There were some good comments on our first post about MyBallard.com, the online-only neighborhood news effort run by my wife and me. Lost Remote reader Aaron asked the most pointed questions. “It takes more than passion to build a business. It takes a truly sustainable business model,” he wrote. “How much money does the property make? How truly sustainable is that revenue stream or more pointedly, how sustainable would it be for someone other than those who started it?”
Of course, this gets to the heart of the matter, and these are the exact questions that media companies are asking as they evaluate the hyperlocal space. Here in Seattle, WestSeattleBlog.com has a full slate of SMB advertisers. CapitolHillSeattle.com and MyBallard.com are just getting started with unique approaches to advertising. The early indications are extremely positive, but like any newly emerging business model, it’s impossible to know how it will scale. There’s an element of risk, and that’s why most local media companies have remained on the sidelines.
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Read the full post October 1st, 2008
The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Washington is ditching the Associated Press. The service no longer meets the paper’s needs according to editor Steven A. Smith. AP chairman and MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton says the AP is the “best bargain I know,” and said “AP has become the whipping boy for an angry bunch of editors who want to blame somebody for their woes.”
Smith fought back. First he said that the AP is not his “whipping boy,” and said he doesn’t blame the AP for the situation his - and many - paper faces. Then he destroys the AP: ” I mourn the loss of strong regional AP reporting;” “AP at the rates charged for content that does not meet my readers’ needs means laying off more local staff;” “there are better and cheaper alternatives to the AP;” “in Singleton’s world, AP is a bargain. It’s far cheaper to fill your papers with AP copy than local reporting.”
Wow. For the record, the Spokesman-Review has a Boise reporter who provides some of the best coverage of state issues - and she works for a paper based far from the Idaho capital in another state. Smith walks the walk when he says local is important - and I’d love to have a paper that wasn’t filled with AP copy in my town each day.
September 30th, 2008
Soon after we moved to the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard last year, my wife Kate reserved MyBallard.com after we noticed there was no daily news source dedicated to the community of 35,000. We rolled out a standard Wordpress blog and started writing about news in the neighborhood. We added an events calendar, restaurant guide and a forum, too.
Ten months later, My Ballard has exploded in popularity beyond our wildest expectations, surpassing the weekly neighborhood newspaper in monthly reach (unique users compared to the paper’s physical subscription base.) We’ve even launched similar blogs in surrounding neighborhoods with the help of friends and friends of friends, forming a news blog network covering the core of Seattle’s fastest-growing communities.
It was all an experiment, really. We fashioned My Ballard after WestSeattleBlog.com, the neighborhood news site we mention frequently here on Lost Remote. We don’t cover nearly as much news as WSB, but the appetite for neighborhood news has been tremendous. Newspapers are covering less, and TV stations only storm into a neighborhood when there’s breaking news or a quirky story with regional interest.
We receive so many email tips, comments and forum posts, we’re able to provide a steady stream of original stories. We’re also able to beat the traditional media on larger Ballard stories, thanks to our active readers. In effect, we don’t “cover” the neighborhood, we “moderate” it. Users are our eyes and ears, and we provide a layer of journalism over the top, confirming stories before we post them.
We’re not selling any advertising (coming soon), but the West Seattle Blog has proven there’s money to be made. They have a full-time sales effort and 30 active advertisers. They’re not getting rich, but it shows the model works and has real momentum behind it.
I have so much to share about our experiences with our network of blogs — as well as the explosion of neighborhood blogging here in Seattle, the new epicenter of hyperlocal. I’ll be writing a series of posts on Lost Remote in the weeks to come, so stay tuned.
September 23rd, 2008
Back in July, we wrote about the launch of Localism, a hyperlocal site that leverages real estate agents to provide information and news coverage on a neighborhood level. We were skeptical about the ability for real estate agents to provide real news coverage, but the site has positioned itself as a “Neighborpedia,” not a neighborhood news site per se. It has also launched a fascinating sponsorship model. Localism is an outgrowth of ActiveRain, a massive real estate community, and the most active contributors on ActiveRain were allowed first crack at buying neighborhood level sponsorships for $9 a month. Only one agent per neighborhood, but the self-service interface made it easy for agents to scoop up multiple neighborhoods at a time. Then other agents were allowed to follow on a strict schedule, resulting in a “land grab” of sorts. While many neighborhoods are still unsponsored, this approach taps into the economic concept of scarcity — something you don’t see very often in the long tail world of the internet. Scarcity creates demand, generates excitement and pushes up pricing (although in this case, the pricing is flat. For now.) It also keeps ad clutter to a minimum. Of course, time will tell if Localism builds a big enough audience to keep agents buying.
September 9th, 2008
The popular New York real estate blog Curbed.com (which is also known for its sister blogs, Eater.com and Racked.com), has launched a real estate listings section — another example of an online media company expanding its reach into local dollars. “We’ve long catered to developers with thousands of dollars to spend on advertising in ad buys for years, but never had a way to service brokers who wanted to spend, say, $100 or $500 with us,” said Curbed founder and president Lockhart Steele in an email to Lost Remote. Curbed’s new marketplace aims to differentiate itself with a highly-targeted audience and high-quality listings. “The coolest thing we’re doing is probably the Quicklisting, which drops a Facebook Newsfeed-style ad right into the blog flow of Curbed,” Steele added, explaining that Quicklistings have been driving advertisers a surprising amount of traffic.
September 8th, 2008
Even MTV is pushing into the local arena. Through a partnership with Zvents, mtvU has rolled out out 25 sites that are essentially city guides for local colleges. Called the Campus Daily Guide, they feature events, restaurant and bar reviews, local search and campus resources. They’ve also tapped into content from the College Media Network — the college newspaper network MTV recently acquired — as well as RatemyProfessor.com, another MTV property. The idea is to bring in both national and local advertisers. “Brands like a Domino’s Pizza might want to advertise in a context that is truly local,” said mtvU’s general manager Steven Friedman. There are 25 sites to start with plans to launch 25 more. Here’s University of Washington…
I think this is a terrific idea — in fact, the best idea I’ve seen from MTV in years — and it makes perfect sense given mtvU’s touchpoints with the college community. The site is well-designed, Zvents is a solid events source, mtvU has plenty of great promotion avenues (college papers and mtvU) and local campus representatives will help with the site at each college. And there are plenty of national and local businesses who want to advertise to college students in their natural habitat.
August 26th, 2008
According to numbers released by Quantcast, CitySquares.com is the fastest-growing search site on the web. Of course, CitySquares.com is starting from a small base — it expanded in June from the Boston area to New York and all of New England — and that makes up the 1500% percent traffic jump. But there’s no denying the site has tremendous potential. (In fact, Clickz once said, “CitySquares may well be the future of local online advertising.”)
In its most basic form, CitySquares is a local search site and business directory. While city guide sites like CitySearch focus on restaurants and the like, CitySquares also lists plumbers, painters and nail salons — all with user reviews. The site’s advertising products are extensive: basic listings are free, and deluxe listings feature coupons, photo galleries and “enhanced search engine optimization” to move the listing up Google and Yahoo’s organic results. Businesses can set up their own email distribution lists via a relationship with Constant Contact. They can also buy advertorial video clips, powered by TurnHere. One-click-print coupons appear on the main city and neighborhood pages. And, of course, there are traditional display ads.
There’s something to be said about how CitySquares started: in a single neighborhood back in 2005. Now three years later, it’s expanded over New York and New England — rather slow, organic expansion given today’s internet speed. But that approach, which ensures neighborhoods are well-represented before expanding, appears to be a critical success factor.
August 21st, 2008
There are some interesting takeaways from this column written by Topix CEO Chris Tolles. (Topix is a local news aggregator and community that’s focused on regions, cities and neighborhoods.) First, Tolles does some rough math:
There are about 1,400 daily newspapers and 7,000 television and radio stations in the U.S., and back-of-the-envelope math shows that they each produce about three to six stories per day, or about 22,000 local stories for the entire U.S.
If you ask me, he’s severely underestimating the number of local stories. Nevertheless, he says there’s a “vacuum” of local news. Which, if you look at it at a neighborhood level, you could argue he’s right.
“The internet’s solution to the dearth of local news coverage is the same as it has been with other problems of scale: let the people build it themselves…. In looking at sites like MetroBlogs, Gothamist publications, Outside.in, NowPublic, Baristanet and Topix (the site that I run), it becomes apparent that a massive amount of attention and investment has been paid to giving people a platform for engagement with the places they live.”
Tolles has a good point here, but I would interpret it differently: local media has an opportunity to leverage their online audiences to enable and aggregate more “crowd-powered” local content, especially at the neighborhood level. If you don’t, the national pure plays will beat you to it.
August 18th, 2008
With LR’s new focus, I wanted to lay out the landscape in “the battle for local” - and look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Local TV
In most markets, four to eight television stations compete for on-air revenue. They traditionally knew who their competitors were and focused on on big advertisers like car dealers and furniture stores. While their core business is still fairly healthy, dark clouds loom as the economy lags, viewership erodes and local ad dollars become increasingly competitive. Online, TV stations aren’t known for being very innovative. Stations are running their sites much like they did eight to ten years ago: text news, video, weather and traffic — a direct reflection of what they cover on the air but with a greater emphasis on around-the-clock breaking news.
Local Newspapers
Local newspapers used to subsidize their news gathering not with the ads that ran next to the news stories - but the small text ads in the back of the paper known as classifieds. Now that model is nearly dead, and newspapers are having to find new ways to fund the paper while trying to get agressive online. On the print side a vicious cycle is in place: fewer ads leads to less content — which leads to fewer ads and so on. Newspapers are becoming labs of online experimentation. They usually have much bigger staffs than TV stations and are willing to leverage the body count to try new things. Some of those efforts are working, but newspapers are far from finding the silver bullet on the online side, and as a consequence are rapidly shrinking.
Local Radio
Local radio continues to reach a large number of folks in a place few other media companies do: the car. Morning drive is still a cash cow for local radio folks. But satellite radio, iPods and in-car navigation (with built-in traffic reports) are beginning to threaten that dominance. With Wi-Fi and other Internet sources becoming more plentiful, IP-based devices could become common-place in cars, splitting open the number of choices in your vehicle. As a general rule, radio stations don’t do much online. Some info about its personalities, maybe an audio stream and a blog - but nothing to hang your hat (or ad dollars) on.
“GYM” Google/Yahoo/Microsoft et al
By rounding up lots of small advertisers with small niches, Google and its ilk are taking a huge portion of the local pie — mostly without local boots on the ground. Google does it without generating much of its own content, and offers automated tools to help advertisers mount a very effective ad campaign in a simple way. These companies spend great amounts on R&D and are always evolving and finding new ways to get their hand in the local pocket. Of course, it’s all fueled by search: increasingly the most popular way people research local products and services.
Craigslist and paid classifieds
The classified site takes its share of local revenue not by pocketing it, but through price desctruction. The minimally-staffed free classifieds sensation has decimated the newspaper industry, and only charges for ads in a few markets. As the site continues to grow larger and push into more markets, it will continue to put the squeeze on the print industry’s cash cow. Despite what you read, it isn’t all sunshine and roses. Craigslist is often in the news because its freewheeling ways breed illegal activities. Everything from prostitution to theft and more started from an ad on Craigslist, and some are starting to see it as a seedy part of the Internet. This could threaten dominance if someone comes in with a way to clean up the “junk” so to speak. Meanwhile, the battle continues among paid classifieds, with many newspapers teaming with Yahoo’s Hot Jobs and sites like Zillow making a real run at real estate from a unique angle.
Pure play locals
Small sites like the West Seattle Blog or big efforts like Everyblock hope to become the hub of local information and activity in ZIP code size ares or smaller. They threaten to do a better job covering areas than the local paper or TV station ever will, and could unite hyperlocal advertisers with users in the area. These sites give advertisers a choice beyond direct mail to target a small area, and could continue to draw ad dollars away at larger and larger rates. The sites often do this with no or small staffs, relying on the local community and public sources to provide content. There are also dozens of local niche sites, like Metblogs and Daily Candy, that also capture local eyeballs and ad dollars.
City guides
City guides like CitySearch have been around for a decade or so, but for the most part haven’t had a huge impact. This could change if the hyperlocal revolution we’ve been talking about comes to pass. If they aggressively aggregate into smaller and smaller (even neighborhood size) areas — and gain traction selling local video — they could begin to draw away traditional ad dollars. Yelp, meanwhile, is growing very quickly in reach and performs very well in many strategic search keywords.
Yellow pages and other directories
Everytime one of these stacks of paper-waste lands on my doorstep, I get annoyed. I lug the dumb thing to the recycle bin, and marvel at how strange it is that I get four or five a year. The Yellow Pages publishers have done a nice job of convincing advertisers that they must be in every book to reach the market. Of course, most folks now get their phone information online or on a mobile device. YP publishers are beginning to get aggressive online, capturing strategic search keywords and leveraging their large local sales forces to sell both print and web products. And directories like Local.com and Angie’s List are making progress, as well.
Alt weeklies and local magazines
Traditionally weak on the web, alternative weeklies are showing some signs of life in many markets, especially in the local music niche. The Stranger’s “Slog” in Seattle, for example, is the market’s most popular blog. Local magazines are beginning to realize their “best of” features extend naturally to the web as local online directories. While many magazines are rich in many advertising segments in print — such as travel and condos — they’re not converting those advertisers very well to the web (and may not want to, given the fact local magazines are less impacted by the internet than other print forms of media).
Outdoor
Billboards are undergoing a digital revolution of their own - but it has little to do with the Internet. Old paper signs are increasingly being replaced with giant TV screens that can be used to display multiple messages to the cars and pedestrians zooming below. The messages can be day-parted and place much more quickly, often at a smaller cost than buying the old paper style board. Plus, advertisers can change their message at a fraction of the cost. As long as people venture outside, billboards will likely to continue to be a force in the local advertising market.
August 17th, 2008
As you may know, the billionaire owner of the SF Examiner, Philip Anschutz, is pushing into local markets with Examiner.com — online newspapers that mix local aggregation with original columns and community features. Right now there are Examiner.com’s in 57 cities — see Seattle’s here — with plans to delve even deeper into larger neighborhoods. In your city, you may notice a local blogger or two that’s contributing content. Here’s the compensation model gleaned from a recent email from Examiner.com to a local blogger: Writers, called “Examiners,” are paid as independent contractors. The base rate is $2.50 per 1,000 pageviews, but there will be incentives/awards that may increase a writer’s pay. Payouts occur monthly if the total compensation is $50 or more.
Part of the pitch is the ability for bloggers to promote themselves on Examiner.com. “It’s free advertising for you and a guaranteed bump in your page views and readership,” explains the email. “This is going to be a big hit as we continue to grow. We want to give people a chance to be on board from the start and grab a share of our audience and find more readers.” Examiner.com says its pageviews have reached 6 million a month and growing.
August 16th, 2008
Over the years, Gannett has built out 60 or so local niche sites dedicated to moms. And now the media company is pulling them together into a network called MomsLikeMe.com, which just launched this week. So for example, RockyMountainMoms.com now redirects to Denver.MomsLikeMe.com, and other sites, like CincyMoms.com, will soon follow. The effort will help streamline Gannett’s national advertising efforts, but the big upside here is MomsLikeMe.com has launched nationally, even in markets where it doesn’t own a newspaper or TV property. So for example, there’s New York, San Francisco and Seattle. All the big markets are represented, as well as most medium-sized markets as well. Very smart. Some media companies have attempted to launch a nationally-branded site by partnering with other media companies in its unrepresented markets, but the patchwork approach has shown little traction. Gannett’s national push all on its own is one of the most promising local online media efforts I’ve seen to date.
Of course, this niche is rather competitive, so Gannett will have plenty of work to do, especially in those new markets where it doesn’t own a media property.
Adds justme in comments: “The problem with this is that these sites are nothing but discussion forums. They don’t provide any content — events, stories about issues, links to recipes etc — that a better mom-oriented site like Whoa Momma from tampabay.com offers. Gannett may have more locations, but when you get there you don’t have much to see.”
Says dcdave in comments: “The tampabay.com approach is the old ‘umbrella/mothership’ thought process. Instead of giving the site it’s own URL and it’s own style, it’s simply an unwieldy subdomain of the larger site, designed exactly the same way as all of their other blogs without much attention to demographics other than the subject matter. The Gannett approach might be lacking substance, but that’s something they can make up for. The broader strategy of making the sites separate niche products, vs. sections on a hub site makes a lot more sense.”
August 15th, 2008
In a brave display of transparency, The Denver Post publishes how accurate their forecast is each day in their Weather-O-Meter. But they don’t stop there, they measure the accuracy of every Denver forecaster. Even the Weather Channel and National Weather Service are compared. According to the site, last week The Denver Post was the most accurate, while the Weather Channel was the least accurate. And it doesn’t seem to be biased, as it shows yesterday the paper was ranked #6 for accuracy (while Weather Channel was #9). This is a unique way to aggregate all the local forecasts in one place, and provide more evidence to their users that weather.com isn’t really the best source for local weather.
August 13th, 2008
Huffington Post Chicago is now live (but not yet linked from the main Huffington Post). The only paid employee is Ben Goldberger, 25, a former Chicago Sun-Times staffer, who scours local news sites for links. Ad sales will be handled nationally by Huff Post. And contributors submit “featured posts” for free. As we reported a couple months ago, the plan is to launch a local Huff Post in all major markets.
I’ve always liked the idea of Huffington Post-like sites in major regions or markets (in fact, years ago I suggested a Drudge Report for California.) It’s interesting to note that media companies are reluctant to go down the aggregation road largely because linking the competition is so taboo — not to mention it takes precious resources away from original content. But I also like how Huff Post marries free original content — opinionated “featured posts” — to aggregation. Opinion also presents a philosophical hurdle for news organizations. But separately branded, why not?
August 13th, 2008
