local radio
Get Over Your TV Brand: Online is a Different Audience
This is another entry in a semi-regular series on how traditional media outlet brands can build upon original development. There are times with clients when you get on the same page within minutes. Great conversations. Birds of a feather. The conversation always turns to the station/newspaper outlet’s brand. And here is where Brand Marketers have [...]
NPR debuts local sites focused on one topic
A group of NPR-affiliated radio stations has launched “The ARGO Network” — sites that pick one area of interest in their community and focus exclusively on it. Local stations are rolling out 12 sites, supported by a $3 million grant from the Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The sites are niche verticals, with each station choosing its own topic — The Informant focused on cops, courts and communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example. Each station had to agree to hire a reporter dedicated exclusively to its ARGO site and respective Facebook and Twitter accounts. The sites are independent of the stations’ companion sites — they look almost nothing like their radio sites. Many of the stations’ official sites don’t link to their ARGO sites, which means the ARGO sites will really have to stand on their own. Interestingly, the ARGO sites are all powered by WordPress and appear in blog format.
According to a press release, The ARGO Network stations will be interconnected to highlight stories from other network sites: “One of the key goals of ARGO is to create an online ‘niche’ experience that invites an exchange of views across the community – bringing together people with different perspectives to explore ideas and solutions.”
On the social side, the sites include curated lists of stories from other sites. The sites note that their latest links are “a current mix of content filtered by our blogroll, Delicious, our Twitter list, and Daylife.” The grant that is funding the project only lasts through the 2011 fiscal year, so NPR will have to find a way to continue to support the project beyond then.
Click through below for a list of the sites, stations and areas of focus:
