Street Fight Daily: Groupon Reserve, Yellow Pages, New CityGrid CEO

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.

Expansion of Groupon Reserve Continues (Time)
Brad Tuttle: Apparently, affluent foodies like getting deals as much as the next person. Groupon’s “Reserve” daily deal program, which focuses on fancy tasting menus and other luxury offerings, is spreading to its fourth U.S. city, Los Angeles. When considered alongside similarly high-end offers from Gilt City and LivingSocial Gourmet, the rise of Reserve points to the “elite daily deal” as a genuine trend.

The Golden Allure of the Yellow Pages (BusinessWeek)
Yes, phone books are still around. And while they eventually may succumb to the Internet, they’re not going down without a fight. Publishers threw 422 million directories on America’s lawns and doorsteps last year, according to research firm Simba Information. And businesses paid a collective $6.9 billion for ads in them, according to the market research firm BIA/Kelsey.

CityGrid Media Announces Jason Finger as New CEO (Local Onliner)
IAC announced that SeamlessWeb founder Jason Finger will take over as CEO of its CityGrid Media unit April 12. CityGrid Media includes the CityGrid ad network and Citysearch, Urbanspoon, Insider Pages and BuzzLabs. Finger was a founder of SeamlessWeb in 1999. The company grew to 21 U.S. cities plus London during his tenure.

Local Media Schooled in Driving Digital Revenues (NetNewsCheck)
Executives from several local media companies that have managed to bring in double-digit revenue from their digital efforts were on hand at the Borrell Local Online Advertising conference to share the the varied paths that led them over the 10% digital revenue threshold.

Patch Suspends Blog of Conn. Congressional Candidate After Alleged Plagiarism (The Day)
Daria Novak, a 2nd Congressional District Republican candidate with tea party credentials, had her blogging privileges on revoked by Patch’s “Local Voices” section, after editors found plagiarized passages in at least two of her seven blog posts. Entire paragraphs of her work appeared to have been lifted almost word for word without attribution from a conservative website and The Washington Times, according to the website editors.

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