gate keeping decisions that differs with every paper. Sometimes only 'bigger' crimes get reported or, in South Africa, crime where there is actual violence. Cell phone snatching or clothes pilfered off someone's washing line is not likely to crack any column centimeters in even the smallest papers.

And yet it might well not the size of the crime, nor its nature, nor the levels of violence that might be interesting: it might rather have everything to do with proximity. You may indeed already know if your immediate neighbor's washing got pinched off the line, but you might not know that such deeds are happening three two blocks away. A veritable small-scale washing-line crime wave may be happening (and may be coming your way!) without you knowing.

Of course it is very hard to cover all crime comprehensively in a print medium. But doing it online, and using various forms of visualization like crime incident maps, elements of which can easily be reproduced in the print edition, is an approach that holds a great deal of promise for small newspapers eager to reinvent their utility in local communities.

There are lots of organisations, including Knight grantees, looking hard at making this kind of hyperlocal information available. Everyblock is the most famous and have done pioneering work http://www.everyblock.com/ and have now being bought by MSNBC. David Sasaki, also a Knight News Challenge winner wrote a very useful overview earlier this year http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/04/maps-for-social-change-and-community-involvement114.html

Inspired by these pioneers, what we have in mind is a much great focus on the visual presentation of the material, with map overlays, mouse-overs that reveal the incident and link then to further reports, context etc.

Although we are only starting to focus on making at least four kinds of maps happen in 2009, we know there are a lot of issues. Knight grantee Leslie Rule, in a thoughtful post about hyperlocal mapping talks about being in a conference where an audience member argued that hyperlocal crime mapping sites can "reinforce stereotypes about where crime occurs, and more importantly, who commits it.... And don't necessarily inform the community, offer insight into issues, or shed light on potential solution"
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/07/whither-hyperlocal-mapping005.html

David Sasaki also makes the point: "2009 I believe will be the year of developing map-based interfaces which enable neighbors to share information with one another, leading to direct action and increased community involvement" (as opposed to, I suppose, just 'having' the information).

We also want to inspire people to take action, find community solutions, pressure police to do their front-line job well, such as actually coming to help when called to do so, (a seriously big deal here in South Africa), and we also want to help communities and police see patterns of crime (Grahamstown seems, for example, to be South Africa's leading city for laptop theft, with more than 1 pinched every day)

To do that well, we know we'll have to go beyond information provision, and into some form of stimulating, encouraging and possibly even facilitating organized responses. But hopefully, powerfully conveyed new information and accompanying investigative journalism will also spur action by readers and users.

We are of course looking beyond just crime.

At Grocott's Mail, and as part of our Knight funded Iindaba Ziyafika project, we're also looking at innovative ways of combining citizen reporting and local sources of useful hyperlocal data such as daily police reports, property valuation rates (and information about the sales history of particular properties, information about government services (opening times of government health clinics and when specialists, such as optometrists, are due to be in added) as well as a range of social information about 'what's on' in terms of entertainment, sporting events, and news about upcoming community events.

There appear to be three separate challenges in providing any of these kinds of 'data driven' information-heavy services. The first is getting a regular supply of data so the information is up-to-date, useful in real time, and has a 'news' quality about it. The second is selecting ways of displaying the information so that it is most useful to the readers - will maps do the trick, and how scalable and searchable do they need to be? What kind of filters can you provide? The third challenge is allowing for comment, feedback and comment aggregation, which will transform some of raw data into trend analysis type stories.

Much of the kind of information needed to do this kind of hyperlocal work well, to continue with the crime example, appears to is available from local police stations and response alarm agencies, and depending on the country and the police station, it is often free available. In the USA, it is available in digital form, which is the whole rationale behind the automated parts of the Knight sponsored 'every block' experiment.

In South Africa both the format and the accessibility seem to differ. It already looks like we might be able to get access to crime reports at the local police, but in hand-written form! So some work to be done!

This type of approach does take time and effort. It is a very different kind of journalism. But whether it focuses on hyperlocal crime, hyperlocal pollution and health issues, local economies (market matching information) and information about the provision of local services, this approach provides an arguably essential missing link between what citizens might find useful to know, and ways that citizens might use the information and analysis to create pressure and increase participation in efforts to change things.

Four graduate students who have received scholarships from the Knight Iindaba Ziyafika project funds are initially getting these projects off the ground. These projects are being supervised by international expert in new media (and much else) Vin Crosbie. (see his great new blog about his recent experiences at our Journalism School and an outsiders perspective of the kind of challenges we face in terms of connectivity http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/blog1/ )

By the end of 2009, these new kinds of journalism will be available both online (www.Grocotts.co.za) and in more truncated form, in the print edition of Grocotts.

In a separate project, we're also looking at how Grocott's online can be a conduit to greater proactive involvement in civic life, through the creation of an early warning system based on scrutinizing local government agendas and alerting people to when issues that they might have a view on, might be coming up. Too much reporting of civic events is done in the past tense: it is critical, we believe to anticipate and frame information for people in a way that encourages participation. I'll blog about some of thinking and plans about that in the near future.

Meanwhile and to conclude, the BIG news from South Africa is that the first (as far as we know!) Citizen Journalism Newsroom is opening formally on 8th of September at Grocott's Mail office in downtown Grahamstown. We're already using the facility, doing trainings and getting ready, but having 10 terminals, computer cables and dongles for about every cell phone on the planet (for people for who sending a MMS is too expensive, and want to walk in to download their photos and stories directly) internet connectivity for research is a very development.

We're also launching our CJ 'photo of the week' competition with a small weekly cash prize and our CJ 'story of the week', also with a small cash prize. We'll see how this 'walk-in' capacity and these incentives start increasing the already impressive flow of stories and photos that is currently coming in.

Finally, we also launching the Drupal based NIKA Content Management System at Highway Africa with two half-day trainings for community newspapers from across the country and the continent. Not only is NIKA a great CMS, but also facilitates the direct reception of sms into the CMS, through a modem and some Kannel based sms gateway bridges.

NIKA will initially be served over the web, but the stand-alone fully installed LAMP system, with Drupal and NIKA configurations, will be rolled out as users who want to move beyond the web only offering later this year.

Watch this space for some urls of launch and training photos!

Full post as published by MediaShift Idea Lab on September 01, 2009 (boomark / email).