Okay, an interesting concept but there are ways to do better.
I tried Patch and Outside.in as well as looking at the other ones. Patch was okay but if you're not going to include every state, it's not very relevant to a lot of people. I looked at Minnesota and some of the towns listed. It's a good idea in theory but there have to be better ways to go about keeping people informed. One city I looked at had almost all the articles written by one person. Having one person's view of a city is not very beneficial.
Outside.in was good because it actually had news about Nebraska. It had a good mix of news, not all written by one person.
These sights serve a purpose but none of them are really better then the other and there are more newsworthy sites out there and the same thing can be done with online newsletters. I don't think these sites should be a main source of information for anybody, people need to learn to look for their news from trusted sources.
Libraries are already full of hyperlocal information. They are because they are found in neighborhoods or schools and are likely to have more info about the surrounding neighborhood or school. Look at all the fliers and events that go on, they are normally about local activities or events. I think many libraries already provide this info on their website or can lead people to sites that would have this information.
Overall the question has to be how localized any given place has to be and whether people will read and seek out this information.
Good point about the need for more than one viewpoint on these sites! I also agree with your assessment that these sites shouldn't be the only source of information for people. I think that's why I was more intrigued by Placeblogger - it doesn't try to replace news sites but instead provides a way to aggregate local perspectives from blog posts.
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