Hyperlocal effort LoudounExtra.com ‘a flop’
Cory Bergman June 4th, 2008
The Washington Post’s big inaugural hyperlocal news effort, which began with a single site, LoudounExtra.com, is a “flop,” reports the Wall Street Journal. While I think that judgment is a little harsh, the site is not performing very well, and chief architect Rob Curley and his team left Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive last month to go work for the Las Vegas Sun.
The article is a must-read study of hyperlocal (neighborhood-focused) news, an area of tremendous potential that nobody has really figured out yet. Three of the lessons learned are 1) WashingtonPost.com didn’t integrate or even link LoudounExtra.com, even on Loudoun county stories and 2) Curley admits his team didn’t spend enough time in the community learning about its uniquenesses and promoting the site’s benefits and 3) Loudoun county is a large area with cities that don’t think of themselves as related. The Post says it’s still planning to move ahead with the next community (FairfaxExtra.com), but it may decide to fold the hyperlocal sites into their respective community sections on WashingtonPost.com.
Meanwhile, Curley’s new venture in Las Vegas is with the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Weekly and “a broadcast property.” Hmmm. “Curley has a budget to hire 40+ people for the Vegas ventures,” reports the Kelsey Group, and he says he has ambitions with community video. Stay tuned…
9 Comments Add your own
1. tdc | June 4th, 2008 at 8:35 am
hyperlocal is so damn far down the road for most folks-
many (most, but i want to be nice today as our red wings will be hoisting the cup tonight) haven’t even begun a true LOCAL effort yet. just check out how many are still trying their hands at being a world portal w/ a few repurposed local stories tossed in (after they air on tv, of course).
and what’s with this urge to hire first and build later?
2. tdc | June 4th, 2008 at 8:40 am
btw- isn’t loudoun and fairfax where backfence.com took arrows?
3. dave | June 4th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Curley has had other “success” stories, i.e. when he was in Lawrence, or in Naples, with huge unjustified budgets and zero ROI. You can do tons of stuff with a big pile of money, but can you do it right when you don’t have the same resources?
@tdc, you’re totally right, I think local efforts are just truly beginning. Most local sites are moving away from the portal approach though. I’d like to see a local news site without any aspirations to deliver national or world news. Same with local tv news: cut out the national junk, because you’re no longer relevant on that stage.
4. Charles | June 4th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I think what LoudounExtra’s main problem is that the site itself it is about two steps away from looking like a classy spam site. The sharp colors, generic headshots in the banner, slick looking text columns with nothing jumping out at you. It minus well be saying “100$ Free Internet Startups!” in place of every link.
5. Rocker | June 4th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Only one problem with staying away from Nat/Int’l news. With dropping network numbers, if we don’t give it to ‘em the other guy will. I can say that, like tdc, I’m a DTW guy. I have seen enough ‘car crashes into party store’ stories to last a lifetime.
6. Mark Josephson | June 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I give a lot of credit to the WaPo for realizing that hyperlocal is worth investing in.
But not sure the loudon model goes far enough…does it solve some of the underlying issues facing traditional media companies (increasing costs of content creation + increased consumer and advertiser demand for personalized/hyper targeting)?
@tdc and @dave, agree 100%. At Outside.in, we focus on the interesction of local and personal. This means that we are different for every user. Every user defines their world…their “local” as different.
7. TR | June 4th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
“Live” from the placeblogger Journalism That Matters conference in Minnesota (where this WSJ article already has been mentioned), we chime in to note: Old media building sites to say hey! here’s our neighborhood site! come post stuff here! just aren’t the model that’s going to work. Aggregation (like outside.in and the Citizen Rain site that Cory started at the Belo op here in Seattle) can tie you to community voices if you want to do it that way, but if people really want to post stuff, they’re going to either start their own sites or look for true organically grown local places where they feel safe and welcome and appreciated - and also informed, by both the site operator(s) AND their neighbors who share in the discussion and information distribution.
8. tdc | June 4th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
this is miles off-topic (so what else is new), but i thought it might make folks think about involving the “audience”.
evidently a detroit radio station picked up on the fact that a pittsburgh tv station was running a web poll asking if the penguins being down 3-2 could still take the cup.
there were about 1000 votes BEFORE that from the fine folks in pittsburgh (and i imagine the percentage FOR was about 100%). that was yesterday.
when said detroit station sent red wing fan-atics over there to abush their rivals the number of votes shot up to around 20,000.
seems even the pittsburgh folks came out in defense of their beloved penns as that side of the vote has picked up steam throughout the day.
for years i have wondered why those running web efforts don’t do this sort of fun stuff every weekend with whatever sport is then in season.
that’s alot of visitors that now know about a certain tv station in pittsburgh.
enjoy your summer off, penguins fans!
9. chw | June 4th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
The fact that Curley is coming to Las Vegas will be interesting. There is a broadcast site that is quietly planning a new twist on the hyperlocal front - a site, that by the way pulls healthy margins.
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed