Local media needs to reinvent itself. In my wife’s hometown a local entrepreneur created a web based “newspaper” that had not only local print stories, but short video clips of the local high school games, a video weather cast and even some short local interest interviews. Sadly local advertisers were skeptical and didn’t want to commit to ads and selling subscriptions to the site didn’t work either. However, I thought the concept was fantastic and maybe just a little too far ahead of the time.
These days papers in big cities (Boston Herald) and medium sized (Lynn Item, etc.) are doing video reports on their sites—indeed like what you said. The Phoenix was a weekly arts/entertainment/sex ads paper. Last night at midnight an online version of their former WFNX radio ceased to be. (They do still publish in Portland ME and Prov RI, newsprint, kinda thin, with some local advertisers). The Boston paper though was deep in red ink.