Real estate agents as citizen journalists

The real estate blogging network ActiveRain has launched Localism.com — a new hyperlocal news site that will be powered by neighborhood coverage provided by real estate agents. “They are the people that really need to know the local market and they do know it the best. They are on the street every day, looking at houses and making friends in the community,” said ActiveRain founder Jonathan Washburn. ActiveRain has 90,000 members, so recruiting real estate agents to become citizen journalists shouldn’t be a problem. I’m a big fan of hyperlocal (despite that fact that nobody has solved the financial puzzle… yet), but I think the jury is still out on whether real estate agents can provide neighborhood coverage that has little to do with real estate. Writes one commenter on this story, “I wonder how many times one will run across the phrase ‘Now is a great time to buy’ while visiting this website.”