The NY Times has a broad article on “hyper-local” news and blogging, focused on EveryBlock. It’s such an unwieldy subject. Lots of stuff that was discussed didn’t make it into the final piece but it’s a good survey:
If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer . . .
The sites, like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch, 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, like The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have stopped printing.
EveryBlock is subsidized by a Knight Foundation Grant and doesn’t need to make money.
The big paradox is: everybody wants this kind information but how do these sites earn a living? Subscriptions will have limited appeal. Advertising is a challenge because of small (though targeted) audiences and the “logistical” difficulty of buying all these sites.
Screenwerk 
April 13, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Greg I agree that it was a nice opening salvo on a “new” area of the internet by a major media company–a rare feat indeed.
I thought the quote they did pull from you was tremendously insightful for a general audience.
As you know, I think that in the right markets (i.e. not TOO small), these kinds of sites will have plenty of chance for success through advertising for small & local businesses if newspapers slowly die off in their hometowns. Advertising aggregation / networking will be a key hole to fill on a national level, though.
April 13, 2009 at 1:09 pm
The consumer demand is there and advertiser interest is there provided it is easy to buy and there’s reach — implies a specialized network
April 13, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Kudos for the NY Times for not tooting its own horn, as they announced a similar initiative in Feb: http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com/. Actually, the news about the news seems more interesting:: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/27/new-york-times-expected-to-launch-local-blog-network-on-monday/
As The Local is still, um, very ‘local,’ it doesn’t means the Times has figured out how to make this work–looking at the ads, one immediately realizes that NYC is not really local in the way that Springfield is. NYC is a market unto itself, so relevance (ie, inventory and advertisers) will naturally seem more of a fit, but this is in a sense a distortion. Does look like an interesting opportunity for Outside.In et al, but still doesn’t answer the underlying revenue question….
April 13, 2009 at 3:53 pm
The paradox of hyperlocal is that you need to be big to matter. Need to achieve scale of inventory (content and ads) across multiple markets to create value for advertisers.
April 13, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Yep. Agree.
April 13, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Systems will need to scale, for sure, but some tiny players will do well on their own and build very nice small local businesses without our or anybody else’s help, thank you very much. The rest need networks built for this space. Some nets will connect you with Coke and Pepsi, I suppose. Some will connect the actual content producing hyperlocal sites to businesses around the corner. Some nets will try to do both. We’re focusing on best ways to connect the honest-to-goodness content producing local news and info sites to small and local businesses. Can we bring the scale necessary to ‘be big’ in that scenario? Maybe we should tun our attention to Coke. Don’t know yet.
April 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm
I was just gonna debate Mark’s comments about scale, but I see Justin did a fine job of it. WestSeattleBlog.com is doing super nice work, making money as far as I understand it, and has no need to scale. (Justin’s Capitol Hill Seattle blog is another good example, and there are countless others.) Let’s get over this whole “it has to be big to work” thing.
April 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Justin, maybe my definition of big is different — i put you guys in the scale/platform group with your approach. not tiny in my book!
April 13, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Ok, so rereading my comment and would like to amend it.
Clearly there are great examples of individual sites that make money.
I think that “scale” means “enough stuff (inventory, pvs, content)” to fully satisfy your customer.
For Outside.in we are increasingly working with large newspaper and local media companies that need to have multiple market coverage and “scale”.
For any individual local site it takes a certain amount of content to satisfy readers and a certain threshold of audience to satisfy advertisers. There are plenty of examples of this.
And from an advertiser perspective, the bulk of dollars today are still being spent “national to local” and so they need scale of inventory (lots of ads in lots of places).
Lots of great efforts going to connecting local advertisers with local audience. And, if you believe that things will evolve in local the way they have in other media segments, you will believe that when that happens, size will matter. The absolute numbers may be smaller, but local advertisers will have lots of choices for spending $$ and efficiencies of scale will matter too.
April 13, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Matt:
How are these guys selling ads?
April 13, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Greg, it seems to me like WSB is monetizing through individual hyperlocal ad sales in Seattle. I feel like a read a Chronicle article awhile back (2 yrs ago?) that http://sf.curbed.com/ was profitable doing the same thing…this kind of 1:1 advertising market seems to exist in the bigger, web-savvier cities. I think the aggregation will come into play for the smaller towns (perhaps like Tri-Cities as Matt might tell you).
April 13, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Greg – check the About page. The wife is the journalist/editor, the husband is the ad salesman.
April 13, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Thanks
April 13, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Thanks
April 13, 2009 at 7:04 pm
[…] to see further confirmation of this in a New York Times item this morning (tip of the hat to Greg Sterling) entitled ‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers. A number of Web start-up […]
April 13, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Small, targeted audiences yield a better return on advertising because they match the hyperlocal form of close to home. By targeting these news groups aren’t wasting time getting advertisers who don’t have a vested interest in the community.
This sort of thing will sustain a news organization’s revenue model over the long run. The hard part is the foot-work of actually going out there and talking to potential advertisers. The best ad models I’ve heard of are self-sustained by the advertisers themselves. Neighborlogs does this by letting advertisers maintain their ads which takes one less thing off a busy editors’ plate.
April 13, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Johnathon
That’s 1/2 the point, but many of these local advertisers have barely heard of the Internet, so it’s exceedingly unlikely a significant base will do anything self-service–this is clearly evidenced in the update of AdWords v. IYPs. Throw in mobile and other emerging units and it becomes even harder for the SMB to decide where to put the spend besides the good ‘ol yellow book
April 13, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Ian
So that only means there’s a higher level demand for easy-to-use advertising engines, something I’m sure the tech industry could pop out. Maybe there’s too much focus on news layouts and not enough on getting advertisers engaged?
April 13, 2009 at 8:13 pm
1:1 doesn’t mean there can’t be scale in the process, btw. We’re building our ad tools with self-service capabilities. If a site owner wants to and can engage in 1:1, they can use the tools too. But advertisers are also able to come to a neighborhood news site and create their own ad. The ‘ad sales’ process is reduced in importance. You can see how it works on my site:
http://capitolhillseattle.com/ads/setup/positions
Some will say that small biz owners don’t have time or don’t want to engage directly with the ad process but we’ve seen otherwise. It’s true for some, not true for others. Advertising is like other professional services — a smart biz owner has to decide which to take on themselves and which to hand over to a pro. Every biz owner knows the minute you start working with a ‘pro,’ the cost can jump (on flipside, a pro can save you plenty of cash too).
The most successful local sites will probably mix 1:1 and self-serve and be part of some sort of network(s) that mixes in regional (maybe national) advertisers into their revenue stream. (Oh, and they’ll also create totally original news and information, foster super strong community, host events and speakers and, basically, become the hubs of the communities they cover 🙂 )
April 13, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I’d actually say it’s the opposite of a tech industry issue–what is needed is more FOTS who can explain to advertisers what the hell the interwebs are all about relative to advertising. I’m not a yellow page guy, but the mantra “businesses don’t buy advertising, they are *sold* advertising” keeps ringing in my head.
April 14, 2009 at 2:07 am
Although there are some interesting models emerging both from the traditional news organizations and from newer entrants, no one has nailed it yet. This screams opportunity for many SMB’s. One business model that I think might have some legs is not to think of it as making money WITH content (e.g. selling ads) but making money BECAUSE you do it by way of selling your services. In other words, the content you provide entices people to do business with you–the better the content, the more potetnial business. The news cycle continues, but you make money off the extended services you provide (e.g. selling real estate, shoes, insurance, etc.). I see this this as a viable business miodel for successful news organizations of tomorrow.
April 14, 2009 at 3:41 am
Love the discussion and debate – just verifies a few things: 1) there is no single model that will work in local over everything else; 2) you can do it big and you can do it small, as long as the economics work for what you’re trying to achieve; 3) small businesses are often small for a reason – a major part of that is that they are good at what they do, but need help and to be convinced of most other things.
Local certainly keeps the creative, entrepreneurial wheels turning!
April 14, 2009 at 9:43 pm
[…] to see further confirmation of this in a New York Times item this morning (tip of the hat to Greg Sterling) entitled Hyperlocal Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers. A number of Web start-up companies […]
April 15, 2009 at 7:45 pm
is this the longest comment thread for a single post?
April 15, 2009 at 8:18 pm
No, but it might be if you make a few more comments 🙂