…to succinctly explain what I meant a few posts back as “microbrew journalism.”

Essentially, it’s the idea that, like the beer biz, the news biz needs to decentralize.

It needs to move from a few big makers toward many smaller organizations.

And it needs to expand from bland, singular, everything-to-everybody products toward more compelling tastes that consumers will actively seek out and loyally support.

This means more than just shoveling newsprint-style text online.

And it means more than just adding blogs and comment threads and RSS feeds and tweets.

It means involving your readers in the daily churn of your reporting beats. Not just the big stories (big crimes, big elections, big layoff announcements) but the eternal ebb and flow of events, the “inside baseball,” the amassing of little events and little facts that add up to an ongoing sense of community.

It’s easy to see this approach taken to sports, business, lifestyles, and arts coverage. Those content genres already have built-in hardcore audiences. There are already people out there who really care about the Mariners, the tech biz, the music scene, and the cost of food.

It takes an extra leap of imagination to see how it could apply to what the Seattle Times used to call “General News.”

But it can be done.

It takes great research, great storytelling, and great networking. All these are skills journalists are already supposed to know about.

But instead of working all week to prepare a couple placid little he-said-she-said analysis pieces or brazen ambulance-chasing gorefests, use the Web’s unlimited space to add both depth and breadth. Let stories breathe with the details that add personality and narrative. Spread out beyond the headlines to show the daily drama ofthe courts, the city council, the schools, etc.

You can do this and still be fair to the various sides of a political debate or a court case. Indeed, with more room online, you can fully explore an issue from all angles.

And you can have background stories about particular issues, stories that stay up on the site, updated when needed.

The online transition can mean both more and better local news coverage. Coverage that can draw in readers at a higher level of involvement.

That’s the sort of audience that can command higher online ad rates.

And it’s the sort of audience that could be sold premium-tier content—stats, alerts, and detailed reports for people who need to know what local and state governments are up to on a professional-wonk level.