I’ve got a profile of Universal Hub co-founder and blogger-in-chief Adam Gaffin in the new CommonWealth Magazine. Here’s the nut:
The idea behind Universal Hub is pretty simple. Every day — during breaks at work, while he’s on his exercise bike at home, or sitting in front of the television with a laptop — Gaffin tries to stay current with some 600 to 700 blogs in Greater Boston, looking for items that are unusually newsworthy, quirky, or poignant. He links to the best of them, along with an excerpt, some commentary, and a headline. He cites mainstream news sources as well, offering words of praise or disparagement.
What emerges from all this is something approaching a community-wide conversation. It’s like talk radio, only better, richer, more diverse, with people able to talk not just with the host but with each other through the comments they post. Universal Hub isn’t exactly an alternative to the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, but it’s become an essential supplement — a source for hyperlocal and offbeat news you won’t find elsewhere, and a place to hash out the big stories of the day.
“It gives you a place to have a discussion with folks who you might not otherwise be talking to,” says Gaffin.
Also in the new CommonWealth, Gabrielle Gurley takes a look at a new model of investigative reporting, driven by students and non-profit foundations. Gurley focuses on my Pulitzer-winning Northeastern colleague Walter Robinson, whose students are regularly breaking important stories in his old paper, the Boston Globe.
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So the 8 student reporters who exposed the senior citizen guardian issue can produce high quality journalism to protect senior citzens living on Beacon Hill; but it is now against the law for the 8 students to live together in the same house on Beacon Hill? Maybe they should focus instead on helping constituencies that actually support the student population as the lifeblood and (one of the only remaining) economic engines of the Boston area.
The idea behind Universal Hub is pretty simple. Every day — during breaks at work, while he’s on his exercise bike at home, or sitting in front of the television with a laptop — Gaffin tries to stay current with some 600 to 700 blogs in Greater Boston, looking for items that are unusually newsworthy, quirky, or poignant. He links to the best of them, along with an excerpt, some commentary, and a headline. He cites mainstream news sources as well, offering words of praise or disparagement.I feel like there just HAS to be a way to port this model to additional media. Since I’m a pubradio guy, naturally, my focus is on public radio.Except that it’s been tried, more than once, and failed. In some cases rather spectacularly. Radio Open Source, The Next Best Thing, etc etc.On the other hand, Free Speech Radio News has effectively been using this model for years. But FSRN is also highly marginalized and not really viewed as a “serious” ratings getter. Certainly it’s not contest between it and the other major Pacifica offering: Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. DN! wipes the floor with FSRN in that regard.I think there might be something of a disconnect for radio, with the idea of aggregating content from multiple, unrelated sources into a coherent product. It’d be hard to do that on a fixed timeframe and fixed length every day or week. And part of UH’s success is that the overhead is low: it’s pretty much just ONE guy doing it all, and that’s just not really possible in pubradio.Still, I keep wondering that there’s got to be a way to make it work SOMEhow…
Nice article. Loved it.
Good job, Dan. Enjoyable read.
Dan – an excellent summary, not just of Universal Hub, but of the local blog scene and its relationship to the established media. A must-forward.