(Cross posted at Greater Democracy.)

Everyone has different phrases to talk about new trends in journalism that have been enabled by the Internet: Citizen Journalism, Hyper Local Journalism, Stand Alone Journalism, and so on. It is hard to keep them all straight.

So, instead of helping clarify things, let me add a new idea to the mix, Micro-Journalism. The idea comes from micro-breweries. The argument for micro-breweries was best presented to me in the quote from “A River Runs Through It”: What a wonderful world it was once when all the beer was not made in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or St. Louis.

People got tired of all the same old beer. People started making beer in their homes, Citizen Brewing. They formed companies to make beer for their local community, hyper local brewing. The idea has spread to other finely crafted products, whether you are talking about wine, jelly beans, ice cream, or, as I just read about yesterday, New England Vodkas. Perhaps fine, hand crafted, local journalism is no different.

People have gotten tired of tasting news from a major cable network, or a national chain of newspapers. They want something with a little more individualism, a little more local flavor.

So, what does this have to do with the Irish Potato Famine? In the early nineteenth century, Irish farmers were forced to grow the highest yielding potatoes, independent of any flavor advantages or hybrid vigor. The lack of hybrid vigor, which is a grave danger of monocultures, allowed a fungus to wipe out much of the potato crop.

Today, a growing dissatisfaction with the universally bland pabulum, spiced only with occasional disasters and depravity, could well be the fungus that is threatening media organizations. The high yield of going back to a small set standard sources instead of doing the hard work of investigative reporting and nurturing new sources is compounding this monoculture.