A Lil' More Seattle

Reading some of the blogs in class, it did become apparent that profit was a cause for concern. Really, how are these hyperlocal blogs going to make money through mostly hyperlocal advertising? I tried using the example I found in order to see if they were making anything out of the deal through their informal partnership with the Seattle Times. I checked out one of the participating hyperlocal blogs, and didn't find very much on the announcement of the partnership outlining the revenue goals, for obvious reasons. I found more interesting results in a business-oriented blog, on the part of John Cook's coverage of the partnership.

Cook doesn't announce anything groundbreaking-- he repeats the same phrasing that the official announcement did when it came to advertising: One of the goals is "Exploring tools that could enhance advertising opportunities across the partner sites." However, in the comments, things get a bit more interesting when a user says he thinks the passive banner ads are lame, and an employee of West Seattle Blog shows up. Apparently, even though one of the goals specifically says that they will explore new forms of advertising, according to Tracy at WSB "the Times partnership doesn't involve any discussion or collaboration on revenue generation at all." She defends the current system in place that features local business on a long, long list of banner ads-- or as she calls it, a business directory. A long, completely unorganized business directory. Anyways, I was hoping to see some collaboration of sorts on advertising and revenue, but it looks like that portion of journalism, arguably the most important considering these journalists want to make money in order to live, has been left out of the experiment.

The Seattle Experiment

While searching around for more models of the hyperlocal setup, and found the website www.hyperlocalblogger.com, which intends to be a central resource for bloggers interested in developing their own hyperlocal blogs. The site has its own "How To" articles, news roundups with links to any article involving the transition from newspaper to these blogs, as well as several pieces documenting Seattle, Washington's print and online news sources working in unison.

More and more of these hyperlocal blogs are being pushed out at an increasing rate in the city, but they still see the newspaper as the greater source of news for all of the city and surrounding areas. This networked journalism seems to be going really well thus far, as the hyperlocal bloggers are trying to do their part-- whether it be questioning mayoral candidates and telling the newspapers of their findings, or informing the times of breaking stories such as a cougar being trapped in a local park. I really like this idea of cooperation, but understand that it just may not be possible in certain cities, markets, etc., and not all hyperlocal bloggers would want to share their information with the local newspaper. It almost seems utopian that there are all these sites out there that have easy interface, incredibly fast updates, but they still want to keep the local newspaper thriving, and as a source of authority.