NiemanLab reporting: “Simply put: civic journalism worked. Readers and viewers got it. We learned that if you deliberately build in simple ways for people to participate — in community problems or elections — many will engage.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/if-audience-engagement-is-the-goal-its-time-to-look-back-at-the-successes-of-civic-journalism-for-answers/
Showing posts with label hyperlocal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hyperlocal. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2015
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The New York Times R&D Lab releases Hive, an open-source crowdsourcing tool
NiemanLab reporting:
A few months ago we told you about a new tool from The New York Times that allowed readers to help identify ads inside the paper’s massive archive. Madison, as it was called, was the first iteration on a new crowdsourcing tool from The New York Times R&D Lab that would make it easier to break down specific tasks and get users to help an organization get at the data they need.
Today the R&D Lab is opening up the platform that powers the whole thing. Hive is an open-source framework that lets anyone build their own crowdsourcing project. The code responsible for Hive is now available on GitHub. With Hive, a developer can create assignments for users, define what they need to do, and keep track of their progress in helping to solve problems.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-new-york-times-rd-lab-releases-hive-an-open-source-crowdsourcing-tool/
A few months ago we told you about a new tool from The New York Times that allowed readers to help identify ads inside the paper’s massive archive. Madison, as it was called, was the first iteration on a new crowdsourcing tool from The New York Times R&D Lab that would make it easier to break down specific tasks and get users to help an organization get at the data they need.
Today the R&D Lab is opening up the platform that powers the whole thing. Hive is an open-source framework that lets anyone build their own crowdsourcing project. The code responsible for Hive is now available on GitHub. With Hive, a developer can create assignments for users, define what they need to do, and keep track of their progress in helping to solve problems.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-new-york-times-rd-lab-releases-hive-an-open-source-crowdsourcing-tool/
Friday, October 3, 2014
What if Journalism Was Built for Inclusive Community Participation?
Medium reporting:
A talk by Larenellen McCann, given at the Code For America Summit
A talk by Larenellen McCann, given at the Code For America Summit
(Forked by Josh Stearns, with permission. Words in BOLD are my addition or tweaks to her original transcript. A video of her original talk is at the bottom of this post.)
At
the risk of creating a massive existential crisis, I want to start my
talk by asking, “What is community?” Who gets to decide what a community
is? Who’s involved? What skills you need to get in the club?
And for that matter, what’s a “journalism community?” What definition of journalism are we using to describe the “news sector,” the “journalism sector” — all of us, here in this room?
We
need to be able to answer these questions concretely, even though it’s
so easy to refer to them in the abstract because “communities” are
groupings of individual people, and you can’t really serve people if you can’t define who it is that you’re trying to serve.
And if you can’t define who it is that you’re trying to serve, you also can’t identify who you’re not reaching.
This
is something we were thinking a lot about in my fair city, Washington,
DC, earlier this year when we had the opportunity to organize the “DC journalism community” (whatever that is) to participate in a massive cultural festival: a Funk Parade.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Aug. 7, 2014, 11:16 a.m. Dutch_windmills-cc Turning a profit in the Netherlands: How a Dutch hyperlocal network has grown
Niemann Journalism Lab reporting:
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The False Hope of Hyperlocal
Digiday reporting: Hyperlocal news has failed to live up to its promise. Chances are it never will.
Once expected to fill the void left by shrinking and
shuttering local newspapers, community-based digital news sites have not
taken off quite the way the New York Times predicted it would
as recently as 2009: EveryBlock is now in the scrap heap, as is
Placeblogger. Outside.in was acquired by Patch, whose editors have been flooding JimRomenesko’s inbox
for months, asking him to air the awful state of affairs at Patch. “I
love Patch,” wrote one Patch editor to Romenesko at the beginning of
June. “However, from what I see on the ground, we are on our last legs.”
An ambitious project by the Times itself, called The Local, recently dissolved
after launching in 2009. It now operates as a shell of its former self
under the uninspiring name “The Nabe” with no New York Times logo, or
journalists, attached.
So what happened? Many of the problems come down to the
structural challenges of building a business dependent on mom-and-pop
businesses. Local businesses were never willing to fork over big dollars
for banner ads, and national advertisers targeting local audiences
never materialized, leaving hyperlocal sites with sizable revenue
shortfalls. And since the height of hyperlocal optimism in 2009,
advertising has grown better at targeting local audiences, essentially
rendering the ads available on hyperlocal news sites irrelevant.
“The hyperlocal models haven’t proven scalable in terms of
content and advertising sales,” said analyst Peter Krasilovsky. “We
haven’t seen an alternative solution pop up for providing community
content that people find valuable, and that’s disappointing.”
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Nesta Research: Public Interest High, Advertiser Interest Low for Hyperlocal Media
LSE and Nesta reporting:
The future of local media in the UK has been in the limelight recently with the granting of local TV licenses, the House of Lords inquiry into media pluralism and the Newspaper Society supporting PresBoF’s Royal Charter bid, but what about the hyperlocal? In this post Jon Kinsbury of the innovation charity Nesta presents recent research on public demand for hyperlocal media and the potential for advertising in hyperlocal markets.
When we began our programme Destination Local – designed to understand and to stimulate activity in the UK’s nascent hyperlocal media industry – there was a lot of assertion and very little hard evidence about its potential.
In March, we published Kantar Media’s research into the scale and nature of demand for hyperlocal services. This showed that they are popular and that consumption is being driven by the take-up of smartphones and tablets.
And last week, we published the first research on the size of the UK’s hyperlocal advertising market, produced by Oliver and Ohlbaum.
Understanding the potential for advertising is crucial. For any hyperlocal service to sustain itself beyond being a socially-important, amateur pursuit it must cover its costs and advertising has been the traditional way of raising revenue in order to do this. At the other end of the spectrum, traditional local media players – perhaps TV companies or local newspapers – trying to respond to audiences going online, will want to know how big an advertising market they are competing for.
The research we have published does not provide heartening reading for hyperlocal media services. First of all, it suggests that big brands will place their ads on location-based platforms rather than spend money with geographically-specific services. Facebook and Google are much more likely to collect advertising spend by providing content relevant to your location than, say, a blog about Birmingham.
Secondly, the research asked small, local businesses from around the UK if they spend their advertising budgets with local hyperlocal publishers. Some do, but out of a total advertising spend of nearly a billion pounds, little more than a few tens of millions go the way of hyperlocals. And this, the report forecasts, is unlikely to increase significantly anytime soon...
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2013/05/31/nesta-research-public-interest-high-advertiser-interest-low-for-hyperlocal-media/
The future of local media in the UK has been in the limelight recently with the granting of local TV licenses, the House of Lords inquiry into media pluralism and the Newspaper Society supporting PresBoF’s Royal Charter bid, but what about the hyperlocal? In this post Jon Kinsbury of the innovation charity Nesta presents recent research on public demand for hyperlocal media and the potential for advertising in hyperlocal markets.
When we began our programme Destination Local – designed to understand and to stimulate activity in the UK’s nascent hyperlocal media industry – there was a lot of assertion and very little hard evidence about its potential.
In March, we published Kantar Media’s research into the scale and nature of demand for hyperlocal services. This showed that they are popular and that consumption is being driven by the take-up of smartphones and tablets.
And last week, we published the first research on the size of the UK’s hyperlocal advertising market, produced by Oliver and Ohlbaum.
Understanding the potential for advertising is crucial. For any hyperlocal service to sustain itself beyond being a socially-important, amateur pursuit it must cover its costs and advertising has been the traditional way of raising revenue in order to do this. At the other end of the spectrum, traditional local media players – perhaps TV companies or local newspapers – trying to respond to audiences going online, will want to know how big an advertising market they are competing for.
The research we have published does not provide heartening reading for hyperlocal media services. First of all, it suggests that big brands will place their ads on location-based platforms rather than spend money with geographically-specific services. Facebook and Google are much more likely to collect advertising spend by providing content relevant to your location than, say, a blog about Birmingham.
Secondly, the research asked small, local businesses from around the UK if they spend their advertising budgets with local hyperlocal publishers. Some do, but out of a total advertising spend of nearly a billion pounds, little more than a few tens of millions go the way of hyperlocals. And this, the report forecasts, is unlikely to increase significantly anytime soon...
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2013/05/31/nesta-research-public-interest-high-advertiser-interest-low-for-hyperlocal-media/
Friday, March 22, 2013
Can Newspapers Evolve Into ‘Local Membership’ Organizations?
Streetfight reporting:
In the days before MapQuest and Google Maps, the first stop you’d make when planning a long road trip was often your local AAA office. There — if you were a member — you could get directions, maps, listings of hotels and attractions, and information on discounts at some of the places you were headed. And, of course, if you got stuck somewhere along the way, AAA would give you the tow, jump or gas you needed to be on your way.
And today, even with the the popularity of digital maps (and the prevalence of insurance companies and car manufacturers providing roadside assistance), AAA’s membership base remains strong with about 53 million U.S. members, up about 50% from ten years ago. Each member pays about $60 annually, allowing the organization to more or less “own” the market when it comes to automotive travel membership.
Meanwhile, AARP “owns” the market on membership for senior citizens, and countless other organizations have a similar lock on their own niche areas — charging yearly dues and providing value through discounts and services. But, so far, I don’t think anyone has really nailed a local membership model, and there are two organizations that have great potential to dominate in this area — local newspapers and the YMCA.
Before we get into their opportunity, though, let’s talk about what I mean by “local membership.”
What makes the AAA model so successful is that they offer a core service (roadside assistance) with other perks. Some people pay for the core service but stay around for the perks — a couple of hotel and restaurant discounts and the membership essentially pays for itself. And a timely towing when stranded might inspire someone to hold onto their membership for decades.
On a local level, families always have products or services they need, and information is one of them. “What to do this weekend? What daycare to use? Are there safety concerns in my neighborhood? What neighborhood should we move to? What summer camps are available for my child?” From a product standpoint they need those home services, day cares or events to attend.
Many families will pay $100-200 annually to join their local science center or zoo so that they know that on any given weekend that can have something to do. That’s a lot of money, but after a couple of visits the membership dues pay for themselves. Getting someone to say just that “it pays for itself” is the key to any successful membership program.
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/03/22/can-newspapers-evolve-into-local-membership-organizations/
In the days before MapQuest and Google Maps, the first stop you’d make when planning a long road trip was often your local AAA office. There — if you were a member — you could get directions, maps, listings of hotels and attractions, and information on discounts at some of the places you were headed. And, of course, if you got stuck somewhere along the way, AAA would give you the tow, jump or gas you needed to be on your way.
And today, even with the the popularity of digital maps (and the prevalence of insurance companies and car manufacturers providing roadside assistance), AAA’s membership base remains strong with about 53 million U.S. members, up about 50% from ten years ago. Each member pays about $60 annually, allowing the organization to more or less “own” the market when it comes to automotive travel membership.
Meanwhile, AARP “owns” the market on membership for senior citizens, and countless other organizations have a similar lock on their own niche areas — charging yearly dues and providing value through discounts and services. But, so far, I don’t think anyone has really nailed a local membership model, and there are two organizations that have great potential to dominate in this area — local newspapers and the YMCA.
Before we get into their opportunity, though, let’s talk about what I mean by “local membership.”
What makes the AAA model so successful is that they offer a core service (roadside assistance) with other perks. Some people pay for the core service but stay around for the perks — a couple of hotel and restaurant discounts and the membership essentially pays for itself. And a timely towing when stranded might inspire someone to hold onto their membership for decades.
On a local level, families always have products or services they need, and information is one of them. “What to do this weekend? What daycare to use? Are there safety concerns in my neighborhood? What neighborhood should we move to? What summer camps are available for my child?” From a product standpoint they need those home services, day cares or events to attend.
Many families will pay $100-200 annually to join their local science center or zoo so that they know that on any given weekend that can have something to do. That’s a lot of money, but after a couple of visits the membership dues pay for themselves. Getting someone to say just that “it pays for itself” is the key to any successful membership program.
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/03/22/can-newspapers-evolve-into-local-membership-organizations/
Monday, February 25, 2013
What Nextdoor is doing right with hyperlocal and Patch is doing wrong
Gigaom reporting:
Serving hyperlocal community-level or neighborhood-level markets with news and information is a tough business — just ask NBC, which recently closed the doors on its EveryBlock unit, or AOL, which is still fighting to keep the losses at its Patch operation from sinking the ship. So why should anyone pay attention to a startup like Nextdoor, which just got $21 million in financing from a group of venture capital funds? Because Nextdoor is doing the exact opposite of what Patch and others have done — instead of making its network wide-open, it is keeping the barriers to entry high, and that could be the key to its future success...
...
Instead of starting with the news and then trying to add social-networking aspects later, Nextdoor started with the social networking side: the idea behind the service is that you and your neighbors need a place to talk about those school closings or crime reports or even where to find a good mechanic or babysitter, and doing it on Facebook or Twitter or another public network isn’t appealing for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns.
So what Nextdoor does is make it as difficult as possible to join — the exact opposite of what Facebook and even Patch try to do. Only people who actually live in a specific neighborhood can join the Nextdoor network for that area, and the service doesn’t just accept your word: it verifies it by checking your credit-card information, calling your home phone or sending a postcard directly to your house with a special registration code on it.
http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/what-nextdoor-is-doing-right-with-hyperlocal-and-patch-is-doing-wrong/
Thursday, January 3, 2013
4 Hyperlocal Trends to Watch in 2013
StreetFight reporting:
2012′s rush to capture the hyperlocal audience has begun to wane as the reality sets in that while the online SMB market is huge and untapped, it remains hard to get those mom-and-pops to spend money on newfangled marketing methods. Last year’s intense startup activity has revealed four trends going into 2013:
–Local no longer revolves around online news sites; channels connecting SMBs to consumers have multiplied
– Banner ads are no longer cost-efficient for SMBs
– Local media needs to retool client relationships, moving from “advertising” to “marketing”
– SMBs must start building brand advocate networks in lieu of advertising
1) Decentralization of local media hubs
Up until now, the online sites of local newspapers (and to a lesser extent online TV) have been the main media hubs for local communities. These communities (including arts organizations, civic groups, causes, and businesses) would route their marketing, advertising, and PR through these hubs and either hope or pay for publication. These entities are now shifting to content marketing and social media to publicize their events, and asking media hubs to link to them. Every tweet or status update they make points to their content. This newly created local content will become metatagged, curated and aggregated by a growing set of community publishers...
2) End of the Local Banner Ad...
3) Replace local media sales forces with ad networks and marketing talent...
4) The building of brand advocate networks...
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/01/03/four-top-hyperlocal-trends-to-watch-in-2013/
2012′s rush to capture the hyperlocal audience has begun to wane as the reality sets in that while the online SMB market is huge and untapped, it remains hard to get those mom-and-pops to spend money on newfangled marketing methods. Last year’s intense startup activity has revealed four trends going into 2013:
–Local no longer revolves around online news sites; channels connecting SMBs to consumers have multiplied
– Banner ads are no longer cost-efficient for SMBs
– Local media needs to retool client relationships, moving from “advertising” to “marketing”
– SMBs must start building brand advocate networks in lieu of advertising
1) Decentralization of local media hubs
Up until now, the online sites of local newspapers (and to a lesser extent online TV) have been the main media hubs for local communities. These communities (including arts organizations, civic groups, causes, and businesses) would route their marketing, advertising, and PR through these hubs and either hope or pay for publication. These entities are now shifting to content marketing and social media to publicize their events, and asking media hubs to link to them. Every tweet or status update they make points to their content. This newly created local content will become metatagged, curated and aggregated by a growing set of community publishers...
2) End of the Local Banner Ad...
3) Replace local media sales forces with ad networks and marketing talent...
4) The building of brand advocate networks...
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/01/03/four-top-hyperlocal-trends-to-watch-in-2013/
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Can Local Newspapers Collaborate with Blogs? J-Lab Finds Answers
mediashift reporting;
J-Lab recently released the results of its Networked Journalism pilot project, a three-year initiative that "called for eight newspapers and one public radio station to network with local blogs," resulting in "nine different models of collaboration," J-Lab reports.
In a detailed report called Networked Journalism: What Works, J-Lab's executive director, Jan Schaffer, outlines the problem the project was designed to explore:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/12/can-local-newspapers-collaborate-with-blogs-j-lab-finds-answers341.html
J-Lab recently released the results of its Networked Journalism pilot project, a three-year initiative that "called for eight newspapers and one public radio station to network with local blogs," resulting in "nine different models of collaboration," J-Lab reports.
In a detailed report called Networked Journalism: What Works, J-Lab's executive director, Jan Schaffer, outlines the problem the project was designed to explore:
With U.S. newspapers losing more than 42,000 journalists since 2007, local news coverage has suffered. At the same time, hundreds of local blogs and news sites have launched in their markets ... What role can traditional news organizations play not only to expose their audiences to more news than they themselves can deliver, but also to connect new sources of information rising throughout their communities?She concludes that for a partnership between a legacy newsroom and its community partners to succeed, two things are needed: First, "it is the responsibility of the hub news organization to provide their news networks with enough visibility and outbound links to drive traffic to their partners' sites." And second, "it is the responsibility of the community news partners to post frequently enough to be robust participants and to nab the visibility -- either on the network page or the home page -- that would bring them traffic."
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/12/can-local-newspapers-collaborate-with-blogs-j-lab-finds-answers341.html
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Hyperlocal Video Finally Comes of Age
Street Fight reporting:
Hyperlocal video has, until now, been basically an oxymoron. The local television stations push out a decent amount of video but it has a metro rather than a hyperlocal focus. Patch.com and other hyperlocal news networks have done a bit of video, but it remains expensive to produce and comparatively hard to monetize at lower traffic levels. Even as small businesses increasingly embrace social media marketing and, to a lesser degree, online text and display ads, you don’t see a lot of mom-and-pop stores doing DIY video ad placements. Likewise, there are a wide variety of video ad networks but those have largely failed to penetrate down to the hyperlocal level — except for wide-scale networks that primarily dump remnant ads on less-trafficked hyperlocal videos.Which is why a platform like Glocal looks really, really interesting. The Ann Arbor, Michigan video scraping and curation startup has some pretty nifty technology that allows users to drill down to find video content close to where they live. The U.S. map allows users to quickly zoom in and out of local and regional video collections. At this point, there really isn’t enough truly hyperlocal video content to make a platform like Glocal interesting. A drill-down into the San Francisco area reveals only a handful of videos on offer and none that are truly hyperlocal. But the company is skating to the opportunity space ahead of the puck.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/11/21/hyperlocal-video-finally-coming-of-age/#.UKzt1oXXrRs
Hyperlocal video has, until now, been basically an oxymoron. The local television stations push out a decent amount of video but it has a metro rather than a hyperlocal focus. Patch.com and other hyperlocal news networks have done a bit of video, but it remains expensive to produce and comparatively hard to monetize at lower traffic levels. Even as small businesses increasingly embrace social media marketing and, to a lesser degree, online text and display ads, you don’t see a lot of mom-and-pop stores doing DIY video ad placements. Likewise, there are a wide variety of video ad networks but those have largely failed to penetrate down to the hyperlocal level — except for wide-scale networks that primarily dump remnant ads on less-trafficked hyperlocal videos.Which is why a platform like Glocal looks really, really interesting. The Ann Arbor, Michigan video scraping and curation startup has some pretty nifty technology that allows users to drill down to find video content close to where they live. The U.S. map allows users to quickly zoom in and out of local and regional video collections. At this point, there really isn’t enough truly hyperlocal video content to make a platform like Glocal interesting. A drill-down into the San Francisco area reveals only a handful of videos on offer and none that are truly hyperlocal. But the company is skating to the opportunity space ahead of the puck.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/11/21/hyperlocal-video-finally-coming-of-age/#.UKzt1oXXrRs
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Five things The New York Times learned from its three-year hyperlocal experiment
NiemanJournalismLab reporting: With yesterday’s news that The New York Times is ending its affiliation with The Local
— a pair of hyperlocal blogs that the newspaper launched three years
ago — an experiment came to a close. And from the outset, the Times made
it clear that it thought of its dive into neighborhood coverage as just
that — an experiment, not an investment likely to generate financial
returns. As the Times’ Jim Schachter told us in 2009,
The Local would be, within the context of the Times, “barely enough to
create a ripple in a pond and not enough to be profitable.”
But nonetheless, even with expectations set low, when the Times moves, people notice — and 2009 was a boom time for interest in hyperlocal, Times or no Times. Some running home-grown hyperlocal sites — the kind more recently assembled under the Authentically Local banner — questioned whether a big institution like The New York Times would have the right mix to pull off neighborhood coverage. (Check out the comments on that 2009 post to see the back-and-forth between Schachter and West Seattle Blog’s Tracy Record.)
The Local project started with a pair of community-focused sites covering neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New Jersey. By June 2010, the Jersey version of The Local was shuttered. Months later, the Times and NYU jointly launched an East Village iteration.
The Local was billed as an open-ended project with some specific ideas in mind. Blogs would be helmed by a couple of professional New York Times reporters, but story ideas and contributions would come from the community. If all went well, it might create a platform the Times could license to other communities.
Meanwhile, the newspaper is sussing out what it learned from the experiment. “What we have been trying to figure out at the Times — and I think what lots of people in this space have been trying to fiure out — is how do you prompt communities, and can you prompt communities into the act of covering themselves in a meaningful way?”...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/06/five-things-the-new-york-times-learned-from-its-three-year-hyperlocal-experiment/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4e48b3c965-DAILY_EMAIL
But nonetheless, even with expectations set low, when the Times moves, people notice — and 2009 was a boom time for interest in hyperlocal, Times or no Times. Some running home-grown hyperlocal sites — the kind more recently assembled under the Authentically Local banner — questioned whether a big institution like The New York Times would have the right mix to pull off neighborhood coverage. (Check out the comments on that 2009 post to see the back-and-forth between Schachter and West Seattle Blog’s Tracy Record.)
The Local project started with a pair of community-focused sites covering neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New Jersey. By June 2010, the Jersey version of The Local was shuttered. Months later, the Times and NYU jointly launched an East Village iteration.
The Local was billed as an open-ended project with some specific ideas in mind. Blogs would be helmed by a couple of professional New York Times reporters, but story ideas and contributions would come from the community. If all went well, it might create a platform the Times could license to other communities.
“We, at least, have not figured out how to extract the professional journalist, or minimize it close to anything nearing zero”As it turned out, the Times ended up handing off editorial control to local journalism schools — CUNY along with NYU — while keeping The Local branded as a collaboration with The New York Times. The schools have now formed committees to figure out what to do now that the newspaper is exiting, and Schachter — whose own Times goodbye party is tomorrow — told me that the newspaper “is giving them time to figure it out.”
Meanwhile, the newspaper is sussing out what it learned from the experiment. “What we have been trying to figure out at the Times — and I think what lots of people in this space have been trying to fiure out — is how do you prompt communities, and can you prompt communities into the act of covering themselves in a meaningful way?”...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/06/five-things-the-new-york-times-learned-from-its-three-year-hyperlocal-experiment/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4e48b3c965-DAILY_EMAIL
Monday, October 15, 2012
Will hyperlocal content save us? Not by itself
We’ve been raised on the belief that good audience segmentation drives
good marketing and good results. Add to that the feeling that local
markets and local advertising might have weathered the economic trends
better than others ... at least to a degree.
Together, this leaves us agreeable to the statement made by many that “hyperlocal” content will drive engagement.
At the INMA Audience Summit in Chicago in early October, we heard two speakers underscore the idea that hyperlocal isn’t the end in itself. Rather, it’s hyper-relevance — wherever that happens to be geographically.
Together, this leaves us agreeable to the statement made by many that “hyperlocal” content will drive engagement.
At the INMA Audience Summit in Chicago in early October, we heard two speakers underscore the idea that hyperlocal isn’t the end in itself. Rather, it’s hyper-relevance — wherever that happens to be geographically.
- Matthew Sanders, general manager of Deseret Connect,
spoke about an audience development road map that spans platforms at
Deseret News. He was the first speaker of the two days to comment that
hyperlocal won’t deliver the promised results if we don’t make it
hyper-relevant.
As Deseret Connect takes its reporting on issues of family and faith national and global, it’s moving from local to relevant, yet keeping the hyperfocus. This strategy’s success is illustrated by the fact that the Deseret News Sunday national print edition is the fastest growing U.S. newspaper. - On the second day, Paul Hood, digital director of Archant London, shared the success of London24.com.
Paul took the audience through a wonderful turnaround story of 14
hyperlocal publications — so hyperlocal, in fact, that if something
didn’t physically happen in the publication’s town, it wouldn’t be
published, even if the news was made by the Queen.
London24 created a forum for the integration of hyperlocal and hyper-relevant. Yes, residents wanted their local news, but it wasn’t enough to drive engagement. London24 increased the relevance by adding topics of keen interest to readers across markets.
EveryBlock President: Economics of Hyperlocal Editorial ‘Broken’
Street Fight reporting:
Between Patch’s beta redesign, NextDoor’s big funding round in the spring, and the Guardian’s hyperlocal news project, N0tice, continuing to expand in the U.K., the hyperlocal news landscape appears to be converging on the idea that hyperlocal information needs to be social. Meanwhile, adding to noise in the local content space, the Journatic scandal in the early summer thrust a set of new hyperlocal plays into the spotlight, raising questions about the sustainability of models which looked to data and technology to replace the heavy costs of editorial content. While the trend line appears to be pointing to a model founded in social, the role of data in editorial, and user-generated content remains very much up for debate.
EveryBlock, one of the earliest entrants in the hyperlocal data space, rebooted in 2011 after being bought by MSNBC.com in 2009. The pivot shifted the product’s focus away from its roots in data aggregation toward a more interactive product centered largely around user-generated content. This past summer saw some major changes for EveryBlock’s management — NBC Universal acquired MSNBC.com; meanwhile, EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty announced he was leaving the company in late August.
We caught up with EveryBlock’s president, Brian Addison (who will be appearing at the Street Fight Summit in two weeks), to discuss the state of the space, and the role of data, editorial and user-generated content in the future of hyperlocal news.
...
While data was at the core of our product when EveryBlock first launched, we found, over time, that it kind of has a niche appeal. In a way, we need to return to the question of what consumer need are we trying to address with this data? How much value do we as a reader place with that type of information? With EveryBlock, some of our users value that, almost raw, data. And it drives more value if you put some editorial around it. But for us, data still plays an important role in what we do but we’ve shifted our focus from the aggregation and organization of that data to a set of community features that have driven our growth from our redesign about a year and a half ago.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/07/02/journatic-ceo-accepts-blame-for-blockshoppers-fake-bylines/
Between Patch’s beta redesign, NextDoor’s big funding round in the spring, and the Guardian’s hyperlocal news project, N0tice, continuing to expand in the U.K., the hyperlocal news landscape appears to be converging on the idea that hyperlocal information needs to be social. Meanwhile, adding to noise in the local content space, the Journatic scandal in the early summer thrust a set of new hyperlocal plays into the spotlight, raising questions about the sustainability of models which looked to data and technology to replace the heavy costs of editorial content. While the trend line appears to be pointing to a model founded in social, the role of data in editorial, and user-generated content remains very much up for debate.
EveryBlock, one of the earliest entrants in the hyperlocal data space, rebooted in 2011 after being bought by MSNBC.com in 2009. The pivot shifted the product’s focus away from its roots in data aggregation toward a more interactive product centered largely around user-generated content. This past summer saw some major changes for EveryBlock’s management — NBC Universal acquired MSNBC.com; meanwhile, EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty announced he was leaving the company in late August.
We caught up with EveryBlock’s president, Brian Addison (who will be appearing at the Street Fight Summit in two weeks), to discuss the state of the space, and the role of data, editorial and user-generated content in the future of hyperlocal news.
...
While data was at the core of our product when EveryBlock first launched, we found, over time, that it kind of has a niche appeal. In a way, we need to return to the question of what consumer need are we trying to address with this data? How much value do we as a reader place with that type of information? With EveryBlock, some of our users value that, almost raw, data. And it drives more value if you put some editorial around it. But for us, data still plays an important role in what we do but we’ve shifted our focus from the aggregation and organization of that data to a set of community features that have driven our growth from our redesign about a year and a half ago.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/07/02/journatic-ceo-accepts-blame-for-blockshoppers-fake-bylines/
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Journal Register Company files for bankruptcy
Poynter reporting:
The Journal Register Company will seek protection under Chapter 11 “and will seek to implement a prompt sale,” according to Digital First Media head John Paton.
Journal Register is one of the companies operated by Digital First Media; the others are MediaNews Group and Digital First Ventures. In a blog post, Paton calls the bankruptcy “Another Tough Step” and says the company “has a signed stalking horse bid” from an investment group affiliated with Alden Global Capital. Alden sold The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com to a group of local investors earlier this year.
Alden purchased Journal Register in 2011 and owns stakes in other newspaper publishing companies. In February, Rick Edmonds wondered whether Alden “may have concluded that the suburban cluster” of papers Journal Register operates in the Philadelphia region “has the better business prospects.”
Journal Register last filed for bankruptcy in 2009. James W. Hall, the CEO at the time, promised it would emerge “stronger, leaner and more financially viable in the current environment.”
Digital revenue is up sharply at JRC, Paton writes, “But also from 2009 to 2011 Journal Register Company’s print advertising revenue declined 19% and print advertising represents more than half of the of the Company’s revenues.” What this means for Digital First Media is a little unclear. Paton says in his post the filing “will have no impact on the day-to-day operation of Journal Register Company, Digital First Media or MediaNews Group during the sale process.”
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/187531/journal-register-company-files-for-bankruptcy/
The Journal Register Company will seek protection under Chapter 11 “and will seek to implement a prompt sale,” according to Digital First Media head John Paton.
Journal Register is one of the companies operated by Digital First Media; the others are MediaNews Group and Digital First Ventures. In a blog post, Paton calls the bankruptcy “Another Tough Step” and says the company “has a signed stalking horse bid” from an investment group affiliated with Alden Global Capital. Alden sold The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com to a group of local investors earlier this year.
Alden purchased Journal Register in 2011 and owns stakes in other newspaper publishing companies. In February, Rick Edmonds wondered whether Alden “may have concluded that the suburban cluster” of papers Journal Register operates in the Philadelphia region “has the better business prospects.”
Journal Register last filed for bankruptcy in 2009. James W. Hall, the CEO at the time, promised it would emerge “stronger, leaner and more financially viable in the current environment.”
Digital revenue is up sharply at JRC, Paton writes, “But also from 2009 to 2011 Journal Register Company’s print advertising revenue declined 19% and print advertising represents more than half of the of the Company’s revenues.” What this means for Digital First Media is a little unclear. Paton says in his post the filing “will have no impact on the day-to-day operation of Journal Register Company, Digital First Media or MediaNews Group during the sale process.”
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/187531/journal-register-company-files-for-bankruptcy/
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
At Digital First, pop-up newsrooms take to the road
WanIfra reporting:
Beginning this summer, residents of towns, suburbs and sprawling counties across the US are liable to stumble upon something resembling the above-described new media tailgate party – also known as a pop-up newsroom – at a local sporting event or community get-together.
The fully loaded newsmobile is just one of several crowdsourced ideas intended to place reporters face-to-face with the people for and about whom they write.
At the turn of 2012, Steve Buttry, the Director of Community Engagement and Social Media at Digital First, challenged all of the newsrooms under the company's umbrella to come up with fresh ideas for engaging with and serving their local communities, according to a post by Randy Parker, Managing Editor of the York Daily Record, on the YDR Insider blog.
In early May, Digital First published a press release announcing that it had selected 12 winning proposals whose community newsrooms projects would be realized. “We want all our newsrooms to engage their communities in multiple ways – on our websites, social media, blogs, text messages and print products, but also in person,” Buttry said in the press release.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/2012/07/02/at-digital-first-pop-up-newsrooms-take-to-the-road
Beginning this summer, residents of towns, suburbs and sprawling counties across the US are liable to stumble upon something resembling the above-described new media tailgate party – also known as a pop-up newsroom – at a local sporting event or community get-together.
The fully loaded newsmobile is just one of several crowdsourced ideas intended to place reporters face-to-face with the people for and about whom they write.
At the turn of 2012, Steve Buttry, the Director of Community Engagement and Social Media at Digital First, challenged all of the newsrooms under the company's umbrella to come up with fresh ideas for engaging with and serving their local communities, according to a post by Randy Parker, Managing Editor of the York Daily Record, on the YDR Insider blog.
In early May, Digital First published a press release announcing that it had selected 12 winning proposals whose community newsrooms projects would be realized. “We want all our newsrooms to engage their communities in multiple ways – on our websites, social media, blogs, text messages and print products, but also in person,” Buttry said in the press release.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/2012/07/02/at-digital-first-pop-up-newsrooms-take-to-the-road
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Five things The New York Times learned from its three-year hyperlocal experiment
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
from the outset, the Times made it clear that it thought of its dive into neighborhood coverage as just that — an experiment, not an investment likely to generate financial returns. As the Times’ Jim Schachter told us in 2009, The Local would be, within the context of the Times, “barely enough to create a ripple in a pond and not enough to be profitable.”
But nonetheless, even with expectations set low, when the Times moves, people notice — and 2009 was a boom time for interest in hyperlocal, Times or no Times. Some running home-grown hyperlocal sites — the kind more recently assembled under the Authentically Local banner — questioned whether a big institution like The New York Times would have the right mix to pull off neighborhood coverage. (Check out the comments on that 2009 post to see the back-and-forth between Schachter and West Seattle Blog’s Tracy Record.)
The Local project started with a pair of community-focused sites covering neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New Jersey. By June 2010, the Jersey version of The Local was shuttered. Months later, the Times and NYU jointly launched an East Village iteration.
The Local was billed as an open-ended project with some specific ideas in mind. Blogs would be helmed by a couple of professional New York Times reporters, but story ideas and contributions would come from the community. If all went well, it might create a platform the Times could license to other communities.
... Here’s a start, with five takeaways on what he believes The Local taught The New York Times.
“Honestly, if hyperlocal is not core to a media organization’s business, then a media organization cannot possibly be fully engaged in it,” he said. “Large media organizations cannot afford to cover large geographic areas in a hyperlocal way using exclusively paid staff.”
...
from the outset, the Times made it clear that it thought of its dive into neighborhood coverage as just that — an experiment, not an investment likely to generate financial returns. As the Times’ Jim Schachter told us in 2009, The Local would be, within the context of the Times, “barely enough to create a ripple in a pond and not enough to be profitable.”
But nonetheless, even with expectations set low, when the Times moves, people notice — and 2009 was a boom time for interest in hyperlocal, Times or no Times. Some running home-grown hyperlocal sites — the kind more recently assembled under the Authentically Local banner — questioned whether a big institution like The New York Times would have the right mix to pull off neighborhood coverage. (Check out the comments on that 2009 post to see the back-and-forth between Schachter and West Seattle Blog’s Tracy Record.)
The Local project started with a pair of community-focused sites covering neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New Jersey. By June 2010, the Jersey version of The Local was shuttered. Months later, the Times and NYU jointly launched an East Village iteration.
The Local was billed as an open-ended project with some specific ideas in mind. Blogs would be helmed by a couple of professional New York Times reporters, but story ideas and contributions would come from the community. If all went well, it might create a platform the Times could license to other communities.
“We, at least, have not figured out how to extract the professional journalist, or minimize it close to anything nearing zero”As it turned out, the Times ended up handing off editorial control to local journalism schools — CUNY along with NYU — while keeping The Local branded as a collaboration with The New York Times. The schools have now formed committees to figure out what to do now that the newspaper is exiting, and Schachter — whose own Times goodbye party is tomorrow — told me that the newspaper “is giving them time to figure it out.”
... Here’s a start, with five takeaways on what he believes The Local taught The New York Times.
1. It just doesn’t make sense for big media companies to pay their staffs to go hyperlocal.
The New York Times is a national and global news organization. Schachter says while covering neighborhoods has been “useful to become familiar with commercial issues related to hyperlocal,” it hasn’t been altogether practical.“Honestly, if hyperlocal is not core to a media organization’s business, then a media organization cannot possibly be fully engaged in it,” he said. “Large media organizations cannot afford to cover large geographic areas in a hyperlocal way using exclusively paid staff.”
2. Hard-hitting hyperlocal coverage benefits from some professional journalism.
3. Create a platform that makes it easy for people to participate in diverse ways.
4. Understand the power of email.
5. Don’t abandon experiments in “innovation land.”...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/06/five-things-the-new-york-times-learned-from-its-three-year-hyperlocal-experiment/
...
Thursday, July 5, 2012
6 Email Marketing Tools for Hyperlocal Publishers
Street Fight reporting:
One of the hardest parts about launching a hyperlocal publication is attracting a solid base of regular readers. Local print publications can drop their papers off at subscribers’ doorsteps each morning, but most online publishers rely on readers to point-and-click their way to their websites each day.
Email marketing platforms are an excellent solution for busy publishers looking to turn occasional readers into devoted fans. By sending out email newsletters with links to the most important stories of the day, hyperlocal publishers can help their content go viral and build a loyal readership with low acquisition costs.
Here are six email marketing platforms with built-in tools to help online publishers automate the process of creating and publishing daily email newsletters, as well as other important marketing materials.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/07/03/6-email-marketing-tools-for-hyperlocal-publishers/
One of the hardest parts about launching a hyperlocal publication is attracting a solid base of regular readers. Local print publications can drop their papers off at subscribers’ doorsteps each morning, but most online publishers rely on readers to point-and-click their way to their websites each day.
Email marketing platforms are an excellent solution for busy publishers looking to turn occasional readers into devoted fans. By sending out email newsletters with links to the most important stories of the day, hyperlocal publishers can help their content go viral and build a loyal readership with low acquisition costs.
Here are six email marketing platforms with built-in tools to help online publishers automate the process of creating and publishing daily email newsletters, as well as other important marketing materials.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/07/03/6-email-marketing-tools-for-hyperlocal-publishers/
Monday, June 4, 2012
Local newspapers' crisis: what hyperlocal means, and why it works
The Guardian reporting:
Today's extract from What do we mean by local?* is by Ross Hawkes, the founder of the hyperlocal news website Lichfield Live. He is also a senior journalism lecturer at Staffordshire university.
He argues that journalists working for traditional "big media", through a culture of centralisation, have become too remote from their audiences...
Patch reporters in the true sense of the word are a dying breed. Gone are those who are known by everyone who is anyone in their local area with a finger firmly on the community's pulse...
If you do not have your ear to the ground how can you accurately represent the views of the community?
That is not to say there is a need for a physical newsroom in the centre of a patch, thanks mainly to the tools that now allow the journalist to set
up a newsroom anywhere... But utilising this technology requires something that is not readily found in the modern newsroom – trust...
News is still the central ingredient in a media business but the difficulty lies getting bodies on the ground in an affordable way... The rise of the hyperlocal publishers has been testament to the opportunities being presented to those with an understanding of the modern, digital community.
One of the accusations regularly levelled at hyperlocal publishers is that no-one is making significant money from them yet. While this may be true, positive signs are there...
Part of the growth and perceived success of the new hyperlocal movement is down to passion and knowledge for the communities they serve – and recognising that "local" is no longer a catch-all term.
The idea of "community" cannot even be described as a purely geographic phenomenon, with many people having a greater empathy and connection to an online social group than to their physical neighbours.
The emotional connection between audience and publisher is particularly important in a society that is used to choice and being able to interact with their media, be it through phone votes, Twitter hashtags or red-button offerings.
For many of the successful hyperlocal sites, the "one of us" mentality and the open nature of the work has been crucial.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/may/21/hyperlocal-media-local-newspapers?utm_source=Street+Fight+List&utm_campaign=df1796f3a7-Street_Fight_Daily5_22_2012&utm_medium=email
Today's extract from What do we mean by local?* is by Ross Hawkes, the founder of the hyperlocal news website Lichfield Live. He is also a senior journalism lecturer at Staffordshire university.
He argues that journalists working for traditional "big media", through a culture of centralisation, have become too remote from their audiences...
Patch reporters in the true sense of the word are a dying breed. Gone are those who are known by everyone who is anyone in their local area with a finger firmly on the community's pulse...
If you do not have your ear to the ground how can you accurately represent the views of the community?
That is not to say there is a need for a physical newsroom in the centre of a patch, thanks mainly to the tools that now allow the journalist to set
up a newsroom anywhere... But utilising this technology requires something that is not readily found in the modern newsroom – trust...
News is still the central ingredient in a media business but the difficulty lies getting bodies on the ground in an affordable way... The rise of the hyperlocal publishers has been testament to the opportunities being presented to those with an understanding of the modern, digital community.
One of the accusations regularly levelled at hyperlocal publishers is that no-one is making significant money from them yet. While this may be true, positive signs are there...
Part of the growth and perceived success of the new hyperlocal movement is down to passion and knowledge for the communities they serve – and recognising that "local" is no longer a catch-all term.
The idea of "community" cannot even be described as a purely geographic phenomenon, with many people having a greater empathy and connection to an online social group than to their physical neighbours.
The emotional connection between audience and publisher is particularly important in a society that is used to choice and being able to interact with their media, be it through phone votes, Twitter hashtags or red-button offerings.
For many of the successful hyperlocal sites, the "one of us" mentality and the open nature of the work has been crucial.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/may/21/hyperlocal-media-local-newspapers?utm_source=Street+Fight+List&utm_campaign=df1796f3a7-Street_Fight_Daily5_22_2012&utm_medium=email
Monday, May 14, 2012
72% of Americans Follow Local News Closely
PEW reporting:
Nearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need. In fact, local news enthusiasts are substantially more wedded to their local newspapers than others. They are much more likely than others to say that if their local newspaper vanished, it would have a major impact on their ability to get the local information they want. This is especially true of local news followers age 40 and older, who differ from younger local news enthusiasts in some key ways.
One-third of local news enthusiasts (32%) say it would have a major impact on them if their local newspaper no longer existed, compared with just 19% of those less interested in local news. Most likely to report a major impact if their newspaper disappeared are local news followers age 40 and older (35%), though even among younger local news followers 26% say losing the local paper would have a major impact on them. In contrast, just 19% of adults who do not follow local news closely say they would feel a major impact and fully half (51%) say they would feel no impact at all from the loss of their local paper. Only 34% of local news enthusiasts feel this way.
These local news and information consumers stand out from other adults in several respects related to community attachment, general interest in all types of news, use of sources for local news and information, and the particular topics of interest to them on the local scene.
As a whole, local news enthusiasts do not stand out from other adults in their use of technology or in the way they use technology to participate in local affairs, such as sending around links or posting comments on websites. However, among local news enthusiasts there are considerable differences in technology use across generations.
These are among the main findings in a nationally representative phone survey of 2,251 adults by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It focused on the ways people get information and news about 16 different topics, ranging from breaking news to weather to crime to schools information. The survey was administered from January 12-25, 2011 on landline and cell phones. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points..
http://www.journalism.org/commentary_backgrounder/72_americans_follow_local_news_closely
Nearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need. In fact, local news enthusiasts are substantially more wedded to their local newspapers than others. They are much more likely than others to say that if their local newspaper vanished, it would have a major impact on their ability to get the local information they want. This is especially true of local news followers age 40 and older, who differ from younger local news enthusiasts in some key ways.
One-third of local news enthusiasts (32%) say it would have a major impact on them if their local newspaper no longer existed, compared with just 19% of those less interested in local news. Most likely to report a major impact if their newspaper disappeared are local news followers age 40 and older (35%), though even among younger local news followers 26% say losing the local paper would have a major impact on them. In contrast, just 19% of adults who do not follow local news closely say they would feel a major impact and fully half (51%) say they would feel no impact at all from the loss of their local paper. Only 34% of local news enthusiasts feel this way.
These local news and information consumers stand out from other adults in several respects related to community attachment, general interest in all types of news, use of sources for local news and information, and the particular topics of interest to them on the local scene.
As a whole, local news enthusiasts do not stand out from other adults in their use of technology or in the way they use technology to participate in local affairs, such as sending around links or posting comments on websites. However, among local news enthusiasts there are considerable differences in technology use across generations.
These are among the main findings in a nationally representative phone survey of 2,251 adults by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It focused on the ways people get information and news about 16 different topics, ranging from breaking news to weather to crime to schools information. The survey was administered from January 12-25, 2011 on landline and cell phones. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points..
http://www.journalism.org/commentary_backgrounder/72_americans_follow_local_news_closely
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