Seattle Takes the Lead on Hyperlocal Journalism
I’ve read somewhere that Brooklyn has more than 1,000 local blogs in its relatively small confines, but sheer quantity aside, there’s a lot going on in Seattle lately that I think puts the city way out in front where local blogging/journalism is concerned.
For starters, the Seattle Times and four hyperlocal blogs in Seattle announced an agreement this week that, depending on the details, could be unprecedented. I know for sure that it’s unprecendented for a major newspaper to start using words like “journalism” and “professionals” when discussing local bloggers:
Kathy Best, managing editor with responsibility for seattletimes.com, said the sites are among the leading neighborhood newsgathering operations in Seattle, staffed by professionals who share The Times’ journalistic values.
Suki Dardarian, managing editor of The Times’ print editions, said, “We’re thrilled to be part of building something that can help this community and at the same time contribute to the profession of journalism.”
That’s quite a change from the “local blogs have no journalistic value” attitude and the lack of respect that even the Washington state legislature has shown toward local blogs.
But all snarkiness aside, this is big news. The agreement basically says the paper and the four local blogs will share news tips, help each other with newsgathering, and link back and forth when appropriate. There are also some hints in there that both sides are making up some of this as they go along.
It’ll be interesting to watch how the long-time readers of the local blogs respond to this. I don’t read any of the four religiously (since I don’t live there), but my impression has always been that these hyperlocal blogs are almost anti-establishment in the sense of, We don’t need big media. You don’t need big media. We can do this ourselves just fine, thank you very much. Sure enough, in the comments on a MyBallard.com post (that’s one of the four blogs in the partnership), after a mostly positive reaction from readers, there are a few who don’t like it and fear what the partnership may mean for their beloved local blog. I’d say that’s to be expected.
Also interesting reading is outside.in’s take on the agreement. They question why the partnership only lasts one year, and why it only involves four local blogs in such a thriving hyperlocal news/blogging city.
What else is happening in Seattle?
The Seattle P-I recently launched its own hyperlocal blog, the unfortunately-named In Queen Anne. (Queene Anne is a Seattle neighborhood, but still….) It’s a direct competitor to the existing, and much better named Queen Anne View blog.
But wait! There’s more! Seattle’s KOMO-TV and its parent company, Fisher Communications, launched 43 hyperlocal sites earlier this month, too. There’s a full list here, and as you can plainly see, the KOMO sites compete with … well … just about every independent neighborhood blogger in Seattle.
So, yeah, hyperlocal blogging is going nuts over in Seattle. But notice that all three pieces of news I’ve listed above are about what big companies/organizations are doing to get hyperlocal from the top down. I stand completely behind my earlier post that Hyperlocal Sites are Best Done from the Bottom Up.
Local Blogs = Citizen Participation
There’s an interesting article that suggests the success of local blogs can lead to increased citizen participation in local government/community projects.
As the story goes, the City of Seattle posted a survey asking residents in 24 Seattle neighborhoods to share their thoughts on neighborhood planning goals. Here’s a chart showing the neighborhood-by-neighborhood responses that the city received back:
See those neighborhoods at the bottom — the ones that returned the most surveys? They have something in common, according to Katie Sheehy in Seattle’s Planning Dept.
“They already have a really strong blog presence in the neighborhood. There’s a lot of people already engaged in neighborhood issues through the blogs, and I think that’s what’s driven a lot of people to respond.”
Neat to have some visual evidence of what local blogging can do in a neighborhood, isn’t it?
(found via Lost Remote)
Hyperlocal Sites are Best Done from the Bottom Up
Here’s today’s Hyperlocal Headline:
Washington Post Ends Hyperlocal News Experiment
I said this on Twitter, but it seems like an idea … a belief statement … worth repeating in longer form here: Hyperlocal sites are best done from the bottom up, not from the top down.
It’s great that the Post tried with LoudonExtra.com. It’s great that UK newspapers are trying to go hyperlocal. Ditto for the NY Times and Seattle P-I going hyperlocal. But I can’t picture a big company ever doing hyperlocal better with their top-down approach than a local blogger/journalist will do with a bottom-up approach.
Local bloggers will do hyperlocal better because:
- They care more. There’s no substitute for writing about the things you live and breathe every day. Passion matters, and corporate hyperlocal efforts from big newspapers are usually more about business than passion.
- They know more. There’s no substitute for making decisions based on extreme, in-depth knowledge of the people and places that surround you. Corporate hyperlocal efforts probably make decisions based first and foremost on revenue and profit.
Don’t get me wrong — local bloggers can and should try to make profit, too, if that’s what they want. But it’s probably one of many priorities, not the only one. It seems to me that the best local blogs didn’t start out as money-making initiatives, as a business decision. When big newspapers start hyperlocal efforts, it most definitely is a business decision. That’s what I mean.
And I’m well aware of the success that ESPN’s so-called hyperlocal effort has had via ESPNChicago.com and its plans to launch to several more local ESPN sites. But that’s not hyperlocal to me. A web site that covers professional sports teams and major college sports teams isn’t hyperlocal; as soon as ESPN starts covering Little League baseball and the local bowling leagues in each neighborhood, then we can talk about ESPN going hyperlocal. Until then, hyperlocal sites are best done from the bottom up.
MSNBC & EveryBlock: What’s It Mean for Local Bloggers
There’s been so much interesting hyperlocal-related news lately, and I’ve rarely had time to blog about it. Today, gotta make an exception for the news that MSNBC has acquired EveryBlock. You may recall EveryBlock from previous coverage here on HLB — it’s an aggregator of hyperlocal data that primarily taps into government and other databases for information. But as I wrote last year, EveryBlock also accepts submissions from local blogs, allowing your posts to appear in EveryBlock’s news pages.
What It Means for Local Bloggers
Well, I can’t find anything that specifically addresses if local bloggers can continue to submit content to EveryBlock, but the signs are pretty good that this won’t change. On the EveryBlock blog, founder Adrian Holovaty says that little will change:
We’ll continue to run the first and best microlocal news Web site on the planet, with the same six people, with the same logo and design, with the same everyblock.com domain. MSNBC.com has hired our whole team, and they’ve made it clear to us that we’ll be driving the site’s strategy and implementation, and that our site will remain an independent destination as a community service.
That sounds pretty promising. Even better is what MSNBC’s Cory Bergman posted on his Lost Remote blog about the company’s intentions:
Because I know this will be the first question many of you will ask – what does this mean for local media? One of our first conversations will be how we can share EveryBlock data with local media partners. Our plan is not to compete with the local news ecosystem, but identify ways to reinforce it.
It seems like nothing will change for local bloggers except, perhaps, the possibility of much wider exposure – depending on how MSNBC integrates EveryBlock data into its news coverage. And let’s not forget, too, that Microsoft owns other properties that might benefit from EveryBlock’s hyperlocal data. There’s the Bing search engine and its local/maps tool, and that’s just for starters.
And if you’re interested, there’s a lot of Techmeme discussion about the MSNBC/EveryBlock deal.
Local News Blogs: ‘No Journalistic Value’
Following up on yesterday’s post, here’s an example of hyperlocal bloggers not getting any respect at all. It comes from a BBC radio program called The Media Show, where last week’s discussion was about the future of journalism. After talking about the possible closing of The Observer newspaper, one of the segments covered citizen journalism. Here’s how the host introduced it:
“Now, people – bloggers and the like – doing things for nothing on the internet, untrained and unsupervised. Sounds like the very opposite of paid-for professional journalism, and indeed that’s precisely what many in the traditional world of newspaper journalism think it is. Not necessarily a bad thing, but of no real journalistic value. Are they right?”
Now, granted, that’s not the host’s opinion — but he is restating what many in the news media (print, especially) think about hyperlocal news bloggers. Jeff Jarvis does a fine job adding legitimacy to local blogs and citizen journalism, and mentions that it can be a legitimate business model:
“We have found hyperlocal bloggers who are bringing in between $100,000 and $200,000 per year.”
The whole program lasts about a half-hour. The material I’m citing here starts at about the 22:00 mark, and lasts about six minutes. You can listen here, but this audio may not be available after today. (Some BBC programs only leave audio online for a week, and the show aired last Wednesday.
(found via the HMI blog)
UK Paper Writes Up a New, Hyperlocal Blog
This is nice to see: A “traditional” newspaper writing a story about a new hyperlocal blog, and doing so without casting the blog in a negative light.
It’s an article in the Birmingham Post (UK) about a local blog that covers Bourneville Village.
“…a bright, young, Bournville born-and-bred, journalism graduate, Hannah Waldram, has decided that the best way to show off her skills in a tough job market is to get on her bike (yes, she really does have a bike) and find some news to write about.
Hannah reckons she has spotted a gap in the market for original journalism in Bournville. A gap that she thinks could also attract local advertising that would help to support her enterprise.”
It’s a short article, not terribly deep, but like I said … nice to see a lack of antagonism from print media toward a local news blog.
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