‘Hyper-Local’ Won’t Save the Newspapers

Peter Krasilovsky posts about Boston.com’s “hyper-local” strategy. National news has been “commoditized” by news aggregators but not local news. Hyper-local is being seen by many in the newspaper industry as a competitive differentiator (along with other local community content) — and they’re right.

But it’s not enough.

Community is one component of a larger strategy that must involve search and usability improvements, as well as content/ad syndication and perhaps verticals. There must be simultaneous movement on multiple fronts.

I don’t think anybody in the newspaper industry these days would disagree.