Money: everyone wants it and everyone is in pursuit of it. However, it has become a limited resource of late. The New York Times has taken a page from Google’s business model, the one that states “a billion dollars, one nickel at a time.” The Times has taken a larger bite out of what once was considered the bottom of the food chain. The Times has begun to believe that they “can take tiny sources of local revenue and roll them into big money.”
With the decline of sales in the world of newspaper media, the local ad revenue online has been on a continuous rise and is projected to grow 5.4% in 2009. That kind of rise will add up to $13.3 billion in profits according to media research firm Borrell Associates. That seems like a great market to tap into if you are a fledgling company desperate to raise financial numbers by the end of the fiscal year.
There appears to be real BUSINESS in hyperlocal links, and someone would be foolish to turn their backs to such an idea. In fact the media mogul, Google, has also tried to cash in on these profits via their incorporation of Patch.
Hyperlocal has been met with resistance from many local sites, because they did not want to share their take of the profits of the local market. This seems to becoming a battle of epic proportions. One that can only be compared to the battles fought by the treacherous bands of marauders: the Jets and the Sharks. The casualties being the news: false reports and inaccurate details fill the reports that are being fed to public, as the Alpha dogs rage war against the home teams.
The article begins to contradict itself as it begins to crunch the numbers. At the end of the second section of the article the authors suggest that each town/ market would benefit from such a venture. “The local-ad market represents a great opportunity to create sustainable community specific information sources.” My question is how? How will they better be informed from this type of reporting rather than the homegrown grass roots approach a localized weekly publication takes? So far as hyperlocal, I understand how it has financial gain for its contributors and advertisers, but what concerns me becomes the usage of this idea. Does it function as a creditable source of news and information provider?
In the third section of the article “can Anyone Tap the $100 Billion Potential of Hyperlocal News?” Gluckstadt quotes Schachter as saying: “our hypothesis is that there is a swath of people—experts of various sorts, journalists, self trained bloggers—who would want our assistance in professionalizing their work and who would love to be associated with the Times. We could help those people mobilize their communities and gather local-advertising dollars in extremely low-cost ways. ” This sounds like a public relations comment that appears without confrontation rather than one open to questions. It seems here they are trying to legitimizing the news told by the local amateur and self concerning blogger to propagandize their own towns at a minimal cost to the Time. What about the quality of news or the impartiality that a professional journalist brings to their material?
Schachter finally addresses my concern of quality by claiming “It’s safe to say that we would exercise whatever level of oversight was required to protect the standing of our news brand” and “every word that appears on the Local has a Times editor reviewing it.” This makes me more comfortable in the idea of the editorial process in this local news blogs, however are they editing grammar, spelling diction etc. or are they checking the facts and creating the sheen of impartiality too? I just feel too skeptical about the whole thing. How can anything that seems so profitable to all involved be profitable to masses as well? I guess I will have to wait and see if Chester ever gets its own hyperlocal link and make my own judgments that are free of biases and altered facts.
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