Howard Owens has a fantastic post up touting local community sites as the future of newspapers and the Web. It's well worth a read, and among other things it debunks the notion advanced in some quarters that the best definition of "community" isn't about geography but about shared interests. Hogwash. The primary community for anyone is geographical–where they live. Hyperlocal sites are about replicating that georgraphical community experience online.
Anyone who questions that people are interested in talking about their communities hasn't dug in to the plethora of listservs, Yahoo groups and organization sites that already provide coverage of many local communities. The trick is to find a way to create a portal site (I know--"portal" is a dirty word from the bad ol' '90s, but it's the best description) that ties together all those local interests in a locally focused destination site, mixed in with calendars, social tools and many other elements. Nobody's really cracked the code on hyperlocal yet, but there are a lot of interesting efforts out there–and there are a lot of local advertisers looking for those sorts of venues to reach their local markets.
Howard, in his role as Gatehouse's digital wizard, just launched a very interesting hyperlocal effort, The Batavian, serving Batavia, N.Y.–basically, an online equivalent of a good community paper, minus the printing press but with lots of Web 2.0 goodness. At the moment, it's sort of a glorified community blog (it needs more photos out front, for one thing), but Howard promises more to come. It's a very interesting effort by a traditional publisher to launch a local publication in a new market, sans the printing and distribution expenses. (Its antecedent, in many ways, is Morris Communications' pioneering print-free hyperlocal site, Bluffton Today.) It will be interesting to see how The Batavian develops, and whether Gatehouse will launch similar products in other communities to tap into the power of local information and discussion (and advertising).
Incidentally, I don't meant to dismiss Web sites and products aimed at non-geographic communities--I'm on record as loving niche products like Gannett's "moms" sites, for instance. But local is a community, too, with passionate interests that cry out to be served. And there's real magic, I think, in combining the two ideas and building local niche sites, as Gannett is doing. There's not nearly enough activity in that space. But at least efforts like The Batavian show that some publishers are willing to launch some innovative experiments in an effort to break out of the industry's malaise.
I think the industry is a bit down on geographic communities on news sites because they haven't turned into the big revenue-maker that folks dreamed of. However, the key difference with interest-based communities is that they tend to scale better. For instance, the blogs that tend to do the best on news sites are the ones that cover a topic that isn't limited to the geographic coverage area of the site. I think there's still potential for so-called hyperlocal sites, it's just that the advertising world just isn't quite there yet.
Posted by: Danny Sanchez | September 14, 2008 at 07:45 AM
I was going to give you heck, until I read your last paragraph. Because the online world has helped to enlarge the definition of community. We all belong to multiple communities these days.
You are very right, in my opinion. The local community is a very powerful niche. Traditional papers have to learn how to build online communities. Something I think most don't understand. Sad print leftovers on a static web site will not do.
If a media outlet, especially print, is to survive than they need to offer content that is not found on Yahoo's front page.
Rosh
http://www.newmediaphotographer.com
Posted by: Rosh Sillars | September 15, 2008 at 08:45 AM
I have to make a comment here, because I keep seeing this example around the tubes and throughout the industry. The time has come for people to stop holding Bluffton Today up as an example of pioneering journalism. The idea behind it looks good on paper of course, but the product itself is terrible. Terr. I. Ble. No one in the new media world ever seems to actually read it, and if they did, they might think twice.
I should add that they do have a print product that's distributed to driveways and free boxes across town. And they occasionally get caught doing lazy things like plagiarizing from other pubs (including us). But that's a different topic.
Yes, I work for another publication in the area, so I've got a pretty firm opinion of them. But no one in the community takes it seriously, and we stopped having to actually compete with them long ago. "Kitties and car wrecks," is how some people refer to it.
I think what they do is fine, actually, it's just not the same thing we do: they have a print product that's shiny and well-designed (usually better designed than ours) and they get a good laugh by printing anonymous phone messages from their hotline. They get better participation on their blogs than a lot of sites, and we have yet to even attempt to catch up. Readers submissions of photos and whatnot seem to do well.
There was a time when they made an effort at real journalism -- now that effort has unfortunately descended into writing up press releases and parroting the official town line on some topics. And their favorite topic to write about seems to be themselves.
Yes, it's a great idea to have blogs and places to share your pictures and all that. But that's about all it is. And if you like to read blogs about dogs, other people's dogs, homeless dogs and dog chow, you're in luck. Their actual news stories are hard to read and unsearchable, meaning any looking for archived information is near impossible -- a key element necessary for any relevant news site.
I think there is clearly a place in the world for hyperlocal journalism. But there has to be at least some "journalism" aspect to it — reporting, researching, acting the watchdog, not just covering the fluff of the day and publishing blogs in the print edition. If the Bluffton Today example is a look at the future of the industry, we all need to reevaluate what our goals are as journalists.
Posted by: SCreporter | September 15, 2008 at 11:55 AM
SCReporter: It's not an either/or issue between a Bluffton Today and a traditional news site (or paper). As you acknowledge, there are some things (user-generated photos, light stories) that Bluffton does very well. That's serving a market niche that traditional newspaper sites don't serve. Nobody is suggesting that that's a replacement for professional coverage of an area. But it's a very important complement, and it provides something to audiences that aren't finding what they want in a more traditional product.
Incidentally, I happen to think that, as a product, Bluffton Today has fallen off sharply from where it was a couple years ago--it's not very attractive and a bit hard to figure out what's going on. By standards of "real journalism," as you put it, it's a whole different animal. But it's providing a connection and service to its audience that traditional news sources need to emulate in some way.
Posted by: Mark Potts | September 15, 2008 at 01:54 PM