Is the Web a poor medium for local news?

The Guardian's Jack Schofield celebrates Topix, the Palo Alto, CA, based citizen journalism site which pioneered the "first open development directory for the Internet."

The internet is a great source of national and international news, but it's not as good at handling the local stuff. If you want to know what's happening where you live, then your local paper - and its website - will probably provide better coverage. That's something Topix would like to change. When it was launched by Rich Skrenta in January 2004, the idea was to take a global approach to providing local news.

I'm not sure Mr. Schofield well argues for his claim that "if the US newspaper industry dies, [Topix] might represent the future of journalism, at least in part," but you should still check him out.