The Homa Files

Excerpted from New York Times, “‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers”, by Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone, April 13, 2009

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A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news sites that let people zoom in on what is happening closest to them, often without involving traditional journalists.

The sites collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources. They might let a visitor know about an arrest a block away, the sale of a home down the street and reviews of nearby restaurants.

Internet companies have been trying to develop such sites for more than a decade, in part as a way to lure local advertisers to the Web. But the notion of customized news has taken on greater urgency as some newspapers have stopped printing and with the news business being in “a difficult time period right now, between what was and what will be.”

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Of course, like traditional media, the hyperlocal sites have to find a way to bring in sufficient revenue to support their business. And so far, they have had only limited success selling ads. 

One problem is that the number of readers for each neighborhood-focused news page is inherently small. “Advertisers want that kind of targeting, but they also want to reach more people, so there’s a paradox.”

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One of the most ambitious hyperlocal sites is EveryBlock, which has created sites for 11 American cities, including New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.

It fills those sites with links to news articles and posts from local bloggers, along with data feeds from city governments, with crime reports, restaurant inspections, and notices of road construction and film shoots.

That raises the question of what these hyperlocal sites will do if newspapers, a main source of credible information, go out of business. “They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear.”

But many hyperlocal entrepreneurs say they are counting on a proliferation of blogs and small local journalism start-ups to keep providing content.

Edit by DAF

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Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?ref=media&pagewanted=print

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This entry was posted on May 14, 2009 at 7:13 am and is filed under Digital Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.