Denver Post editor Gregory L. Moore announced in a note yesterday that the paper is now putting local news on the front page. “Every day except Sunday, the front page and the first part of Section A generally will be devoted to our metro report, what we call Denver & the West. This change is an effort to reflect our continued emphasis on local news, including our business report,” he writes.

Why is the Denver Post making the switch? Andrew Phelps at Nieman Lab points out that “the Post’s national content is typically provided by The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Often, these are commodity stories, stories that readers can easily find elsewhere on the web — and, in many cases, stories that readers aren’t seeing for the first time in the morning paper.” So it doesn’t make sense to put them on the front page, when the Post could be giving greater exposure to its most original and community-focused content - content that readers can’t find elsewhere. 

Moore confirms this idea, telling Phelps, “we really want to promote the fact that we are spending an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to promote our local communities, and this demonstrates it better than any words can say.”

UK regional publisher Archant and citizen journalism photo news agency Citizenside have teamed up to launch iwitness24, a community news platform which will help "to bring the locals back to local news", a press release announced today.

Archant readers, divided into 7 regional sub-communities, can contribute content through the website - accessible through a one-click sign in with Facebook Connect - or the iPhone and the Android applications. This allows them to share geotagged photos, videos, and text articles directly with their local newsrooms.

The initiative, which uses Citizenside's Reporter Kit technology, aims to allow Archant to more effectively engage with its readers and foster the power of its local communities.
Using the "Calls for Witnesses" tool, Archant can send geotargetted news alerts to members within 1 km of breaking news events to ask for their help in coverage, the press release explains.

"The technology actually associates a geolocation - provided when users sign up - with every member. With this tool, Archant's local journalists can then contact their readers they know to be in the area of a news event", Garrett Goodman, International Coordinator for Citizenside, told the Editors Weblog.

The local daily paper was once at the heart of every community; now it seems that the smallest publications are most vulnerable in this time of change and uncertainty within the media. So, how does your average local daily keep up nowadays? The answer, according to the findings of a study conducted by Joy Mayer, a fellow of the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), seems to be community engagement.

According to the Associated Press, the shortage of in-depth local journalism is placed at the forefront of the FCC's long delayed report released today. The report examines the future of journalism, and follows an 18-month-long inquiry into traditional media business' struggle to adapt.

The report chronicles newspapers' drop in revenue, and cites the weak economy and advertisers' choice to market cheaply online as the main sources of the problem.

The report claims that the contraction of papers and absence of local journalism has had an "invisible" effect on press. The consequences leave "stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little."

A few recommendations were made to support local papers, but the report emphasizes that the independence of American press limits the government's ability to help. The report ends explaining the paradox of digital media: consumers have more news choices than ever, but there remains a "journalism gap" left by contraction of newspapers.