Jay Rosen's tweet about explainthis.org the other day reminded me of this interesting concept from Norwegian local newspaper Budstikka.

The paper is running ads like the one below, telling their readers which journalists to contact if they live in such and such postcode areas. The text of the ad (my hasty translation):

"Even Closer: If you live in postcodes 1380 - 1389, then I'm your journalist - get in touch with me if you have a news tip" (picture and Budstikka story tip via Anders Brenna). UK equivalent would be if you e.g live in N1 or N2 (those are just the first UK postcodes that springs to mind, there's little comparison between North-London and the area where Budstikka is based).

Update 16/12-09 11:20 CET: more on Budstikka here (in English), what the Wikipedia entry doesn't say is that the daily local, part owned by Edda Media, Mecom's Norwegian arm, has a well-deserved reputation for savy editorial innovation, particularly online. I've written more on this for Journalism.co.uk here. I do hope that saying computer programming is journalism is a real no-brainer by now (the article is from April 2008), but the last five paragraphs describes a few of Budstikka's innovative projects using mashups, databases and involving readers to create hyperlocal journalism that was an instant public hit.