Category Archives: local

The Economist: Local newspapers in peril: The town without news

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"An advertising slump has hit local newspapers much harder than national papers or other media (see chart). The growing reach of national brands like Rightmove and Auto Trader means that local papers have lost their grip on property and car advertising. Most painful has been the disappearance of job ads. Public-sector recruitment has shifted mostly to official websites in the past few years, and recession has eroded the rest. In July 1999 an edition of the Echo carried 17 pages of job advertisements. The final issue had one-fifth of one page."

currybetdotnet: ‘Local Newspaper Week’ – Advertising

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Martin Belam makes a very important point that usually isn't mentioned in discussions of online ads' effect on local newspaper advertising: "One of the traditional areas of revenue generation for the local newspaper was the 'announcements' page, where people paid to publicly announce births, deaths and marriages. This is a business model that is under a great deal of pressure from online social networking."

The Big Money: Rebel Yelp: The replacement for newspapers isn’t Craigslist; it’s local social media.

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"Much has been made of Craigslist rising up to destroy newspapers' classified-listings business, but less has been said about newspapers' own sins in falling behind the needs of their commercial advertisers. ... there has been progress in monetizing the Internet, beyond the display ads most people ignore. But that progress isn't coming from newspaper companies. It's coming from companies like Yelp. And Yelp is currently eating newspapers' lunch."

Reflections of a Newsosaur: Finally, someone makes hyperlocal pay

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Richard M. Anderson: "We've stepped back and re-focused on hyperlocal population centers of 20,000 to 50,000 people in four communities in Maine. Why? Because it is in these places, whether urban neighborhoods, suburban villages or ex-urban towns, that citizens are most closely engaged in the practice of democracy at its root level."

Online Journalism Blog: The impact of newspaper closures on independent local journalism and access to local information

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Alex Lockwood: "The problem for existing traditional newspapers is that it is not part of their business model to innovate ways for local people to engage directly with the democratic process. ... Other (and often better) ways to access information within local communities, including news and issues of local democracy, already exist. It was not a local newspaper that developed www.theyworkforyou.com"

I’ve Said Too Much: Are we buying this anymore?

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Lloyd Shepherd responds to David Simon's Guardian piece: "[It’s] perhaps instructive that London, a city many times bigger than Baltimore, has no publication with the same news values as the Baltimore Sun, and is rather served by a right-wing rag aimed at the suburbs and three freesheets with the emphasis on gossip and entertainment. Local professional journalism could die in London and, you know what? No-one would notice. Literally no-one."