I’ve been thinking alot about that “audience” participation thing, and it *may* change as people become more comfortable socializing online. Right now, we’re at an in-between time, and may not see the effects for awhile. this article from CNet explains how the kids of Gen X’ers are far more comfortable with all the social media–even as little kids–because we are the pioneers who have been mucking around with it and not worrying about it so much like the Boomers.

My op on this relates to stuff that Terry Heaton’s written about local broadcast affiliates and their need to keep ads local vs. relying on GoogleAds (it’s pretty complicated–you have to go to Terry’s blog and read a bunch of his past essays to get my drift…I’ve been reading him for over a year now, and what he says for broadcast makes great sense when also applied to print.

But, to re-state it: why should local ad revenue be going to some corporate entity somewhere that is disconnected from the community. What is the corporate entity’s investment in the local community? How can the corporate entity understand what works for a local business? It’s more of the “shove your content into our site and let us make some bucks” –If no one in the local community cares about the big corporate citizen shovelware site, how effective will the ads then be?

One concern I have had with Citizen’s Media is the well-intentioned idealism as shown by Liz. In many ways I share that idealism. But I think we have to take a step back and look at reality.

Reality is that, quite often enough, that locally created and run citizen’s media may not be sophisticated enough to provide viable advertising opportunities for local businesses.

Reality could also be, as Megan Taylor found out, that sometimes those big ‘corporate’ type sites DON”T do the job right, but the local one does.

Yes, it would be great to see the latter as the rule as opposed to the former. But for that to happen, those that run local sites MUST learn the ins and outs of online advertising. And they also MUST learn how these small, local businesses think when it comes to advertising. They’ll often see is strictly as a cost factor, not as an investment, and, as a result, go the low-cost route (fliers), or the traditional route (the local newspaper). It’s my bet that many citizen’s media types won’t be prepared for this unfortunately. Their idealism may get them to think that bringing in advertising should be easy…until they go out and find out its challenges. Suddenly they’re turned off when they can’t seem to get the local restaurant, tire shop, or dentist to place an ad. Yet they have to pay bills like the rest of us.

I DO think that Ryan and Tish are onto something though with the way the sites like Backfence and others appear. Intentional or not, they can come off as too corporate, which takes away form it’s “down home” feeling.

I agree that it’s a good idea to keep risks low by using low cost and commonly available tools (though depending on whether it’s a newspaper company or an individual what “low cost” is might mean something different). One thing I’ve been thinking about is how many sites like Duke City Fix and my own at H2otown kind of rub up against the limitations of blog software in terms of supporting a community. In particular, I’d love to see greater support for social networking among the visitors to the site. Sites like these are successful when the participants come more to talk to each other than to “read stuff, get information.” Comments go some of the way, but ways to let people “friend” one another would be great.

(Bakersfield did something like that with a tool they developed called Participata, but it’s out of reach for the average individual. Not too expensive for a smallish to midsize paper, though)

I would *hope* that community sites with local content would be sustained by local advertisers. What better place for Joe’s Pizza on 4th Street to advertise than a news page for people who live on 4th Street?

She said: “I also found it super-offensive that the AT crew wants to post local ads, which not only assumes everyone wants to jump on the internet ad bandwagon (local small businesses are often reluctant), but also takes ad revenue out of communities. Ads on hyperlocal sites keep the revenue in town.”

The Readership Institute shows over and over again that advertising is a form of content. If any site wants to be local, it’s advertising must be local, as well. And if a site wants to be hyper-local, it’s advertising should be hyper-local.

There’s no ethical rule anywhere that says media companies should refuse local ad dollars if they’re not headquartered locally.

Whoever does the best job for local readers deserves local ad revenue.