“The key, in my opinion, to hyperlocal video being successful will be to offer original programming which is streamed,” he said in a recent email conversation. “Protocols and appearance must mirror network TV standards to the greatest extent possible, in order to gain the public’s acceptance. The look and feel must mirror ‘real TV.’”

Macpherson says Pasadena Now will initially feature pre-existing content. By the six-month mark, the plan is that the bulk of programming will be new content. The video channel’s home page currently advertises a weekday, 6:00 pm newscast and a 7:00 am morning talk show. Both are planned to debut in October. Macpherson says the channel will also live stream community events. All of this will be done with a team of 7-9 videographers.

For now, Pasadena Now hasn’t tried to sell advertisers on the concept, but Macpherson has a plan and says he’s “not terribly worried” about finding advertisers.

“Our objective is to create specialty audiences. For example, to work with the Pasadena Humane Society to produce a weekly ‘Pasadena Pet Channel.’ We won’t charge the PHSSPCA, but we will require that they must promote each show with an email blast to their 5,000 members. We will then sell commercials to local pet stores and vets who can be guaranteed that the show’s audience will perfectly match their target audience.”

Macpherson’s math suggests that the channel — if it sells its entire commercial inventory — would bring in more than $13,000 per week: 12 commercials per hour (30-second spots) for 16 hours each day is 192 spots per day, or 1,344 commercials per week. If Pasadena Now charges $10 per spot, that’s $13,440 per week. Is it wishful thinking that every available spot will be sold in a given week? Probably, but Macpherson is confident.

“I am extremely optimistic. Our prices will be reasonable, our costs low, and let’s face it, most people love the idea of being on TV.”

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Pasadena News Site To Launch Hyperlocal, Online TV Channel

Turns out that Google’s plan isn’t as exciting as first thought. It’s actually kinda of a yawner.

Google announced on Thursday that the company is working with the local ABC TV station to power their “UReport” citizen video submission service:

ABC7 will use YouTube Direct to collect news footage from people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Residents of the Bay Area are invited to document the news and events happening where they live, work and play, and to submit those videos via YouTube Direct to the producers at ABC7. The team at ABC7 will feature newsworthy videos on television (Channel 7 in the Bay Area), on their website (ureport.abc7news.com), and on their YouTube channel (youtube.com/abc7news).

Like … really? That’s it? Terribly anti-climactic. Citizens are already posting news videos on YouTube every day. You’d think Google could come up with something more creative than this, y’know?

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Google’s Hyperlocal Video Thing – A Yawner

• Drilling Down – Where the Bloggers Are, New York Times
• Getting election expenses from your local elections office, Help Me Investigate Blog
• Keep your local blog buzzing with amazing content, agentgenius.com
• Low-Cost Marketing/Promotion Ideas for Hyperlocal Sites, Google Groups
• Should The East Village "Blog Mafia" Really Be Out To "Stop" The New York Times’ Hyperlocal Experiment?, www.businessinsider.com
• Well This Is Something New, www.gohyperlocal.com
• How to Tell a Journalist from a Blogger, jolieodell.wordpress.com
• 10 Blogging Tips. My 1,000th Post on This Blog, timberry.bplans.com
• AOL Patch and MainStreetConnect Expand Hyper-Local News, PBS
• Survey: Half of Journalists Think Their Offline Publications Will Eventually Fold, www.socialtimes.com
• The New Online Journalists #6: Conrad Quilty-Harper, onlinejournalismblog.com
• Writers Talk About Working the Hyper-Local Beat, PBS

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Hyperlocal News Roundup

I’ve read TIME magazine’s article, Are Hyperlocals Replacing Traditional Newspapers?, a couple times now. It’s pretty good overall.

But I can’t not chuckle at the first paragraph on page two:

Most hyperlocal sites don’t have the budget for flashy graphics or searchable databases. Their content comes from observant neighbors (and local gadflies) who care about both large and small goings-on around town. Hyperlocal sites also frequently publish upbeat accounts of parades and high school sports, as well as information on which local vendors sell the best produce. Recent headlines on Record’s site noted a “mega-low” tide and an upcoming garden tour.

Hehehehe. It’s as if the writer is completely flummoxed over the possibility that people actually care about parades (BTW, have you ever attended a downbeat parade?), high school sports, local food/vendors, garden tours, and local weather conditions.

Funny.

By the way, the “Record” mentioned in that excerpt is frequent HLB commenter Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog, who makes a few appearances in TIME’s article.

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Traditional Media are Funny

Bee Editor Melanie Sill writes about Sacramento Connect, the local blog network/partnership that began with the newspaper and 18 blogs/sites, and now boasts a roster of more than 70 partners.

Launch was greeted enthusiastically. Readers who commented liked the network concept. Metrics tracking showed immediate use of the “Share” function of the toolbar, and the rich media format of the ad position got attention from some advertising customers. Ad revenue was steady, though modest, from the outset, through the toolbar and ads served on sacbee.com pages. Page views, “shares” from the toolbar, revenue and other metrics were established at the outset, and we’re pleased by progress.

The greatest lesson wasn’t about technology. It was this: Sacramento Connect’s successes and potential spring from the network effect — the activity and involvement of partners and the value of connections among them and The Bee. Partners share insights about their readers, subject matter and the local communities they cover. They ask questions about blogging and technology. They have offered praise and critiques of The Bee and sacbee.com, and have contributed content ideas.

She ends the piece by calling the paper’s partnership with local blogs a “win-win.” Nice to see a traditional media outlet not afraid to reach out and make connections with local blogs and citizen journalists.

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Sacramento Bee & Local Blogs: “Win-Win”

Meanwhile, among the links below, be sure to check out the Outside.in piece on “Information Shortfall.” That was a topic I had hoped to write about here on HLB, but have not found the time to do so.

• Announcing Two Important GrowthSpur Partnerships, Growthspur Blog
• Community blog Freehold InJersey launches a newsroom in a café, Editors Weblog
• ‘We’re helping to rebuild a profession’: Hyperlocal network founder aims for 3,000 sites, www.journalism.co.uk
• A few words from our panelists, The Hyperlocalist
• Five free SEO tools to improve your search rankings, www.reportr.net
• Pegasus News rolling out in select cities, Lost Remote
• 6 Best Practices for Multi-Author Hyperlocal Blogs (aka Bloggers We Love: Tom Bridge of WeLoveDC.com), Outside.in Blog
• Caroline’s Secrets of the Blogging Lifestyle (aka Bloggers We Love: Caroline on Crack), Outside.in Blog
• Ever notice a story on your Neighborhood News Page…, oipblog.outside.in
• GrowthSpur’s First Two Media Partners: TBD.com and Journal Register, Growthspur Blog
• Blog Networks Try One More Time to Turn Local Journalism Into Cash, gigaom.com
• Information Shortfall? Not So Fast, says Outside.in, Outside.in Blog
• On Hyperlocals, Hyper-hiring, and Hype, www.cjr.org

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Hyperlocal News Roundup

They don’t want it anymore.

Greg Sterling first mentioned in passing that MapQuest Local — the company’s excellent local start page — is going away, and that immediately made me wonder if the local blog content would be, too. I spoke today with MapQuest GM Christian Dwyer and he confirmed that it is … although MapQuest may bring it back in the future.

Background

If you’re not familiar, take a look at local.mapquest.com and you’ll see what this is about. That’s the home page for MapQuest Local, and it should default to your current location. You should see, somewhere near the top, a “Blogs in…” widget like this one from the Seattle page:

You can see that there’s an “Add Your Blog” button, and some real estate agent has wisely taken MapQuest up on that offer. I don’t know how much exposure she’s received, but this was always a pretty brain-dead simple thing to do. Even if it didn’t lead to a ton of new visitors to your hyperlocal blog, it also didn’t require a ton of effort to setup … so any exposure was a fair trade.

Current Situation

MapQuest Local will eventually go away, Dwyer tells me, and the support for accepting local blog content will go with it. He says there’s no timetable for this to happen, though; it depends on how quickly MapQuest users adopt the new MapQuest home page at new.mapquest.com. When there’s substantial adoption there, the “classic” version of MapQuest, along with MapQuest Local, will go away.

For now, MapQuest is bringing in local blog content … but, as an AOL-owned property, it’s focusing on content from AOL’s growing Patch network. Dwyer showed me Maplewood, NJ, restaurant listings in MapQuest’s system that are pulling business information from the Patch hyperlocal site covering Maplewood.

Future Possibilities

But all isn’t lost for local bloggers. Dwyer did say that MapQuest is thinking about how to capture local blog content from non-Patch sources and make it part of the main experience on the new MapQuest.com. A likely addition to come sooner than that will be local news sourced from AOL’s news property.

Bottom line: It may be many months before MapQuest Local goes away, so if you want to submit your blog to the local site covering your area … go for it. Just be aware that it won’t be around forever.

(PS – while you’re on MapQuest, do check out the new site. It’s got some pretty darn cool mapping tools that I’ve not seen on Google Maps or anywhere else.)

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

MapQuest Dropping Local Blog Support

Backfence: Lessons Learned

It was written by Mark Potts, founder of Backfence — a hyperlocal news community site that was probably ahead of its time and shut down before this article was written. He shares some real down-to-earth wisdom for anyone running and thinking about starting a hyperlocal site:

• Engage the community.
• It’s not journalism—it’s a conversation. (Actually, it’s whatever the community wants it to be.)
• Hyperlocal content is really mundane.
• Trust the audience.
• Focus on strong, well-defined communities.
• Leverage social networking.
• There is most certainly a robust hyperlocal advertising business.
• Keep costs down.
• Partner with a media company or some other distribution source.
• Hyperlocal works. You need patience and hard work to embed yourself in a community and become a vital cog in the life of that community. But when a community comes together, it’s striking.
• Hyperlocal is really hard. Don’t kid yourself. You don’t just open the doors and hit critical mass.

The article goes deeper into each of those points above, so go read it; you’ll be glad you did.

Mark Potts, by the way, is currently the CEO of GrowthSpur, a company that offers a variety of tools/services to help hyperlocal sites make money.

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Great Hyperlocal Advice…From 3 Years Ago

On a much brighter note, the SEO for Hyperlocal Blogs series will launch on Monday with the first of five articles. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, here are a half-dozen links from the past week. I particularly enjoyed reading the Jeff Jarvis piece below on his Buzz Machine blog.

• Bloggers We Love: Jill Harrison – 10 Ways to Build Community as a Hyperlocal Blogger., Outside.in Blog
• Bloggers We Love: Your Stories Are LIVE on CNN.com!, Outside.in Blog
• Dan Cote with YourLocalBlog.com, hyperlocal101.com
• Journalists’ pride getting in way of user-generated content, says Paul Bradshaw, www.journalism.co.uk
• Three things a new online journalist should know, www.crocstar.com
• Independence day for newspapers, www.buzzmachine.com

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

Hyperlocal News Roundup

The Times was one of the first major media outlets to try hyperlocal blogging/journalism, and when they first announced The Local, there was a fair amount of criticism. Some questioned the decision to try to cover three unique towns with a single blog; others questioned the decision not to launch each blog on its own domain (they were launched under the nytimes.com domain). And I pointed out the oddity of launching The Local on a URL that had the word “marketing” in it.

In its announcement, the Times talks about The Local being an “experiment” and mentions “lessons learned,” but I’m struck by this point they make about the capabilities of citizen journalists/bloggers:

From its launch on March 2, 2009, the heart of The Local has been our contributors, who taught us that communities are filled with talented, civic-minded, interested and interesting people who have much to offer in the way of local coverage. We are spreading that message far and wide, encouraging other journalists and news organizations — and other citizens — to venture down this path.

Quite a contrast to the recent editorial in my small-town newspaper, isn’t it?

I’d suggest you read more about this on Mediagazer, which has reactions from a handful of other sites, too. (thx to Nancy for the tip)

This is an article from HyperlocalBlogger, a site about the intersection of local search and blogging by Matt McGee.

New York Times Drops Its Hyperlocal Experiment