Mike Butcher today reported that UK based Newspepper with the backing of its heavyweight board is readying itself to launch a citizen journalism site. The Newspepper site doesn’t seem to be doing anything too exciting in terms of technology, it looks like a Drupal build, but the ambition of breaking the local and national media markets certainly is exciting.

It always strikes me how narrow the focus of news output can be, especially from the national television networks in the UK. The national news industry has a very tight focus, which quite often I find is totally irrelevant to the daily lives of the people who are watching. Local news coverage has its own problem, using traditional TV, Radio and Print technology local media really can’t get local enough. User generated news supported by technology such as RSS, interactive maps, video etc could generate a break through in providing genuinely local news. And how could technology help move the local news into national? Simple, the news items could be categorised and aggregated on a national scale.

I’m sure there are plenty of challenges, including revenue models, getting eyeballs on the site, editorial control etc but good luck to businesses trying to bring a greater breadth to our news output.