Disruptive Proactivity

One of the most potentially amazingly powerful projects from 4iP has sneaked out a bit – Newspaper club (Disclosure: they sponsored opentech earlier this year, but NC wasn’t discussed as far as I’m aware).

One of the projects locally that i’ve started doing a bit of work with is a Manchester volunteer newspaper (the MULE). They look at a variety of things that aren’t getting covered in other media – in terms of local newspapers, the only thing really left focussing inside the M60 is the Manchester Evening News), and that’s extremely cosy with the council.
They’d never think of looking at something like this: Closed doors at the council.

The main issue with printing anything is that the first copies are very expensive, and soon after that the cost can come down to roughly the cost of the paper it’s printed on. But doing 2 editions of 5000 copies is nearly double the cost of 1 edition of 10,000.

Now, in the MULE’s single paper edition (latest PDF here that story is buried on page 5, but what would happen if MULE could upload a custom PDF with that story on page 1, and get a small run printed cheaply, and then distribute that version at the door to the town hall on the evening of a council meeting. What impact would that have on the council and it’s level of belief in democracy and transparency (and quite frankly, there’s only one way that it can easily go). And if that doesn’t work, what happens if it gets handed out on the street in the contested wards in the week before an election.

Or what happens if it is possible to have the story about Beetham Tower using illegal wood on the front page of the version that went in every post box in that building, and the (numerous) other big buildings owned by the same company? Both those that have been built (the people who pay rent), and those that are under planning discussions (when small spanners can jam up works pretty easily). it only takes one person to have read the article and raise it, to start a process of change.

Newspapers became popular for a reason; and large parts of that reason haven’t changed. The business models have; the methods of distribution have. But that’s an opportunity, as well as a threat.

There are many local papers like MULE out there, the internet has let them publish online for a long time, but the big problem with hyperlocal is getting people to find out about it. Newspapers have been solving that problem for a long time by putting it through people’s front doors on a regular basis with something worth reading. Mixing the two will have dramatic impact.

Online is of course vital, but offline can get people there, and get people to make things better.