What is this supposed to MEAN? That the Times could buy Gothamist if it really wanted to? That the Times has surrendered to the fact that they can’t fix their Metro or hyperlocal reporting? I had the pleasure of talking to Dave Winer this afternoon about the hyperlocal space and the work the Times is doing with his students at NYU to produce a niche blog for the East Village. On his own blog , he questions where the money will come from to support these efforts. Big institutions seem to think there’s some mysterious code to crack with the production and business model of hyperlocal, when in fact there is an institution that had been doing it well for decades and only recently started to stumble when they couldn’t keep up with online: the alternative weekly (I cut my teeth at one such publication, The L Magazine ). What can the Times et. al. learn from the alt weekly model as they dive into hyperlocal blogging? 1.…