The appeal of the smalltown newspaper is its proximity to the community.  Smaller papers, circulation 50,000 and below, cover news in a focused, informed, hyperlocal manner–and the survival of the small media’s ink-and-paper business plans hinges upon their ability to continue connecting their home community with content that nobody else can deliver.

In other words, the Cleveland Plain Dealer can’t deliver relevant hyperlocal content to citizens of a smaller neighboring county (Lorain County) the way the Chronicle-Telegram, a smaller, more locally-focused paper, can.  Who won the high school hockey tournament is at least as important to the local news consumer as who won the Stanley Cup, if not more important.

So when we apply this idea of hyperlocalism to social media, we begin to see that Facebook, the predominant social network ecosystem, may indeed have a flaw.  Moreover, we see that Facebook despite its basis in geographic and interest-based “network islands”, isn’t actually as great a facilitator of localism as it gets credit for.

First off, there’s a vast, vast swath of community members with whom Facebook has absolutely no connectivity.  Most news consumers born in the 1960′s or earlier have not ever used Facebook.  How do I know this?

Well, it became apparent to me that building a structured social community around the local newspaper’s web sites would be the ideal way to enhance traffic, build loyalty to the news product, and create a more cemented hyperlocal role for the newspaper publisher within its community.  In other words, we built a social network for the readers of the newspaper’s web site.

And, while I expected the majority of people joining this social network (northcoastnow.com) to be in their 20′s and 30′s, what I discovered was quite the opposite:  Most of the people reading the newspaper web site are, in fact, in the same age bracket as those reading the newsprint.  The bulk of the people who signed up were born in the 60s, 50s, and 40s.

So I was surprised.

But also elated.  Our social network has reached a group of people Facebook has been unable to reach–and we’ve done so by applying simple localistic concepts. This vindicates the notion that hyperlocalism is the answer the newspaper industry is looking for.