Feb 16, 2011

Hello, 2012 presidential primary season. Will you be my friend?

Mmm, Iowa! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. The Buckeye State. Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. And the traditional starting gate for US presidential campaigns.

Every four years, journalists descend upon Iowa, stalking would-be leaders of the free world as they shake hands, kiss babies and eat their weight in pancakes. However, the upcoming 2012 campaign season promises to have a hyperlocal twist to it. Arianna Huffington, newly appointed overlord to AOL’s content-producing properties, plans to use Patch.com editors to cover the election on a “granular” level, she told The Washington Post.

Huffington’s plan is genius: employ an army of already-embeds who won’t need lodging or driving directions, and let them lay the foundation for AOL’s larger, search engine-savvy campaign coverage. “We will have thousands and thousands of people covering the election. Covering the Republicans. Covering the Democrats. Just being transparent about it,” she said.

And that’s when my heart sank. Reporting on elections can be a major drain on hyperlocal news outlets, especially those with limited human resources. So how the hell are independent hyperlocalists supposed to compete with myriad minions of The Huffington Patch?

First, they can beat Patch to the punch. Indie hyperlocalists in states with high-profile primaries (Iowa and New Hampshire, for example), as well as those in the convention cities of Charlotte and Tampa, should immediately contact larger news outlets and promote themselves as location experts. If AOL can use its hypothetical Des Moines Patch editor (more likely, someone from its Seed content farm) to blanket the Iowa caucuses, surely The New York Times and CNN can pay Cedar Rapids‘ independent hyperlocalist to work the beat.

(Incidentally, hyperlocalists from Super-Duper Tuesday states are not shit out of luck when it comes to milking the campaign coverage. They can similarly promote themselves to NPR or some other large outlet as experts in their beat’s hot topic — unemployment, gay marriage, the effect of prolonged deployment on military families, whatever.)

Notice my use of the word “pay.” The time and energy required to cover a campaign deserve appropriate compensation from whomever is doing the hiring. National exposure will not fuel a hyperlocal news outlet while its resources are diverted to the campaign trail.

To earn that living wage, independent hyperlocalists must offer coverage that encompasses more than just the who, what and where. The material must deliver a distinct local flavor and offer unique insight into how political events and the populace interact. This connection with place, and the ability to drop a reader smack in the middle of it, will distinguish the independent hyperlocalist from a Patch editor or embedded big-media reporter.

Ultimately, if a hyperlocal news site can’t beat Patch’s campaign coverage, it should join it — sort of. Local Patch sites likely will create RSS (syndication) feeds for their campaign stories, which can then stream onto a hyperlocal news site’s sidebar. Thus, the independent hyperlocal site offers its readers a portal to political coverage without having to create content.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Carl Wycoff.

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.

May 19, 2010

Yahoo! News and the big, bad buyout

We interrupt this week’s fashion report to bring you this crazy post. The fashion report resumes Thursday.

Oofah! The Twitterverse was buzzing Tuesday afternoon about Yahoo! News’ acquisition of Associated Content for $100 million. My initial reaction was an apathetic “So what?” Associated Content’s sloppy editorial practices would only dilute Yahoo’s wire content, and its contributing writers probably won’t see much difference in their paychecks.

But then I read this very good article by Michelle Rafter, whose blog focuses on freelancing in the digital age. In it, she points out that Associated Content’s buyout signals Yahoo’s entry into the war for local ad dollars. (AOL and Google are already in the ring with their own products.) Rafter says straight up that “local content [generated by Associated Content's writers] gives Yahoo access to local advertising that would otherwise go to those hyperlocal news ventures that have been cropping up everywhere.”

That’s when my apathy turned into complete panic. I’m one of “those” hyperlocal news ventures trying to crop up. Those are my ad dollars Yahoo, AOL and Google are taking! Motherfuckers!

Once I pulled my head out of the oven, I refocused and took an inventory of what makes independent hyperlocal news outlets the better deal in local advertising. The bottom line: Yahoo, AOL and Google don’t stand a freakin’ chance. Here’s why.

Hyperlocalists have the inside edge on what’s happening in and around their beats. Where content farms like Associated Content and AOL’s Seed spin press statements into content (don’t expect peanut-earning writers to put too much effort into their reporting), hyperlocalists fill in the blanks with strong local flavor and details that larger outlets can’t and won’t detect. It’s the difference between having an embedded journalist and reporting from amalgamated wire stories.

That flavor gives the hyperlocal outlet an “emotional value” with its audience. As I wrote Tuesday, consumers do more than just consume a successful hyperlocal outlet’s content. They incorporate the information into their decision making and allow it to influence their lives. Yahoo, AOL and Google don’t have that kind of hyperlocal clout — perhaps they never will. Score a big one for hyperlocalists!

Also, hyperlocal news outlets are more likely to have access to charitable contributions from homeowners’ associations, chambers of commerce and local professional organizations than Yahoo, AOL and Google. Sure, the big guys have investors to fuel their efforts, but investors are interested in only one thing: a big, fat return. It was the drive for profit over quality journalism that took down print newspapers, and it has the potential to undo Yahoo, AOL and Google. Slightly different business model, same outcome.

On the other hand, local donors have other interests in mind. Homeowners want their property values to rise (or at least not fall), chambers of commerce and professional groups want publicity for their businesses. Having a locally owned news outlet in the neighborhood goes a long way to advancing these donors’ respective goals. It’s something that generic news coverage from content farms can’t offer.

I really don’t mean to knock those hyperlocalists who choose to work with these larger organizations. As I’ve said previously, if a hyperlocal news organization stands to benefit from some kind of arrangement with the big guys, then do it. Surely, well-versed and justly paid hyperlocalists can only enrich the news landscape with their content, regardless of who’s doing the distributing.

But if writing for a content farm leads to nothing but pennies per click and “exposure,” then one would be better off in the trenches, digging graves in which to bury Yahoo, AOL and Google.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user godutchbaby.