Hyperlocal Sites are Best Done from the Bottom Up
by Matt on Aug 18, 2009 in Industry
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.
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I agree entirely. Hyperlocal media is a service that may become viable as a business in some places for some bloggers, but it is not a business first and a service second.
I do agree. It seems to me that there are few barriers entry to any hyperlocal niche. Wealthy areas might have a couple of local blogs battling it out, poorer area may have no commercial hyperlocal presence. The owner of the .com of a particular area might have a chance as their ‘brand’ is established already. There may be a commercial formula that works long term – but I suspect no one has found it yet. One thing is sure – the ad supported hyperlocal news model just won’t work, on its own (with the exception of sites established on .com place names).
I had no choice but to start at the bottom when I began. I had no backing, no advertising and no experience. Only an idea (thanks to you). Now 8 months into it, my site has legs and a purpose.
Revenue generation has now taken on a top priority. I can’t do it forever as a hobby. I’ve never made a decision up to now based on revenue. I’m sure that some of my future decisions will be based on revenue, it’s inevitable.
[...] 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. Please share [...]
[...] the concept still has somewhat of rogue, and independent, since these projects work better, or at least are more honest, when they come from the users to the media, and not from the media to the users. Even though there are experiments promoted by large media [...]
[...] at Hyperlocalblogger get’s it! Blogging from the bottom up is better: local bloggers often care more, and they know more, in the sense that they possess a lot [...]
What about hybrid intiatives that come from a large company, but operate with the speed and tenacity of startups? That’s how TribLocal is growing in Chicago. It’s owned by the Chicago Tribune, but the staff is composed of scrappy backpack journalists, and we’ve opened our doors to citizen contributors in the communities we serve. The result is a pretty great mix of traditional journalism alongside reliable citizen contributions.