Category Archives: Hyperlocal

Manager of Washington startup TBD.com leaves amid ‘stylistic differences’

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At the end of last week it was revealed that the general manager of Washington startup news site TBD.com, Jim Brady, had resigned.

In an internal memo (published by FishbowlDC), TBD publisher Robert Allbritton says Brady decided to move on following “stylistic differences”.

In his positions at AOL, Washingtonpost.com, and now at TBD, Jim has proven himself to be a true visionary and a champion of innovation in the world of online journalism.  The results of his expertise are self-evident: our site is being studied and praised throughout the community of people studying the future of media.

As we talked about the next phase of our growth, it seemed clear to Jim and I both that we had some stylistic differences. So with mutual respect—and in my case a lot of appreciation for the work he has done across the company for the past year—we decided to shake hands and go in different directions.

Hatip: Lost Remote

E&P: Washington Post survey suggests hyperlocal moves are afoot

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A survey being circulated by the Washington Post – which includes questions such as “Please rate your level of interest in accessing a community-news oriented website from your mobile device” – seems to indicate that the paper has hyperlocal on the brain, reports Editor & Publisher:

Judging from the questions, these new hyperlocal sites would:

*Feature voices from the community;

*Include reporting from Washington Post reporters;

*Go hard on mobile;

*Offer all kinds of functionality enabling people to network with each other, post all kinds of photos, and so on.

Full story at this link…

The New York Times has several ventures into hyperlocal/community news under its belt, having worked with local NYU students on creating hyperlocal blogs for the Brooklyn and New Jersey last year and launched a new blog for the East Village is September.

Boston University and Boston Globe partner on Your Town hyperlocal sites

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Boston University has formed a partnership with the Boston Globe which will allow students to cover local news for Boston.com’s Your Town hyperlocal wesbites, according to a report on the Market Watch blog.

Students will carry out the work as part of their course at the university’s College of Communciation, with university professors working with Globe editors to coordinate the project.

David Dahl, the Globe’s regional editor said, “We’re delighted with this collaboration. It provides Your Town readers with even more local coverage and enriches the educational experience of BU’s students”.

The Your Town sites feature stories by their own correspondents, as well as links to area blogs, Globe stories, and user-generated content. Lucky Jet game on the site – an exciting adventure for all fans of the gambling world. Simple and clear, but interesting game. You can play it as a demo version, as well as for money. Players note that the probability of winning real money is high.

The project was launched in 2009 and now has 43 sites covering areas in and around Boston.

Journalism students at the university also write daily news coverage for newspapers in Massachusetts and New England through the department’s Washington and Statehouse programs.

Talk About Local: Personal v professional, the hyperlocal balancing act

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Nicky Getgood, who runs hyperlocal site Digbeth is Good, discusses the balancing act between personal passion behind a site and readers’ expectations of a professional service:

[W]hen a person creates a community resource through a personal passion, which then becomes something many people rely upon and have expectations of but is still down to one person to sustain voluntarily. What happens if that person finds they can no longer maintain the website?

Discussions about this at the recent HyperLocal GovCamp West Midlands raised the idea for hyperlocal sites to charge local businesses who want notices or listings put up more quickly or to a deadline – part of a premium model for hyperlocal websites?

Full post on Talk About Local at this link…

NearSay offers ‘neighbourhood news’ to New York

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NearSay, a new local and hyperlocal news site, has been launched in Manhattan according to a report by Lost Remote.

The site reportedly uses both aggregated information chosen by editors as well as stories currently filed by around 80 contributors.

According to NearSay’s website, its mission is “high quality neighbourhood news”:

We:

  • Let you personalise the news.  You tell us what neighborhoods and topics you care about;
  • Manage a veteran newsroom that covers the stories from your favorite publications, so there is less clutter in your inbox;
  • Curate every story on the site for quality and feature just the best of NearSay;
  • Show you the influential local voices who tell the inside scoop of what’s happening.

Lost Remote says it believes the site will branch out beyond Manhatten soon.

Knight Foundation gives $3.14m to local media projects

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Niche and hyperlocal news sites in the US are to receive $3.14 million in funding from the Knight Foundation as part of its Community Information Challenge.

The money will be divided up into grants aimed at encouraging greater investment in media-related projects by community foundations, whose funding is matched by Knight.

Receivers of the grants this year will include the Alaska Community Foundation for the Alaska Public Telecommunications project which hosts hyperlocal blogs and virtual community ‘think-tanks’ on issues such as arts and culture; ACCESS News, a website for the deaf community and West Anniston Today in Alabama, which reports on industrial pollution in that area.

The full list of community foundations and supported projects can be found here.

Hatip: paidCotent

New York Times and NYU launch new East Village hyperlocal blog

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The New York Times and New York University have jointly launched a new hyperlocal blog today covering the East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan.

According to a release from NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, The Local: East Village is aiming for 50 per cent of its content to be produced by members of the neighbourhood’s community. Readers will be able to submit content to the site through its Virtual Assignment Desk, which allows readers to send in stories, photographs, multimedia, and news tips.

Some content will be paid for, says NYU professor Jay Rosen, who is acting as an advisor to the project, but the site will also rely on voluntary contributions.

Most of the site’s content will be provided by students on The Hyperlocal Newsroom, a new course in NYU’s Reporting New York program.

Editor of the site is Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute professor and former Times reporter Richard G. Jones, who calls the site “a significant step forward in pro-am journalism collaborations”. He will work alongside Times deputy metro editor Mary Ann Giordano.

The Times launched ‘The Local’ project last year with two New York hyperlocal blogs covering Brooklyn and New Jersey, both run in conjunction with City University of New York (CUNY). In July this year the newspaper passed control of the New Jersey site to Barstanet.com.

More from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at this link.

More on the The Local: East Village and NYU’s Hyperlocal Newsroom Summer School in the video below.

OJR: How nationally-owned local publishers can get ahead

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The challenges facing locally and nationally owned publications are the subject of a post on the Online Journalism Review website by Robert Niles, who follows up on a previous post in which he questions the future of AOL’s hyperlocal start-up Patch.com and other national chains.

Niles ha previously claimed that locally-owned publications today have cost advantages which outweigh the “economies of scale” of national chains of local publishers. But pushed by a reader to come up with advantages for national chains which could make them more profitable, he puts forward two ideas as a starting point for further debate, shown in summary below.

National training

A smart, focused national training program could help reduce the time it takes a local editor to produce an engaging website. Local website publishers who don’t have access to such training will take longer to get up to speed.

Search engine optimization

A national chain can give its local publishers an advantage by arranging for aggressive cross-linking among its sites. That creates a potentially huge number of inbound links, helping push the chain’s sites ahead of its local competitors. In addition, by building a national brand for local news, the chain might be able to elicit more in-bound links to its sites from outside the network.

See his full post here…

Hyperlocal – what does it mean?

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Not long ago it was the buzzword of the media and news industry – but what does ‘hyperlocal’ really mean today?

It’s a question Guardian Local editor Sarah Hartley has sought answer on her blog, putting forward ten characteristics which represent the meaning of the phrase as it evolves.

First, she discusses the growing range of the term, which has developed from a postcode-focused news patch to now being used to describe focused subject matter, story treatment, or even geographical areas which are actually large in size. “Can these things be considered hyperlocal in nature?”, she asks. TikTok Follower Kaufen | günstig ab 2,99 € per PayPal

Here is a summary of the main characteristics Hartley associates with the term:

  • Participation from the author.
  • Opinion blended with facts.
  • Participation from the community.
  • Small is big. Scale is not important, impact is.
  • Medium agnostic. Use of different platforms.
  • Obsessiveness. Sticking with a story.
  • Independence.
  • Link lovers.
  • Passion.
  • Lack of money.

Readers are invited to comment on her blog on whether it is time to find an alternative to the term ‘hyperlocal’ or whether it is well used enough to keep.

See her full post at this link…

New US hyperlocal Twitter network using zip codes to aggregate news

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A new Twitter network could be about to change the face of local news gathering.

Twitzip is designed to share ‘hyperlocal’ news based on users’ zip codes. American creators Nathan Heinrich and Aaron Donsbach created accounts for nearly all of the zip codes in the US back in 2008 with the idea of building a network that would harness the knowledge of local residents and allow them to share news by tweeting from an account for their area.

As we analyzed Twitter’s potential, we realized the one location-based handle that everyone knows is their zip or postal code. We thought it would be a waste if Twitter zip code handles or ‘TwitZips’ were owned by tens of thousands of different people with tens of thousands of different uses. Furthermore, we thought TwitZips might be valuable for networking local citizens together. This was the start of TwitZip.

According to a statement on the network’s website, the service is currently focused on hyperlocal news, blogs, and crime, but will soon integrate weather and government alerts.

If successful, TwitZip could prove a happy hunting ground for local journalists tracking breaking news.

For more details, visit www.twitzip.com and www.hyperlocalblogger.com