It’s been a big (huge?) day in the hyperlocal space today.
- Firstly, MSNBC (joint venture with my employer) has announced the acquisition of EveryBlock.
- Secondly, Jeff Jarvis et al’s report of their study of the hyperlocal space was presented and published at the Aspen Institutes’s Forum on Communication and Society.
- Thirdly, KOMO (a local news station here in Seattle) launched 43 community/hyperlocal sites in the Seattle area. Compare this with the Seattle PI’s launch of a single blog for Queen Anne.
Take a look at my break down of the space and see if you can match the story to the bucket!
Below is the full list of KOMO sites. Note that (AFAIK) the feeds for these sites are almost content free, in great contrast with the existing grass roots content of many hyperlocal sites. I’m also interested in who the authors are. In the list below, I’ve tracked the content authored by two identities appearing on the site: Amy Roe and Rose Egge (real names?). Contrary to the definition of hyperlocal that I’ve attempted to get rolling on wikipedia, the authors of this content are not resident in the neighborhoods. It’ll be interesting to see if KOMO’s strategy for scale (beat authors and lots of reuse of content between neighbourhoods) pays off. Note that Amy Roe, until recently, penned KOMO’s economics blog.
- auburn.komonews.com
- ballard.komonews.com : Amy Roe, Rose Egge
- beaconhill.komonews.com
- bellevue.komonews.com
- burien.komonews.com : Amy Roe, Rose Egge
- capitolhill.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- centraldistrict.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- columbiacity.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- downtownseattle.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- edmonds.komonews.com
- everett.komonews.com
- federalway.komonews.com
- fremont.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- georgetown.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- gigharbor.komonews.com
- greenlake.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- greenwoodphinney.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- issaquah.komonews.com
- kent.komonews.com
- kirkland.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- lakecity.komonews.com
- lynnwood.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- madisonpark.komonews.com : Amy Roe, Rose Egge
- magnolia.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- medina.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- mercerisland.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- mukilteo.komonews.com
- newcastle.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- northseattle.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- puyallup.komonews.com
- queenanne.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- redmond.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- renton.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- sammamish.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- shoreline.komonews.com
- snohomish.komonews.com
- tacoma.komonews.com
- tukwila.komonews.com
- udistrict.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- viewridge.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- wallingford.komonews.com : Amy Roe
- westseattle.komonews.com : Rose Egge
- woodinville.komonews.com
In today's New York Times Bits blog, there is another article that might be of interest on this topic, "Washington Post Ends Hyperlocal News Experiment".
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/washington-post-ends-hyperlocal-news-experiment/
An excerpt:
"The challenge, though, is that hiring reporters to cover car thefts, school board meetings and new store openings is expensive. So is hiring salespeople to visit local businesses and sell ad space. The model works only if a bunch of salespeople pound the pavement, or if a company like AOL with a network of large advertisers offers them geo-targeted ads as part of a bigger package."
Posted by: Greg Linden | August 18, 2009 at 04:03 PM
TechCrunch article on Jeff Jarvis: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/17/jeff-jarvis-tries-to-save-local-news-with-spreadsheets/
Seems unnecessarily snide to me. Jarvis has some creative ideas, and right now we need those. But I'm not going to quit my day job to become a hyperlocal blogger, either.
Posted by: CarolynJ | August 18, 2009 at 11:21 PM
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Posted by: Ted | August 20, 2009 at 01:32 AM