Isn’t the point of a hyperlocal journalist that they become embedded in and engaged with the community they cover? For that to work, building a community around the site and a genuine relationship with readers would be essential. That would limit the site’s size, in terms of geography and visitors.

A news-gathering organisation devoted to serving, say, 20,000 people is almost certainly never going to be able to offer the profit margins once enjoyed by the huge US and UK regional and local conglomerates (which have laid off swathes of reporters who covered local beats). If it got to the stage where it could offer those kinds of returns, by widening its geographic reach and appeal to a larger number of visitors, it would no longer be hyperlocal.

Another problem is that in an effort to reap those profit levels, AOL will almost certainly pay rock-bottom rates — they’re hiring journalism grads because they’re cheap, not for their youthful energy.

What is wrong with the citizen journalist, reporter-as-owner model? The Ann Arbor Chronicle and the Batavian spring to mind as good examples of local news outlets covering events, right down to town council meetings, that nobody outside a 20-mile radius would touch. Their advertising works because it is linked to the area and probably sold to local businesses by somebody they know. Will it work as well when the ads are served or sold from AOL or Guardian or NYT HQ? I wouldn’t bet on it.

I’m not sure if I agree with you that hyperlocal has a big future, but I would love it if it did. However, I would much rather see it grow as an ecosystem of local, cottage-industry journalism, whether that’s by citizen-journalists, part-timers, students or whoever, than be shoehorned into the broken business models of huge media outlets that have been activley reducing their investment in local journalism.