Okay, so on Friday I got to talking in detail about the idea of 'hyperlocal' websites, and how they might just be the key to text-based local journalism surviving this Digital Decentralized Age we're in, which is wreaking so much havoc right now in the newspaper industry. The idea is too complicated to get into again in detail, of course (here are part 1 and part 2 of the original entry, if you didn't get to read them the first time); but basically it's the concept of breaking a city down into neighborhood areas, assigning each area its own web page, then pairing a paid professional journalist and a series of volunteer citizens to actually produce all the hard and soft news found on that page. And I got most of my thoughts down concerning this on Friday, but unfortunately ran out of space right when I was getting to my final point; and this is an important point to make, which is why I decided to extend these thoughts just a little bit into today's entry as well.

The point, basically, is that there's a final great benefit to the idea of a hyperlocal news site, which is that its business model is extremely flexible, and can be adjusted year by year or even month by month based on how the company itself is doing. And this was one of the main things, frankly, that caused this idea to appear on my top-10 list of "possible new careers" last summer, back when I was making a final decision about what I wanted to do with my life post-literary career; because it's something a person could start up with almost no money at all, but that could realistically grow to eventually be as big as something like the Chicago Reader or Village Voice.

I mean, let's just assume for a moment that I did decide last year to open up a 'Chicagosphere.com,' instead of the arts center I did end up deciding on. So my first priority at that point, of course, would be simply to get one form or another of the site up and going, and as quickly as possible start making readers out of the people that internet advertisers want to reach the most. And hell, here in Chicago, you can basically start with five neighborhoods and already reach 75 percent of those people internet advertisers are looking for - the Loop, South Loop, River North/Gold Coast, Lincoln Park and Lakeview, which by happy coincidence happen to neatly line up in a row geographically. So me, of course; one senior-level journalist, who already has a good amount of experience; and one junior journalist, to do the day-to-day duties of the neighborhood pages; and between us we could manage those five pages ourselves for the first six months, without needing additional paid staff. Add some server space and a WordPress license; work without a physical office; rely on your volunteer reporters to provide their own equipment, like cameras and laptops and cellphone time; and hell, you could easily be up and running on a couple thousand dollars, especially if your two employees keep freelancing that first year and delay their full salary. (In fact, there's even a term in the business world for such organizations - 'micro-startups,' or new companies that need no outside investors at all, but can be directly funded by the people starting the business.)

And so you basically then do things such as a site like Gaper's Block has been doing over the last couple of years: just allow yourself to organically grow at a natural rate; rely on a lot of press, public appearances and word of mouth when you start; only add things like a promotional budget and advertising when you can afford them. And hey, you're a Heterotopian yourself if you're at this journal, so you know how that stuff works; you build an underground audience full of 'connectors,' to borrow a bullshit buzz term, they go tell lots of important people about your site, which speads out like a virus until you reach your 'tipping point' (to borrow yet another bullshit buzz term).

If this all there was to such a site, though, it frankly would've never made my list of possible next careers; because I'm, you know, a restless guy, and I get bored with shit just so quickly sometimes - usually the moment I've learned how to succeed at it, frankly, at which point it no longer holds any mystery or wonder to me. And so I knew that the next career I picked had to be complex enough and be able to grow enough to keep me constantly amused for the next twenty years of my life; and that for example is why the idea of a publishing company was eventually discarded, because there's only so many new things you can do with a company like that, and is why the idea of a cafe got thrown out, and the idea of a think-tank/consultancy for electronic text, and the idea of going back to school and getting my teaching certificate.

The idea of starting a hyperlocal news site, though, stayed on that list almost all the way to the final decision, because it seems to me that there are just so many layers to it, so many different levels at which you could define success, which you could be happy at achieving while still always with a further goal ahead. I mean, for starters you've got the challenge first of simply filling out the site, which could easily keep me thoroughly entertained for five or six years on its own; adding new neighborhoods until the entire city was covered, expanding the number of volunteer reporters, expanding the breadth of coverage, expanding the readership. Then once this became stabilized, you could move on to further and further media; adding as much video as you can, as much audio, expanding the ways people can get this information delivered. Eventually you could move into the tricky subject of legitimacy, and how to more and more make your company another bedrock in the world of Chicago journalism, which I could also see fascinating me for a good five or six years.

And hell, if things went really well, you could eventually get to the point where you were publishing your own paper edition; 24 pages in a tabloid style, for example, just like all the other newspapers will be like by then, distributed for free at the same places you find the Reader or the Onion, a sort of cross between Reader-style features and event calendars, Onion-style reviews and interviews, and Tribune-style hard and soft news. And that's when you've suddenly done something really impressive, and that maybe only two dozen companies have ever done in history, which is to have your shit together enough to print a quarter-million copies of a paper publication and to get it distributed throughout the entire city of Chicago on a regular basis. And that's when you actually do start getting compared to a place like the Trib or Sun-Times, and suddenly do become this major player in the world of Chicago journalism. And all from, what, three nerds, a thousand bucks of tech equipment, and a bunch of weirdos running around Lakeview with their cellphone cameras. Not a bad way to spend twenty years of your life, I think, which is why this all came so close to being my new career in 2004, instead of the arts center I did eventually decide upon.

Okay, so that's it about citizen journalism for now! And sorry if all these geeky, geeky thoughts have been boring some of you to death recently.

Well, what do you know - for the first time since Thanksgiving, I actually made it out of my neighborhood last Friday! I went down to the River West neighborhood, in fact, the hot new trendy area in Chicago for art galleries and overpriced restaurants, to see a new show of "hate paintings" by my old friend Patrick Welch, at a gallery called Gescheidle. And as sad as it is to admit, it was literally the first time in about two years that I actually seen Patrick; as regular readers of course remember, I used to hang out with him and his wife Carrie Golus just all the time when I was younger, but then they had twins and I got out of the habit of going down to Hyde Park to visit, and then the next thing you know it's two years later. So that was nice, to at least say hi to Patrick and get caught up a little, although Carrie herself wasn't there which was a disappointment. And I'm finally dropping them a line today about maybe visiting them in Hyde Park again soon, so maybe before too long I'll have some cutsie-wootsie little photos of a couple of twins for you all to see.

What I didn't enjoy, however, was the 12-fucking-block walk I had to make on Friday night from my el stop to the gallery, because of River West having almost no public transportation options at all, on a breezy 5-degree night (-15 C) while trudging through seven inches of snow on top of everything else. Oh, and then there was the 12-fucking-block walk back to the el after the evening was over, which was just as fun as the walk there. Gescheidle made up for all it, though, by bringing in this truly horrible undergraduate two-person '80s ambient mid-tempo electronica band, who were just so bad that the entire thing just flipped around and ended up being thoroughly delightful. Plus of course there was this whole pack of nerdy little 19-year-old art-school girls there as well, with their short haircuts and their little retro '80s outfits, actually getting into the band without a trace of irony whatsoever, doing these awkward, uncomfortable little dances that were just getting me so turned on. In fact, I was just laughing about this with my brother on the phone last night, of how guilty I always feel when getting turned on by a nerdy girl acting nerdy; I mean, seriously, it seems that I'm always ten times more turned on when watching a geekgirl dance all awkwardly and self-consciously, than when watching a normal girl dance all sexy and self-assuredly. So, you know, take that as you want; but don't be surprised if I end up moaning the next time you trip over your bookbag in front of me.

Also ran into my old buddy Greg Gillam, who is also a semi-regular reader of this journal, so we ended up standing around and gabbing for a little while about some topics I've been recently writing about here. Greg brought up a great point about the newspaper industry, by the way, which I didn't mention myself when I was talking about it last week, which I wanted to share; namely, that it's important to remember that almost every newspaper in America is now owned by some giant, infinitely complex, multinational media corporation. And so that, he opines, is a big reason why papers are in so much trouble these days, and why they seem to be cutting the exact things that newspaper readers actually want the most - because it's not actually newspaper people making these decisions, but often some bean-counter in some cubicle a thousand miles away, who doesn't even read newspapers himself and doesn't have the slightest clue what newspaper readers actually want. And let's not forget, of course, that synergy and cross-promotion is the name of the game with these companies; and that's why, Greg further opined, you just see this unending coverage in papers anymore of gangster rappers and vapid cable-television hosts, because the company publishing that newspaper also owns the record company and cable channel representing those people, and have a lot to gain by promoting these people as much as humanly possible. And hey, you know, never mind that this is actually the least-wanted thing that newspaper readers actually desire in a newspaper; because we're Knight-Ridder, damnit, and we do whatever the fuck we want, and if you don't like it you can suck our corporate dick, because it's not like you have any alternatives available to you. Oh, wait, you do have alternatives now? Oh, and we just posted a 40-percent drop in revenue in the last fiscal quarter? What do these people want from us, I'm telling ya!

Okay, well, I think that's it for me today. Make sure to tune in tomorrow for the latest edition of The Heterotopia Report.