Lost Remote: Our hyperlocal experiment and why it works
Thursday, 2 October 2008, 19:58
"Ten months later, My Ballard has exploded in popularity beyond our wildest expectations, surpassing the weekly neighborhood newspaper in monthly reach (unique users compared to the paper’s physical subscription base.) We’ve even launched similar blogs in surrounding neighborhoods with the help of friends and friends of friends, forming a news blog network covering the core of Seattle’s fastest-growing communities."
Journalism.co.uk: Hyperlocal news site outside.in confirms UK launch
Thursday, 2 October 2008, 19:54
"Hyperlocal news and information site outside.in has confirmed it will launch in the UK." Cites "The demand for personalized information on the web, and the failure of the newspaper industry to capitalize on featuring hyperlocal content".
MediaGuardian.co.uk: Trinity Mirror to launch map-based news service on regional websites
Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 17:31
"Trinity Mirror has launched a map-based news service on the Liverpool Echo website and plans to expand it across its other regional sites. The site will geo-tag news stories so users can search for news stories via postcode."
Planning applications as hyperlocal news
Monday, 22 September 2008, 07:59
The mysterious Grey Cardigan this weekend blogged about his infuriation with his local weekly’s habit of using news of local planning applications to fill the space left over above the birth, death and marriage announcements in the classified section:
[T]aken as a measure of usefulness to readers living in rural idyll, whether or not a near neighbour is about to attach a carbuncle to their cottage is probably the most important news the paper can bring us; more so, even, than the inevitable uproar about bin collections on the front page.
But because the space available for planning applications is variable, some weeks they will be perfectly legible while on others they will be down to 6pt or worse, or even published incomplete or left out altogether. I know it’s a small thing, but it annoys me that such a valuable service is treated so poorly. It might be ineptitude, it might be laziness, but it’s little things like this that endanger sales.
I hope Grey will forgive the intervention of a mere newsroom “Web Monkey (Special Projects)” like myself, but he is absolutely right.
In addition to endangering their print sales, the approach to planning applications taken by Grey’s local rag is also endangering the relevance of its website — even though its parent company has, no doubt, recently professed a “hyperlocal” news strategy of some sort.
In online journalism circles, this would be discussed as an example of what Steven Johnson calls the “Pothole Paradox“: the fact that seemingly trivial developments happening near people’s homes interest them a great deal, while similar events occurring 100 metres further down the road are mind-numbingly boring.
The trick is to find a technological solution that will solve this paradox by targeting hyperlocal information, like planning application news, to only the handful of people who care a great deal about any given instance of it. Websites like Johnson’s Outside.in and Everyblock are attempting to do this through geotagging local public sector information and local bloggers’ posts to deliver this sort of “pothole news” to people wherever they live.
Its also the sort of thing that (most) local newspapers — and their websites — don’t do particularly well.
While the Grey Cardigan’s local paper is (like many others like it) still squeezing planning application details into 6pt type, two UK websites - PlanningAlerts.com and PlanningFinder.co.uk are busy coming up with a better way of providing this information to its former readers.
Both sites work the same way: Enter your postcode, and the site will automatically send you an e-mail alert if any neighbour within a given radius proposes said monstrous carbuncle extension.
Why aren’t local papers providing clever online services like this? It’s certainly a medium more appropriate to reporting planning applications than a weekly digest in 6pt type.
Services mapping local information to readers’ location like this are a tiny part of a bigger trend to develop the geographic web and its ancillary, local search — where the relevance of information is measured by its proximity to readers’ current location or to places significant to them. The mobile phone operators understand the commercial significance of this, as does Google. Why do you think they are investing so much money in cartography?
They’re coming after the local papers that no longer offer the most efficient way of getting local information to their readers.
MediaGuardian.co.uk: Northcliffe Media to publish more websites than newspapers with launch of 45 new sites
Monday, 15 September 2008, 06:44
Northcliffe is launching the sites that subdivide some of its existing papers' sites into more local propositions. But not all of its strategy is hyperlocal - there are also regaional business sites pooling regional content…
outside.in: Radar Email Alerts. New!
Wednesday, 10 September 2008, 10:52
"[Y]ou can now opt to receive email alerts for your [Outside.in] Radar. You’ll get an email anytime someone publishes news happening within 1,000 feet of your selected location, or about any topic or favorite place you’ve added to your Radar."
Guardian.co.uk: Dave Hill’s London Blog: Calling London bloggers
Monday, 8 September 2008, 21:40
"[H]uge areas of London and Londoners' lives and times go unreported, unrecorded and unshared. Blogging offers the chance to fill the void. Part of this blog's mission is to nourish connections with bloggers already engaged in that adventure and to do its bit to encourage more Londoners to do the same."
kress.de: “Gießener Zeitung”: Lokaler als die Lokalzeitung erlaubt
Monday, 1 September 2008, 16:04
A free local paper in Germany, the Giessener Zeitung, is launching as a "participatory newspaper" on Wednesday. Users will be able to post their own stories on giessener-zeitung.de.
TampaBay.com: New Web site shines light on sales in 220 neighborhoods
Saturday, 23 August 2008, 07:32
"The [St Petersburg Times] has just launched a Web service called Neighborhood Watch in which you can pick through more than 100,000 home sales from the past four or five years. The Times' computer guru Matt Waite has done a great service by categorizing home sales, updated weekly from county appraisers offices, into 186 neighborhoods in Pinellas County and 35 neighborhoods in Pasco County."
SearchEngineWatch: HelloMetro Wins Trademark for ‘Hyperlocal’
Wednesday, 20 August 2008, 07:04
HelloMetro has won trademark approval for the term 'Hyperlocal', reports SearchEngineWatch. HelloMetro CEO in the comments: "We are not claiming stake to the term all the wonderful journalist use in bringing us "'hyperlocal News' stories."
Chicago Tribune Magazine: Cyberstar
Sunday, 17 August 2008, 08:41
A long interview with Adrian Holovaty about Everyblock. "In Chicago, we've got 14 types of information," Holovaty says. "We're creating an ordered view of chaos. That's what journalists do, right?"
New York Times: Voices From the Suburban Blogosphere
Sunday, 10 August 2008, 23:37
"Many [bloggers in the suburbs] have let their sites go untended, but a few have built serious local journalism operations, while others have developed a following on certain topics and bask in the muted limelight of Internet fame."
Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 18:03
Comments
America’s most (in)famous newspaper intern takes on the hyperlocal debate.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008, 06:09
Comments
"[T]he trouble is, for many people, local news is boring and not relevant to them. And hyper-local (aka, local-local) is even more so. This is especially so for people who don’t have strong ties to the community in which they live."
