The thing is – people like to read about their communities. The Webster-Kirkwood Times, for example, is extremely successful. Even the Ferguson Times in north county manages to stay afloat. When the Post abandoned community news, it effectively abandoned the communities. This means that local governments and local school boards had to find other ways to get information out to their stakeholders (I don’t understand your use of “hyper” local here, btw; “local” already means local, community, etc., as opposed to regional or state or national. No need to add the “hyper” part, IMHO.)

Patch.com is attempting to fill that void, and it is potentially a very lucrative void. All news is local, as the saying goes, and many people are more interested in whether or not a new stop sign is going to be installed on the corner than whether the marginal tax rate is going up – because that’s the news that actually directly affects them.

Examiner.com is another matter. It’s written by people who only get paid based on how many “hits” their posts get (so there can be some selling involved), and it’s all pretty fluffy and opinionated stuff. Some of it is interesting, but it’s not news.

Patch.com just recently opened a Webster-Kirkwood page, and they send real journalists to cover community and city news, including Kirkwood City Council meetings. So far, they are doing a respectably good job.