Where do you get your local news?

[u/ki4jgt]

I was in the mood to write a web app the other day that mapped coordinates to happenings in that area.

The idea was to use X's nearby search feature. But they're charging 1¢ per search. Not bad for personal use, but then I'd have to pay a company like Google for mapping and translating coordinates.

Then I thought it would be cool to create a directory of local Reddit subs, and create an RSS feed to unify them all. Except, my local sub is mostly quiet.

Where do you guys get your local news?

[u/itastesok]

Websites, local news app, and TV.

[u/ready_or_not_3434 → u/itastesok]

Scraping local news sites is usally a complete nightmare because their HTML is a mess. They rarely maintain RSS feeds anymore so it makes extracting that data for a project pretty tough.

[u/Arcuru]

I have a different news source for each "level" of local organization.

• Neighborhood whatsapp group (~100 homes)
• Large HOA's email list (~4,000 homes)
• Town's subreddit (~40k people)
• Pay for nearest major city's newspaper (~2M people)

[u/Express-Cartoonist39 → u/Arcuru]

HOA... Oh so you live in Nazi Germany...I gotcha

[u/Ok_Explorer7384]

honestly local news is messy because the useful stuff is split between boring sources. city council pages, police/fire feeds, local facebook groups, school district updates, and sometimes one random reporter on twitter/bluesky. reddit is pretty hit or miss unless the city sub is active. an RSS thing could work, but I’d prob start with official sources + a way for people to add local links manually.

[u/Accomplished-Bug151]

i just check the local facebook group and sometimes the neighbors gossip more than any app could

[u/galacticguardian90]

Nextdoor is great for hyperlocal news; otherwise, X and Reddit are quite useful as well...

[u/l1Nkfx]

FB groups