Feb 24, 2011

Where hyperlocal news meets the “like” button

On Tuesday evening, I received a message via Facebook from Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, a friend and fellow hyperlocalist from Maryland. It was the kind of message that made me wince, smile and then slap my knee at her ingenuity.

First, the wince. Cotte Griffiths announced that she and her business partner, Brad Rourke, were pulling the plug on their Rockville (Md) Central news website. After three and a half years in publication, both had grown tired of juggling content creation and advertising sales, she told me. Furthermore, competition from Patch, another indie website, the local print publication and the municipal government’s site made their reporting redundant, Rourke blogged.

Then came the smile. Rockville Central would live on as a news source through its Facebook page, where their fans were already gabbing about current events. With a combination of news aggregation and original reporting, “we can create a true community hub,” Cotte Griffiths wrote.

And then the knee slap. Even though Cotte Griffiths and Rourke won’t generate advertising revenue from their Facebook page, they can establish themselves as social-media experts with tabs on the local vibe. That can translate into serious revenue from social-media consulting, building an online presence for small businesses, nonprofit groups and even government agencies.

Then another knee slap. Facebook is already a mobile-friendly service, whether one uses its mobile website or a native (platform-specific) app. That gives the Rockville Central fan page greater reach without having to “mobilize” its own website or develop an expensive app. The technical witchcraft has already been done for them.

And still another knee slap. Cotte Griffiths and Rourke can take their social-media savvy onto Twitter, where they can generate revenue from sponsored tweets. Also, they can use the multimedia-heavy publishing platform Tumblr to build a portfolio of marketable stock photos or to publish original audio or video content, though Tumblr’s community of users is still small relative to Facebook and Twitter.

By the time I reached the closing salutations of Cotte Griffiths’ message, my knee was swollen from the slapping and I was swearing up a storm. (“Fucking genius!” came up a lot.) Sure, they’d have to stay ahead of the social-media curve in case some future service turns Facebook into MySpace. In the meantime, they can provide hyperlocal information, foster dialog among neighbors, and make bank as consultants.

One day after our Facebook exchange, the news of Rockville Central’s transition had made its way through Twitter. And by Wednesday evening, members of the Online News Association were talking about it at a mixer inside the offices of The New York Times. Some were intrigued, others were disappointed that local news would take this route.

I’m hitting the “like” button on this one.

Illustration courtesy of Flickr user Christopher S. Penn.

Feb 15, 2011

So Arianna Huffington is taking over the internet. Now what?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I have a love/hate relationship with The New York Times. Its aloof, elitist tone dings my psyche like a supermarket shopping cart and renders my self-esteem a pockmarked jalopy. That’s the hate part, by the way.

Now here’s the love part. Last week, The Times published two articles that should give independent hyperlocalists new hope in competing with the local Patch outlet, soon to be governed by the Google-savvy Arianna Huffington.

Both articles discuss search engine optimization (SEO), the internet voodoo that boosts a website’s prominence in search results. It’s the bread and butter of The Huffington Post, why AOL coughed up $315 million — most of it cash money — to buy the current-events blog, and why Huffington is getting paid $4 million annually to run Patch and AOL’s other content-generating properties.

SEO is often associated with what I call the bieberfication of journalism: the monetization of current events, though not necessarily of news. For example, The Huffington Post monitors the web for popular search-engine queries — tween heartthrob Justin Bieber is hot shit these days — and then generates content around that subject. A tell-tale headline, copy chock full of key words, and a fine-tuned URL bump The Post’s article to the top of search results, thus increasing its page views and advertising revenue.

Patch sites are likely to follow Huffington’s modus operandi, loading their sites with juicy content for the search engine spiders. That means articles with “accident,” “shooting,” “fire” and other sensational topics as key words. After all, how many hits can “local zoning laws” squeeze out of a Google search?

But just as Patch can score high with those words, so can independent hyperlocalists. Loading key words into an article’s headline, lede and URL (if possible) can improve its standing against Patch in search engine results. After that, it’s up to the hyperlocalist’s writing, reporting skills and rapport with the audience to cash in on that search result and convert the incidental visitor into a regular reader.

Another SEO trick — this one pulled by retailer JC Penney — is to link and be linked to other websites, even unrelated or abandoned sites, The Times reported. More than 2,000 websites linked to the JC Penney home page, thus boosting its standing in search results for dresses, bedding, area rugs and other assorted stuff. Google considers this practice verboten and can knock a website off its spiders’ radar as punishment, but it’s still done. (Reps for the JC Penney Co. deny any chicanery.)

Hyperlocalists can work this angle by linking to area blogs and regional news sites, and hope that these sites will reciprocate. They can also leave comments on other sites and include a link back to their own. Ideally, these comments will add to the online conversation and not just serve as obvious (and obnoxious) self-promotion. A thoughtful and intelligent comment can attract more readers to a hyperlocalist’s site, whether or not the link optimizes search-engine standing.

While SEO draws readers to a website, quality content ultimately keeps readers (and advertisers) coming back for more. And it’s that quality that keeps an anxious Arianna Huffington awake at night.

Photo of Arianna Huffington courtesy of The New York Times.

Apr 14, 2010

On air with The Hyperlocalist

I don’t care what the Pew people pollsters say about radio’s decline in the news ecosystem. I still think it’s a good way to reach underserved communities that live off the grid, as well as Silicon Valley techies sitting in slow California traffic. And that’s where guest blogger and fellow hyperlocalist Dan Hugo steps in.

When you think “hyperlocal” or “community journalism,” you probably think blogs, newspaper-style articles or some sort of written word — I did. Clearly this is not the only way to go, and in August 2009 my colleague Kevin Fox and I tried a new angle on hyperlocal media in a project called Radio Sunnyvale (Calif.).

It wasn’t “real” radio at first, though we did toss around the idea of somehow getting our content broadcast somewhere in the area. We started off on my couch with “The Dan and Kevin Show” and talked about simple things, including the warning horns on the Caltrain that would pass by during our podcast recordings. By October 2009, our programming had diversified with city-council candidate interviews, special segments, and a well-received interview with the city manager.

Because our programming was not bound by time slots, hard breaks, and FCC regulations, we would post our content as recorded, without looking for sound bites or removing what we felt might be boring. If someone had something to say, we would put it up. Bringing as many people as possible to the table was the general idea.

We were well received — one operator of low-power AM radio offered to take us from a podcast to an on-air broadcast — but we were not necessarily well timed. With the declining economy, even the most supportive of Sunnyvaleans were not able or interested in contributing cash to the cause. Real interest did not translate to financial support. Even with our negligible operating budget, there was a need to pay the founders so that they might continue to reside in the city of interest. Ultimately, this was our undoing.

A traditional advertiser-funded model might have worked in an established medium, but visionary funding is needed when trying something new. A reasonable economy may have made that more likely. Creating a nonprofit entity probably makes sense, and we seriously considered making a community advisory board to keep the effort community-driven, at least in part.

Radio-style programming in the hyperlocal space is an exciting opportunity despite the financial difficulties we encountered in our first go. A better business plan, segmented shows, and a solid user interface for our podcasts are things we would attack first if we had to do it again. Also, a better way to measure our audience size would have given us more momentum when approaching potential advertisers.

Enabling real voices and real discussions without editing is a powerful proposition that builds trust between the community and its media efforts, as well as between people within the community. The discussion can flow and it can reach people who want to participate. There is still much to be done. To be continued?

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Burnt Pixel.

Apr 13, 2010

All the news that’s fit to text

My mother, a first-generation American like my father, made this observation a few years ago: Everyone in the old country communicates via text message. Calloused thumbs are the norm, regardless of age or social status. And if an event isn’t announced via text, then it’s as if it never happened.

That’s how things roll, not just in my parents’ country of birth but across a big swath of the planet, according to The New York Times. Outside the United States, text messaging is used to find jobs, transfer funds, even monitor elections for fraud. These people don’t worry about broadband service for their iThingies, as long as the cell phone towers keep pumping out the juice.

I’m willing to bet that if people abroad are texting like fiends, their emigre counterparts in the United States are doing the same. They’re reconnecting with friends in the motherland and making new connections here, all via text messaging. Why shouldn’t they receive hyperlocal news in the same way?

Unfortunately, there are a few hurdles to that, namely the cost to send and receive text messages in the United States. AT&T charges $20 per month for unlimited texting on top of its smartphone data plans, and Verizon has a text-heavy plan for $35 each month, excluding voice telephony. Compare that with the one-cent text rate offered by one Indian carrier, The Times reported.

Another sticking point is the need to send bulk messages from a single source. Google Voice and Twitter allow a few text messages for free, but broadcasting more will require a paid account with SMS Everywhere or some other service. It’s possible to have a sponsor shoulder this cost for the hyperlocal outlet, but it doesn’t dodge the next hurdle.

And that is: What kind of information should be sent via text? Should the standard 160-character message contain only a headline with a link? Will the recipient follow that link to the full story? If yes, will the full story appear in a mobile-friendly format?

Also, in what language should the text and full story appear? If the goal is to reach immigrants, then the content probably should appear in their primary language. This might mean the cost of hiring an interpreter who not only can convert an English-language story into some other tongue, but can text the story using that language’s colloquial abbreviations and acronyms.

There are kinks to texting news content, but I still think it’s worth exploring if the objective is to deliver news to traditionally underserved immigrant communities.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user daveblume.

Apr 7, 2010

You remember print, right?

For all the the talk of how the internet and the iThingy will save journalism, there’s one thing that computer technology can’t do: deliver information to people who exist off the grid.

Some of them can’t afford a computer or monthly internet service charges. Others don’t bother with the English-heavy net because they speak some other language. Still others live beyond the cable company’s reach. Whether by choice or necessity, these people just don’t do the web.

That doesn’t mean they should go without access to community news. What it means is hyperlocalists must apply a different approach to news distribution, even if that means using technology that’s distinct from their primary mode.

One form of news distribution familiar to non-techies is probably print. (There’s also broadcast, but I’ll get into that later this week.) Most online hyperlocalists use broadsheets only as marketing material — it’s much cheaper than handing out free iPads to prospective readers. Recently, California Watch printed an investigative report for distribution and promotion, and I’ve done similar stuff with content from my former hyperlocal site.

But what if the broadsheet were to become a regular thing for online outlets? Obviously, printing content with the same immediacy as posting online would be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so. But a daily or weekly broadsheet should be enough to deliver news in a timely way.

Also, broadsheets don’t necessarily have to be fliers given to individual readers. Back in the day, broadsheets were single, poster-sized sheets of paper posted in town squares and gathering spots. The same can be done today at coffee shops, supermarkets, transit stations, houses of worship, or the shop windows of supportive businesses. (Perhaps those supportive businesses can even pay for printing costs in exchange for the foot traffic the broadsheet might bring.)

I haven’t compared the cost of printing a single large sheet versus a stack of letter-sized fliers. But posting one big broadsheet certainly would cut down on the cost and energy required to distribute fliers to individual readers.

The best part: no net neutrality required.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Dorrell Merritt.

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