#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – hyperlocal online support

Launching or developing a new hyperlocal site? Check out JournalLocal, a site designed to support hyperlocal start-ups and existing hyperlocals "to deliver community news at low cost". Tipster: Judith Townend. To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link - we will pay a fiver for the best ones published. Full story...

Tags: Hyperlocal, journal local, philip john, Technology/Internet

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Cit-j site AllVoices plans to develop hyperlocal markets

AllVoices, the US-based site that describes itself as ‘the leading source for credible citizen reporting’ has raised $9m in funding overall since its birth in 2007, with the latest $3 million from VantagePoint Venture Partners (as earlier reported by paidContent / TechCrunch).

Forthcoming plans include focusing on developing hyperlocal and global markets, COO Aki Hashmi has told Journalism.co.uk, without going into detail.

It was hard to raise capital at first, he said, “because everywhere you turned there were stories about the death of journalism, coupled with the economic downturn. But, we were lucky; we have great metrics, a model that scales and series A investors who believe in our vision.”

Hashmi attributed the site’s success – TechCrunch reports it has five million unique visitors a month – to its 275,000 reporters, “who have become great evangelist for our service,” he said. It’s the “social aspect of our service,” that helps, he said. “When people create reports they want to share their content with their network.”

“Readers are seeking an alternative voice to mainstream media and our system does a great job in optimising content so that it can be easily found by search engines.

“Keep in mind we are an open platform where anyone can get instantly published and develop a reputation based on their content, activity and report validation based on our technology.”

Tags: Aki Hashmi, COO, Entertainment/Culture, Hyperlocal, VantagePoint Venture Partners

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The Dan Slee Blog: BBC College of Journalism site is a textbook for bloggers and journalists alike

Dan Slee looks at how the BBC’s newly launched College of Journalism website can be used by journalists and by bloggers and hyperlocal sites too.

The site, which was previously available only internally at the corporation, offers several guides on legal issues, social media and handling user-generated content that could benefit individuals launching community websites and news sites, suggests Slee.

Full post at this link…

[Disclaimer: the BBC College of Journalism is sponsoring Journalism.co.uk's news:rewired event on 14 January 2010]

Tags: BBC, BBC College of Journalism, Hyperlocal

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Hyperlocal sites downplayed by MPs and mainstream – signs of progress?

Two separate posts on hyperlocal sites and independent news start-ups:

First, Patrick Smith at paidContent:UK has a round-up of yesterday’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) microlocal media forum, where Roger Green, digital managing director at Newsquest, says he’s had enough of new start-ups coming to the group asking for support and funding when they haven’t got a business plan.

Green says he’s open to ‘reasonable’ offers, but suggests that hyperlocal start-ups must have the model to take them on or work with existing local media groups.

As Smith writes:

“In short, 2010 will not be the year of hyperlocal – these are the foothills, the beginnings of localised online publishing. But the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers – and advertisers – will shift to new outlets. Whether anyone will be making a real living from it – as a mainstream publisher or a start-up – seems unlikely in the near future…”

On the Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw has a verbatim report of Tuesday’s final select committee on the future of local and regional media, in which MP Adrian Sanders dismissed hyperlocal websites (and arguably online news sites because of their status as online) as ‘tittle tattle’.

Perhaps 2010 will be the year of hyperlocal having to prove itself and change opinions of people like Sanders. Still it’s encouraging to a degree that the discussion took place at all – especially for the name-dropped Pits ‘n’ Pots site.

Tags: Hyperlocal

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#aopforum: Live coverage on microlocal media discussion

UPDATE – the liveblogs seem to have stalled – we spoke too soon, so below is a tweetstream from the event so far featuring Guardian local launch editor, Sarah Hartley; Birmingham City University senior lecturer, Paul Bradshaw; and Trinity Mirror head of multimedia, David Higgerson:

For those of us unable to attend today’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) forum on microlocal media (hyperlocal/ultralocal/local – whatever you want to call it), we’re lucky to have the liveblogging skills of journalist Caroline Beavon, who will be covering the sessions as they happen from 2:30pm.

Tags: #aopforum, David Higgerson, Hyperlocal, james thornett, local and regional media, lori cunningham, Paul Bradshaw, roger green, Sarah Hartley

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#polcasm: Policing 2.0 – citizens and social media

Now this is an agenda worth looking at: the NPIA Citizen Focus and Neighbourhood Policing Programme is holding a conference in Coventry (the journalistic place to be in October Journalism.co.uk can vouch) today on ‘Policing 2.0: the citizen and social media’. The introductory document can be found at this link. Among the attendees are hyperlocal pioneers Will Perrin (@willperrin) and Nicky Getgood (@getgood).

Follow tweets here, and Journalism.co.uk will follow up on what was said later:

Tags: Hyperlocal, nicky getgood, polcasm, policing 2.0, will perrin

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Lost Remote: Google’s new simplified ads for local businesses

Local advertising: Google has introduced new simplified ads for local businesses in the US, reports Lost Remote. Full story at this link…

Tags: Advertising, Google Ads, Hyperlocal, Lost Remote

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PDA: Talkaboutlocal’s hyperlocal ‘unconference’

Great post from Sarah Hartley rounding up the potential for hyperlocal online ventures to revive and supplement local news coverage with examples from delegates at Talk About Local’s first unconference

Full post at this link…

Tags: Hyperlocal, talk about local

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paidContent:UK: Interview and update on Northcliffe’s hyperlocal sites

Following the launch of its Local People network in July, paidContent:UK talks to Associated Northcliffe Digital’s Roland Bryan about developments with the sites and the group’s expectations for revenue.

The network’s success will be reviewed over the next 2-3 months, says Bryan, who is confident the sites will make money – a slice of the UK’s local ad market, which he values at £2.8 billion.

Despite not being set up as citizen journalism/user-generated news sites, Bryan says contributing news items has been popular with users with around 12 stories feeding back in Northcliffe’s local papers.

Full post at this link…

Tags: AND, Associated Northcliffe Digital, Hyperlocal, Northcliffe

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Lost Remote: ‘Hyperlocal’ is not everything local

A blog post that examines the buzzword ‘hyperlocal’. Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman argues that its use should be restricted to describe coverage more local than ‘local’. The Fast Company’s headline refererring to the ‘$100 billion potential of hyperlocal news’ particularly irks him.

“If you cover a city or a town, you’re a local site. Hyperlocal is a subset of local, not the catch-all buzzword for all of it (which explains the $100 billion number.) And slapping a garage sale map on a city news site does not make it hyperlocal.”

Full post at this link…

Tags: Cory Bergman, Hyperlocal, the fast company

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