More ‘Serious Disruption’ in Store for the Local News Industry
Local and hyperlocal journalism, like the entire news industry, is being pushed toward big change — to leave its editor-centric culture and connect more deeply with the community in the news-gathering process. Peggy Holman, co-founder of Journalism That Matters, is one of the on-the-ground agents of change…
Journatic CEO Accepts Blame for Bogus Bylines
The popular National Public Radio show “This American Life” turned its eye on hyperlocal news service Journatic this weekend, revealing in its latest episode that the company’s local real estate site BlockShopper had slapped fake bylines onto some of the site’s lawsuit-prone stories. “This was a mistake,” Journatic CEO Brian Timpone told Street Fight yesterday. “We should never have run an alias byline and sent the article to our partners.”
How Hyperlocals Should Handle User-Generated Content
There was a recent media kerfuffle when the Nashville Tennessean ran two un-bylined articles produced by publicists at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Was that a no-no? We asked Jane Stevens to explain what works and what doesn’t when sites, as they should, turn to their audience for articles and other content…
Can Bloodied Patch Pull Off a Digital ‘Rocky’?
Patch could compete more effectively if adopted a community-faced news strategy. Instead of building a Ptolemaic news gathering universe in each community centered on one young, inexperienced, overwhelmed reporter-editor, it should set about recruiting regular reporter/contributors who know their communities inside and out…
Hyperlocal Start-Ups Say They Can’t Measure Their Engagement. Huh?
Independent hyperlocal news sites are busy trying to get their users fully engaged, but they say they can’t measure how well their strategies are working. A new study from J-Lab at American University finds that nearly eight in 10 news sites “could not measure whether their engagement strategies were also converting readers into advertisers, donors, content contributors or volunteers.”
NJ’s TAP Grows Indie Hyperlocal Network Through Licensing
Under the licensing program, participants pay a $2,500 fee in their first year, $5,000 in year two and $10,000 in year three, plus 10% of their ad revenue. Alternative Press publisher Mike Shapiro says a licensee, “after the three-year ramp up, should bring in $50,000 to $100,000 in income (after expenses have been taken out for licensing fees, freelance, ad commissions, marketing etc.).”
How Hyperlocals Can Burn In Their Brand
How important is branding to hyperlocals? I put the question to a handful of editors, publishers and other leaders of hyperlocals that are successful or are headed in that direction. What’s interesting, and reassuring, is that they were are in basic agreement: branding is important, it has to be earned, and audiences wield the iron that burns in the brand…
Journatic’s ‘Darth Vader’ Takes Lightsaber to TribLocal
Brian Timpone, the founder and CEO of Journatic, is a destroyer. And that’s a good thing because community journalism needs entrepreneurs who will clean out the stubbornly resistant vestiges of 20th century “best practices.” Too much of community journalism is built on an outdated model where one reporter is the Ptolemaic center of the news-gathering universe….
Big Brands and Hyperlocal Sites: A Matchmaker Gives the Lowdown
Size matters when national advertisers look at hyperlocal sites, but not that much. That’s what I got from a phone talk with Bryan Quinn, vice president of publisher strategy & operations at Cox Digital Solutions. CDS — the combination of Cox acquisition Adify and Cox Cross Media in January 2011 – is the middleman between advertisers as big as Walmart and Target and their agencies and local digital sites of all varieties…
Tribune Hands Off TribLocal to Data-Rich Journatic
Old-media Tribune Company’s decision to invest in new-media startup Journatic, and let the fast growing content production company take over operations – but not ownership – of its TribLocal hyperlocal network, isn’t just about cost-cutting. Journatic has the resources and — just as important — the vision to use data to drive editorial content, all the way down to the neighborhood level…
How to Engage Hyperlocal ‘Hard’ News Enthusiasts
Hyperlocal sites shouldn’t look at hard news as journalistic broccoli. The challenge is to serve up hard news appealingly – to connect it with each user’s gut-level self-interest. This means giving users the space to talk about their news enthusiasms. It’s not always enough to ask, “What do you think?” Sometimes a site has to offer a prompt…
Chicago Indy Ad Network Shutting Down After Poor Sales
The Chicago Independent Advertising Network is shutting down six months after it opened for business. Business manager Mike Fourcher wrote: “I am disappointed that it has come to this conclusion, but the old saying is, ‘When sales are good, everything’s good.’ Sales were not good, and therefore neither was publisher interest.”
Will Wash Post Take Another Run at Hyperlocal Under John Temple?
After crashing and burning in Northern Virginia’s highly competitive hyperlocal space in 2009, it appears that the Washington Post is again looking for a way to get back into the game in its local markets. The big, signifying tea leaf is the Post’s appointment of John Temple as managing editor for local news…
Smartphone Optimization Tips Every Hyperlocal Should Know
Mobile is the commanding new digital experience. App-rich smartphones are rapidly transforming our daily lives, and it’s become vital for publishers and media companies of all sizes to create mobile products that satisfy consumer demand. What does this all mean for hyperlocal news sites, which have largely been focused on perfecting the digital experience for the desktop? Amy Gahran, senior editor of Oakland Local, shares her insight…
For Troubled News Industry, Is It Enough to ‘Pivot’?
“Let’s just assume that the traditional newspaper organization is a loss and will not survive, and come up with other plans to produce local journalism,” said the AP’s Jonathan Stray. “I may or may not be right about the possibility of survival for the former news industry, but I think this point of view forces the right questions.”