I sent a snarky tweet earlier this week about my frustration with the increasing trend of journalists labeling everything local with the term “hyperlocal.” Hyperlocal is certainly more hip than “local” these days and perhaps more “bankable” as well, so that explains a lot of it. But what’s the real difference between the two?
Instead of trying to define geography — is a site that covers a city of 50,000 hyperlocal? — perhaps its best to characterize what hyperlocal sites do. Sarah Hartley takes a crack at it on her blog with 10 characteristics including author participation, community participation, independence, medium agnostic, passion and (my favorite) lack of money. (So does that disqualify Patch as hyperlocal?)
“Can these things be considered hyperlocal in nature, even if that’s not true of their scale or scope?” Hartley asks. I think she’s right, although I would tend to focus more on the “hyperlocalness” of the content and community, and less on the type of enterprise.
How would you characterize hyperlocal vs. local?
