News, like wealth, tends to clump. Websites such as Everyblock and Groupon, despite significant differences, demonstrate how news tends to become more and more local in focus, allowing individual citizens to take an increasingly active role in news-gathering and news-making. Note, just out of interest, how competition between those august publications The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal seems to be boiling down to who can most vividly recount the various goings-on in Manhattan rather than who can best analyse the future of the planet. As Manuel Castells said, “Elites are global, people are local.”
Derrik De Kerckhove director McLuhan programme (via Skype)
Federico Fioravanti journalist
Michele Mezza deputy director RAI New Media, author of the book Sono le news, bellezza!
Marco Pancini Google Italy