Last week, my friend and colleague, Theresa Freeman, provided an overview of the emergence of the “hyperlocal” scene. As her post explains, these sites combine user-generated content along with some professional content. While the sites Theresa focused on categorize information into localities, they fall into the larger context of citizen journalism, which (as she discusses) faces considerable criticism. Theresa points to comments from the Cape Cod Times ombudsperson who, to paraphrase, calls on consumers to question information derived from citizen journalism. To her credit, she calls on the owners of these entities to offer clear disclaimers like CNN does with its iReports. (more…)