We’ve come a long way. There’s a growing recognition and appreciation of why citizen journalism matters. Investments, from media organizations and others, are fueling experiments of various kinds. Revenue models are taking early shape. And, most important, there’s a flood of great ideas.

But we have a long, long way to go. We need much more experimentation in journalism and community information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain — and some notable failures are discouraging.

I offered 10 major points in my talk, as follows:

1. Recognition of citizen media.
2. Traditional Media Get It Now
3. Backlash
4. Tools and Ideas
5. Business Issues
6. Experimentation is Cheap
7. Some Experiments to Pursue
8. Ethics, Reliability, Civility
9. Assisting Trust
10. Media Literacy

The site, LoudounExtra.com, is an experiment in hyperlocal news; it will have church schedules, restaurant menus and real-time high school football scores. The county, in northern Virginia, includes Dulles International Airport and the town of Leesburg.

“There will be stories about things that normally would not make it into the pages of The Washington Post, like mailboxes being knocked down,” said Rob Curley, vice president of product development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “It has every Rotary meeting, every Bible study group. It is very local.”

Readers will be able to download restaurant guides and other content from the site onto their iPods, phones and even video-game consoles. In late August, a new feature will let readers click on a street address and see all the closest events and news nearby.

Let me suggest a new standard by which to judge hyperlocal news sites — the “Tell-a-Friend Test.” This is about whether the news provided is sufficiently compelling to readers that they actually pass it on to someone in their household or hyperlocal community, whether in-person or electronically.

When hyperlocal news succeeds, it will be because it successfully re-created and upgraded the word-of-mouth, village-based communication processes of 500 years ago, before the printing press was invented. The human condition includes the irresistable urge to hear and spread news that directly affects us, our families, and our communities.

[T]he hyperlocal news experience will be like hearing and spreading the latest facts, opinions, and rumors that come from a village’s authorities, know-it-alls, eccentrics, gossip-mongers, friends, braggarts, neighbors, and people who just plain talk too much.

With LoudounExtra.com, the Washington Post is trying to force-fit what newspapers now do into smaller, more local areas. But the ultimate solution will arrive when someone figures out how to capture the content that neighborhood gossips and their listeners now spread, and expands this into larger areas.

Although the campaign ultimately failed, his blog was another example of the growing influence of citizen journalists roiling communities across Southern California, many of which rarely are covered by newspapers or other traditional media outlets.

These muckraking bloggers say they have stepped in to fill the government watchdog vacuum. Some are anonymous, others are scurrilous and, on occasion, possibly libelous. And to local politicians, most are a royal pain in the tuchis.

It may only be a matter of time before bloggers start to have a major influence in local politics and policymaking. "It's inexpensive, and my guess is there are a lot of people who find it fun," said Matthew Spitzer, former USC Law School dean. "There have always been citizens who love to go to city council meetings and see what's going on. Putting it on a blog makes it a lot easier and it increases accessibility to 24/7."

It is the anonymity that separates the bloggers from professional journalists, said Michael Parks, director of the journalism program at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. "Journalists need to accept responsibility for their reporting and comments, and that provides for them to be identified," said Parks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who is a former editor of the Los Angeles Times.

"Anonymous blogs are similar to writing something up, not signing it and putting it on a bulletin. It's more social commentary than anything." Although blogs are protected under the 1st Amendment, they are vulnerable to libel lawsuits, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke University constitutional law professor. They present unique 1st Amendment challenges. "They cannot have defamatory speech any more than a traditional media type; however, the difficulty with an anonymous blog is who is actually doing the blogging?" he said. "And if you ask a server to take it down, what happens if they refuse?"

The California Supreme Court ruled last year that Internet service providers and bloggers cannot be held liable for posting defamatory material written by someone else.

This site will pick up where his earlier project, ChicagoCrime.org, left off by bringing together several databases of information. He said this will "allow citizens of a large city to learn (and act on) civic information."

What makes this idea truly new, however, is not just that it will aggregate local information. Holovaty explained, "The concept of aggregating local information is not new, but I think our particular implementation will be, because we're focusing on a wide variety of information that doesn't tend to be available in a one-stop-shop format."

Said Holovaty, "It's too early to tell what the main focus will be. We'll be throwing around lots of things and seeing what sticks on the proverbial wall."

Regarding citizen journalism and EveryBlock, Holovaty noted: "One thing we certainly won't be doing is adding citizen journalism for the sake of citizen journalism. If it makes sense, we'll do it; if not, we won't."