Introducing Hometown, and how tech can collaborate in local news
Last week we launched Hometown: a mobile app that scans dozens of news sources and delivers a handful of the most important stories about Oakland, California every morning.
This app is the first small step of an ambitious and experimental project whose mission is to strengthen local journalism, which we believe is the linchpin of democracy itself.
As two former tech workers who are new to journalism, we know we can’t do this alone, so we’re looking to collaborate with the people already working in journalism, local government, and the nonprofit sector.
If that’s you, we’d love to hear from you.
Introducing Hometown
On May 13, 2019 we launched Hometown: Oakland for iPhone. (An Android version is coming soon.) Unlike existing news apps, Hometown delivers just a few stories every weekday morning, which are chosen to help you understand what’s going on in local government.
Highlights from Oakland right now are the new coliseum construction project, pothole-fixing vigilantes, and work to reduce homelessness.
Deliberately (and refreshingly) absent are stories about national politics, sensationalized crime, the weather, and anything that distracts residents from being informed citizens of the place they call home.
Along the way, Hometown highlights the people that represent you in local government, puts faces to their names, and tells you what they’re about — a little touch we hope will help you get to know them and their work.
Hometown is starting in Oakland because it’s where we live, but we hope to launch it in other cities soon.
Who we are and why we’re doing this
My partner Rick and I have each worked in tech for over a decade, including together at a company I co-founded in 2012. We’ve done good work and we’re proud of it, but recently we’ve become disillusioned by the industry we grew up in.
Many of the companies we admired became successful using manipulative and attention-harvesting tactics that harm us and our society.
The lofty ideal of “changing the world” so many of us shared didn’t turn out the way we thought. Worse, many of the companies we admired became successful using manipulative and attention-harvesting tactics that harm us and our society.
Rick and I came together to work on Hometown because we wanted to use our skills to actually improve something essential in society. After weeks of exploration, we came to believe the best way for us to do that is by building software that supports citizens, journalists, and elected representatives to work better together toward our common good.
The Hometown app is our first small step toward that goal.
The challenges for local news and civic participation
Most news companies rely on advertising to fund their operations, which demands that their content reach the largest possible audience. As a result, the stories we read tend to be national, controversial, and those that excite emotions in us (usually negative ones).
National politics and controversies are important, of course, but they can’t speak to the challenges we face living in the particular place, among particular people.
Compared to national politics, local government issues seem less dramatic, existential, or urgent. But unlike national politics, local news affects our daily lives directly, and it takes only a small number of people, who all live within a few miles of you, to make a difference.
Meanwhile, people’s connection to the city they call home and the institutions that help it thrive are weakening. People who could explain the latest healthcare policy debate in Congress often struggle to tell you who their county supervisor is or what that person has done in the past year.
Local government can also seem messy, inefficient, and unapproachable compared to the slick private institutions (corporations, brands, celebrities) we encounter online and in the real world. Jargon is everywhere (what’s a “consent calendar”?) and it can feel like a thing for “other people”, people who’ve devoted their lives and careers to it.
People who could explain the latest healthcare policy debate in Congress often struggle to tell you who their county supervisor is or what that person has done in the past year.
Great local journalism — that is to say, informative stories about the people we’ve chosen to run the programs that make our city a good place to live — is how we know what’s working well and what needs our attention to improve.
Unfortunately, local newspapers, which have traditionally helped us stay informed, are going out of business or struggling to stay afloat.
How tech can help
We believe technology, and the modes of problem-solving used by digital product makers like ourselves can be helpful to these problems. Ideas built with software are quick to test, get feedback on, and improve. We can learn from our users, use what we learn to inform the next version, and ship within a matter of weeks. Software lets us deploy our ideas at a large scale to serve thousands of communities at a low cost.
We’re also exploring ways software can help local journalists do their work by, for example, helping them find leads for important stories, collaborate with journalists in other cities to know what’s working there, and reduce administrative distractions so they can focus on what they do best.
How tech can’t help
Of course, not every problem can be solved with software. No one needs tech bro interlopers swooping in and telling them they’ve got all the answers, so let me be clear: we don’t. Good tools can help, but actual people need to do the hard work of investigating, understanding, and telling the stories that matter.
We also don’t want to seem critical of local news organizations and how they run their businesses. We have tremendous respect for the professionals who’ve devoted their careers to keeping us informed. They’re doing important work — despite painful cuts and layoffs — to serve the public that depends on them.
No one needs tech bro interlopers swooping in and telling them they’ve got all the answers, so let me be clear: we don’t.
It is precisely because of our respect for this work that Rick and I would like to join in, bringing our skills building digital products to local news, along with an eagerness to learn from those of you who’ve been doing this all along.
What’s next
First, if you live in Oakland and want to read stories about what’s going on with the construction projects you see everywhere, what the city is doing about homelessness, and much more, give Hometown a try and send us your feedback!
Second, we hope Hometown can serve as a conversation starter: a way for us to find partners among the people already working in journalism, local government, and the nonprofit sector. If this is you and you like what you’ve read, we’d love to talk and find a way to work together!
So please get in touch and let’s meet for coffee!
Thanks for reading,
Ljuba Youngblom
ljuba@hometown.is
Co-founder of Hometown
