Hyperlocal News sites are surviving … and more
by Matt on Mar 23, 2009 in Industry
I’m about a month late on this one, but it’s too good to throw out due to age. It’s a story from David Westphal at the Online Journalism Review, in which he checks in with several leading hyperlocal news sites/blogs to see how things are going in the current economy.
The overall verdict on what David admits is a small sample size? They’re surviving, and some are doing pretty darn well despite the poor economy. Here’s a bit to chew on:
Local news sites come in all sizes and shapes. Some are non-profits. Some aren’t trying to live off the operation. But for those who are, some survivable wages are being earned.
Tracy Record and Patrick Sand, another husband/wife team who operate West Seattle Blog,, are getting revenue in the high five figures. Debbie Galant, co-owner of Baristanet,, earned more from the site than she did from her free-lance writing business last year. And Bob Gough, who runs Quincy News,, pockets $1,000 a week in wages from his startup that serves an Illinois community of only 40,000.
Those are respectable numbers, I think, especially for a medium that’s so new and unfamiliar to many advertisers. I’d kinda like to be a fly on the wall at some of the pitches when these local news folks are introducing their blogs & sites to local businesses. (“You do what? And get how much traffic?”)
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7 Responses to “Hyperlocal News sites are surviving … and more”
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Hey Matt – good post with some great links!
I’m over in the UK and slowly making my mark in the hyperlocal scene. My home town site is gaining readers but it’s only a small population (approx 3,300 16-65) there’s a limited audience.
Nice to read that some sites are turning a healthy profit.
Cheers
John
I’m seeing pretty much the same thing here in Kansas City. As the local print newspaper shrinks, pageviews of my local site keep climbing, as do ad CTR and CPM rates.
I love seeing the stat about Quincy, Illinois on here. I grew up in a nearly identical town about two hours away. I think this is a great example that should help quell some of the fears about “the demise of local journalism” that seem to come up on Greg Sterling’s blog. If a HyperLocal blog can succeed in Quincy, it can succeed anywhere.
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KC Guy — you’re using a wiki format for your site. How’s that working for you? Would you recommend it to others?
Matt – It has its good side and bad side. I don’t recommend it for everyone, but I sort of like it.
Good things:
I like it because I have a lot of pages that are not date related. For instance, restaurant reviews or the stuff about this particular month. I try to focus on those more than the daily posts, and the wiki lets me do that a little better.
I can easily edit the general “theme” or look and feel of the site or any particular page using regular wiki syntax.
Bad things:
Not many other people use a wiki for their website like I do, so I had to build a bit of my own infrastructure. For instance, I pretty much had to build my own calendar system. I can’t use any of the wordpress plugins that many people use.
The way I have it set up, I have exactly one post per day, and I can’t really change that if I want two or zero on one particular day.
I had to build my own RSS feed script that deals with the particular way that I do daily posts.
Comments are not really built into the system. I tacked them on with intensedebate.com. I’m not completely satisfied with the solution, and I may work to improve it in the future.
If you’d like more information about using mediawiki as a blogging platform or a CMS, don’t hesitate to contact me. thekcguy (at) gmail.com.
Just to let everyone know that we are in the middle of redesigning OurTown.com and it is not a completely free site where anyone can sign up and manage their own site about their local town. We provide the platform and the tools to help anyone who wants to blog or write about whats going on in their town or community. Their is also a business plan built in for the local editors to make a nice amount of money if they want with local advertising.
OurTownChris