Nicholas Kristof is one of many journalists and commentators to lament the gradual decline of the local newspaper. All newspapers are facing stiff competition from the web, cable and mobile applications. Local papers especially, with smaller readership and smaller budgets, feel the squeeze. Usually the squeeze is applied first to foreign news coverage, which is the most expensive and, so the thinking goes, least relevant. Only four American newspapers now have foreign desks, reports Kristof. That means all the foreign news you read comes from a very few sources. At least, according to the traditional journalism model.

There are efforts to broaden the network of free agents feeding us international news. Kristof reports on one: "One new venture is Demotix, which offers aspiring journalists a chance to upload their articles and photos for others to see -- and some possibility that news outlets will publish them." Such extended stringers may not bolster local newspaper bottom lines very much but they might provide the kind of up-close and personal foreign news coverage that would go well with locally-tuned newspapers looking less for the big think piece and more for a compelling personal hook (image above courtesy of Demotix contributor in Darfur).

One innovation that may help to save--by repackaging--the local newspaper is being developed by mobile application builder Verve Wireless, as reported in the New York Times this weekend:

[The company's] mission is to save the local paper by making it mobile. It provides publishers with the technology to create mobile Web sites, so readers can read the paper on their cell phones. Verve or the newspaper then sell ads on those sites. Verve already powers mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers, including The Associated Press, McClatchy, and the New York Times Regional Media Group.

If you feel the siren call of the iPhone as I do and cannot imagine reading newspaper stories on your everyday cell phone, you will be pleased to know that Verve is already in the iPhone app game, with an excellent entry that "delivers daily headlines and photos and lets users watch slideshows or videos and text or e-mail stories to friends, which took the runner-up spot in the Apple Design Award competition" (high praise indeed).

These are the sorts of creative partnerships that will give local papers, most of which would never have the internal resources or capital to create mobile versions of their content, a fighting chance in our brave new media landscape. Either way, I will reach for the printed New York Times every time. But I for one am much more likely to browse a few local paper stories on the go than invest in an entire print version of the local paper.