NY Times Goes Hyperlocal … But Does It Change Anything?
by Matt McGee on Mar 7, 2009 in Industry
Hot on the heels of my recent post about everyone getting the hyperlocal religion, the New York Times jumped in these waters with its own experiment in hyperlocal blogging: The Local.
The Local is, for now, two blogs covering suburban areas in northern New Jersey, outside of NYC. Tina Kelley is one of the primary bloggers for The Local, and she introduced the project here, promising what looks like a heavy emphasis on news-based local blogging:
The foundation of The Local will be local news, both breaking and simmering. We intend to ferret out the kind of information that my journalism training and 20 (yikes!) years in the news business has prepared me to find. I have my whole work day, plus a press card, to devote to getting answers for you.
Reactions:
Alan Wolk took the Times to task for, among other things, trying to cover three towns with one local blog. Note that Cari and I faced a similar issue of coverage and decided to start four separate blogs. (At the moment, the link to Alan’s blog above leads to an empty page, but you can read the post from the home page still.)
Cory Bergman was one of the local bloggers that The Times consulted, and he says they ignored the advice about launching the blogs on separate, non-branded domains. Both of the new Times blogs are on sub-domains of blogs.nytimes.com, and both clearly show the Times logo.
My Reaction?
I continue to feel that almost any experiment like this that introduces the concept of local blogging to more people is good for all of us. The Times has enormous reach, and no doubt thousands of new people are now aware of what we do.
I also agree with both Alan’s and Cory’s suggestions above. I even question their decision to put The Local on a URL that has the word “marketing” in it:
Is this about community and connections, or is it about marketing? This is one reason I don’t think a Big Newspaper has what it takes to win at local blogging. It’s not about marketing — not directly. It’s not about scale and reach and access and brand name. It’s about neighbors and passion and all the mundane stuff that happens on your block that really doesn’t matter to anyone but you. It’s about people like Steve Sherron getting Hyperlocalbloggeritus. I think the successful local blogs will come from the street, not from the company boardroom.
What think you?
Comments
6 Responses to “NY Times Goes Hyperlocal … But Does It Change Anything?”
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The URL alone makes me think this will fail miserably, although it’s nice to see them linking out to other blogs from the nytimes.com domain name in their first couple of posts…hopefully the bloggers on the ground will “get it” more than the guys at the top who chose the URL.
You nailed it Matt. I thinks it’s about neighbors, neighbors, neighbors. I thinks it’s about everyday normal local people who feel like they are part of your hyperlocal community site. It’s about people who call you and tell you about a local event and ask if they can get a mention on your site and you say yes, and surprise them. It’s about the look on a store owners face who gave you good service and you tell them you are going to give them a very positive review on the front page of your hyperlocal blog. If you first start with marketing, I think you have it reversed. The Times most likely has it reversed, only time will tell. Build a community and they will come. As I have worked very hard on my site, my number one focus has been on my community. I most certainly want to market and earn revenue also at some point. My neighbors can call me and I answer. I can’t imagine my neighbors calling me and going through a 4 minute series of commands only to reach a voice mail. The Times can succeed if they engage their community. I found this article about the Times not responding to their readers and already apologizing for it. http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/were-not-ignoring-you/
Instead of writing an article about not responding, they should have spent that time responding. Like you said Matt, it’s about neighbors, passion and mundane stuff that we have to do. I guess responding to readers may be a little too mundane for the big boys.
I grew up in that region…but it has been so many years….I’m not the one to comment on the critique referencing different towns and types of people….YET….
A few miles away….and in a similarly densely populated area a reasonably long surviving hyperlocal blog and one which is oft cited….baristanet….has been seemingly doing quite well…..serving several towns and several types of demographics among those neighboring towns.
Not everyone in the area to be covered is a potential customer. Some in the area are extraordinarily town only centric…..others will have interests in the activities of several towns. I respect the reasoning of the author of the NYTIMES blog….she lives there. I also suspect those have been prime territories for hard copy NYTIMES deliveries.
In any case…good luck. More examples from which to learn.
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