The great American newspaper was in many ways ancillary to another great American institution: the department store. So it’s entirely possible that tomorrow’s local news will be tied up in the interests of the real estate hustle. From the Seattle PI:

The new neighborhood beat reporters of the 21st century could very well be … real estate agents. That’s the promise from the folks at real estate blogging network ActiveRain, who today are rolling out a hyperlocal news and information Web site called Localism.com. The idea behind the site, dubbed the “world’s most complete neighborpedia,” is to create a compelling source for local news and information. That includes everything from restaurant reviews to news events to neighborhood photos and videos. Of course, since real estate professionals are doing most of the writing there will also be a fair share of stories about buying and selling homes. … “The goal is to make this a complete cross-section describing the communities,” said Washburn. “One of our initial challenges will be finding a way to motivate our agents to write real general consumer information for the next few months to get that consumer interest sparked.” But Washburn also thinks real estate agents — many of whom have embraced blogging — are perfectly positioned to tell stories of the neighborhoods where they do business.

“Perfectly positioned” may be pushing it, though. A couple of problems leap to mind: The first is that real estate agents tend to be terrible writers and, like most successful salesmen, borderline-to-full-blown egomaniacs. Browse through the real estate ads in any suburban newspaper or consumer glossy and you’ll see plenty of evidence of that. Real estate agents are reliably terrible when writing their own ads — why would they be any better writing about something they have less incentive to care about? Second, there is the question of credibility. It may be unfair (it may not) but real estate agents are generally perceived as being right up there with used-car salesmen and congressmen when it comes to telling the truth. (Then again, the same is true of the Washington press corps and the talking-heads brigade.)

But real estate agents may be a good model for tomorrow’s journalists. Most agents are part of a larger organization that provides them with resources and infrastructure, but they act, more or less, as independent operators, and their income is performance-based, not position-based, which is probably where journalism is going.

Here’s the site for Localism.com.