Wednesday, April 25, 2007

“Hyperlocal” coverage: future or fad?

Hyperlocal newspaper coverage, whether in hardcopy or online, is being touted as the latest Tool to Save Newspapers. An American Journalism Review story suggests it may not be all that. Beyond the article’s noting that, based on experience of papers to date, there’s definite concerns about content and quality of editing/writing, I just don’t see how this works on the advertising side.

If you’re targeting such narrow blocks, like Census blocks, for these sections or pages, well, your circ numbers for the overall paper may be high, but not that section. Ditto for online. I just don’t see this being the “savior.”

1 comment:

Shields Bialasik said...

I agree with you... and I think that the idea of locality will begin to change because of this issue.

I think this will in turn start to redefine how we aggregate and expect to see things organized.

Essentially hyperlocal will extend to encompass more than the idea of physical parameters.