Local newspapers in America are dying. Across the country, established titles such as the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Post-Intelligencer here in Seattle have stopped the presses after printing their final issues.

For all the hand-wringing by commentators, Americans themselves seem relatively happy to let their local papers go. A recent survey found that fewer than half believed losing their city’s newspaper would seriously damage civic life, and just a third would miss reading the paper a lot.

So where are Americans finding out about planning decisions, neighbourhood crimes, restaurant openings and jumble sales? They are turning to “hyperlocal” websites such as Everyblock.com and Outside.In; online news portals that produce “stories” without so much as a journalist sharpening a pencil.

Instead of quizzing politicians and eavesdropping police radios for leads, hyperlocal websites use digital data issued by city authorities, local residents and blogs. Everyblock.com, for instance, can generate a virtual daily newspaper for every street in Seattle, displaying information about building permits, houses for sale and blog entries within a four- or eight-block radius.

Today, I read that several people have posted positive comments about a nearby bakery, that a school’s kitchen failed a health inspection and that two neighbourhood bars regularly receive visits from the police.

Of course, hyperlocal sites can’t investigate the stories they present. If I want to find out what is going wrong at the school cafeteria, I’ll have to look into it myself. Will that empower individuals to pay more attention to issues in their neighbourhood, or will it mean that important stories get lost in a deluge of irrelevant data? Right now, nobody knows. One thing does seem certain, there will be plenty of unemployed journalists to blog about it.

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