How to Use Flipboard to Create a Killer DIY Hyperlocal Publication in 5 Minutes
For anyone who owns an iPad, it’s no surprise that Flipboard is a breakthrough. The one-year-old application allows you to instantly turn any news site, social feed, or photo stream into a slick, tablet-optimized, ad-free magazine — a pretty neat parlor trick. Apple selected it as their app of the year and Time listed it as one of their top 50 innovations of 2010…
The Hyperlocal Journalist and the Salesperson
“I worry about the future of my profession when I see large segments of the online news industry failing to rigorously test the kinds of revenue models journalism needs to survive,” writes CJR’s Michael Meyer, who runs the News Frontier Database. “Taking our content seriously is a basic requirement, but are we taking ourselves (or even readers) seriously if we’re not wholly committed to monetizing it?”
Is TapIn the Future of Hyperlocal?
To be honest, I hate writing about this startup because it was an idea I wanted to pursue myself. But over the past week I’ve been playing with TapIn, a hyperlocal news application created by Silicon Valley software startup Tackable. Available in the iTunes store, TapIn allows users to overlay a variety of pieces of information (deals, news, events) over a local interface. But what I was really interested in, more than anything, was the photo assignment engine behind Tackable.
Hyperlocal Scoreboard: Two Close Watchers Total It Up
The Poynter Institute’s Mallary Jean Tenore and Rick Edmonds are must-reads in the digital media world. Their pieces on hyperlocal, while not numerous, have been extensively linked, tweeted and commented on. Tenore came of age in the digital era, while Edmonds entered his first newsroom when the IBM Selectric typewriter was still the standard…
Arlington Hyperlocal Picks Its Own Patch, Turns a Profit
Scott Brodbeck, the editor of hyperlocal ARLnow.com (Arlington, Va.), which is part of the “authentically local” movement, claims he has a steady thrum of profitable traffic, and an empathy-bordering-on-sympathy for his competition (read: Patch). I thought it would be worthwhile to dig into this apparent and positive anomaly…
Should Hyperlocals Incorporate Content From Local Merchants?
Today’s local merchant is learning to build a more contextual, social relationship with their customer base through social media, and it’s making the simple banner ad less effective. Simply put: business is integral to engaging the community because they have the commercial incentive to create content that builds their brand equity, directly or indirectly…
The Alternative Press: A Successful Hyperlocal in the Garden State
The story of why InJersey went out has been told in so many conflicting ways it could be called “Garden State Rashomon.” I’d like to tell the story of another New Jersey hyperlocal, The Alternative Press, that is less maddening, and more optimistic. Would-be hyperlocal publishers and editors, give TAP founder and CEO Mike Shapiro five minutes of your time.
Patch-HuffPo Wants Hyperlocal Traffic? Here’s How
Last week I talked to a number of people about Aol’s Patch network and pointed readers to one Patch in particular that ostensibly seemed to be going for (human) form over (hyperlocal) function. It was a little unfair to single them out perhaps, especially with plenty of other examples of click-baiting to highlight, but I’m guessing I wittingly provided them just what they wanted by sort of calling them out: more pageviews, more clicks, more buzz…
Why Niches Are Becoming More Important for Deals
In the month since Groupon’s S-1 filing, there has been a lot of criticism directed at the nascent daily deals industry. Some say that the deals model is unsustainable, while others claim that running a deal can cripple a small business. But before jumping on that bandwagon, it’s important to remember that online deals are still in their infancy…
Hyperlocal Is Only as Good as Its Talent
Ted Mann made a lot of smart points in his recent post on the lessons he learned from two years running InJersey, a network of 17 hyper-local blogs across the Garden State. There was one big, simple and very important takeaway: In a small town, having a single, passionate voice who is prolific and visible in the community can make the difference between flourishing and folding…
‘Social Journalism’: News You Can Take to the Bottom Line
The LJ World in Lawrence, Kan., has been a fount of innovation in digital journalism — especially in how to build and foster more and deeper community connections. Jane Stevens, the site’s director of media strategies, is herself a nonstop innovator. In 2010, she and her team launched LJ World’s WellCommons, a highly interactive site where “community and journalism work together to create a healthier Lawrence and Douglas County”…
Hyperlocal Post-Mortem: Lessons Learned From InJersey
When we made the decision this week to shutter InJersey.com — a network of hyperlocal sites across the garden state that I helped build, nurture, and raise like a child -—my biggest fear was that the effort would be branded a failure. In the age of Twitter, I was braced for the #epicfail hashtag. It came instead via Slate, in the form of a Jack Shafer missive…
The ‘Wishes and Dreams’ of Hyperlocal News Consumers
The data explosion offers plentiful opportunities to develop new news. But to blend that data into a compelling content cocktail, hyperlocals have to be continually innovative, and that’s not happening. Social networking is a big part of the new news, but it is nowhere near connecting to the user’s meaningful preferences…
Inside National Public Radio’s Play for Local Online
I’ve been writing about large media brands and their hyperlocal efforts for the past few weeks, looking at Gannett, Tribune and PBS for example. Balancing things out with another not-exactly-for-profit property, I recently asked NPR’s digital services GM, Robert Kempf, to talk about his organization’s forays into hyperlocal…
Delivering Local Deals: It’s All About the Data
It’s become clear that the two hottest areas of digital media — deals and mobile — are colliding. Mobile payments (i.e. Google Wallet) are meanwhile closing the loop on decades-old deal redemption and tracking challenges. This has led to another important variable: Data. More specifically, mobile payment technologies open the door for more comprehensive consumer purchase data, which can fold back into the equation for more targeted deal delivery…