Hyperlocal -- where does it stop?

Templates don't work well in the news industry. Every day is suppose to be different and exciting for a reason. Some days all local will work. Other days it won't. There's no one answer that will solve all problems on all days.

People making decisions need to remember that people buy the newspaper for a lot of reasons and it ranges from ads and comics to local and investigative news. In many ways, our little stories are just part of a greater package.

 

Ah, see, but my point is that the local stockbroker has a highly vested interest in seeing that news presented in a very particular way. You think you're gonna get him saying, "Better get your money out now, because that thing ain't comin' back?" Of course not. He's gonna say something like, "The market is just going through a correction, and it will come back, and now's the time to buy!"

Doesn't mean his point is or isn't valid. It's just that you know what he's going to say before you even ask.

There's nothing wrong with localizing a national story. There IS something wrong with the idea that the only way the national story makes it on the front is if we localize it.

 

It depends your market. Regardless of your circulation, if you have a large geographic area it's hard to go hyper local on the front even if you have editions.

We struggle with that. We try and find a regional local story that appeals to the market. At the very least, if we are good, we can zone the regional stories.

If it is not there, you go with what is the most interest to all of your subscribers and do the nuts and bolts of town news inside.

45,000 circ here. This is a difficult call, are we local or regional? Sometimes it would be easier if we were a city daily, or, we were small 10,000 circ enterprise.

 

True.

 

Sports has always followed the basic structure of hyper local because that's the way sports are built. You localize the NFL by emphasizing stories on the regional team. Same with college football. Smaller papers have always had an emphasis on local preps and local colleges. There really wasn't much need to tell sports to adjust, but because all other departments had to, well, sports had to too.

So let's get a little league story done.

 

I generally agree with this viewpoint.

I understand the principle of hyperlocal, in that it gives the readers something they can't get anywhere else. But if they don't care about it, what difference does it make?

Covering prep sports is great and has its place in every sports section, but you need to realize that the readership for prep sports is limited. By going hyperlocal, you're covering stuff that no other media outlet covers, but you're also hamstringing yourself by committing all your manpower and time to stuff not very many people care about.

Instead of emphasizing hyperlocal content, I think papers would be better off to emphasize original content. For example, say Pro Team X is located a couple hours away. Cover Pro Team X, but cover them with the emphasis that you're not just going to write traditional gamers and straight news stories that will be found on the wire.

If you're a mid-major or smaller paper, you'll quickly realize they you can't break anything new in sports (outside of preps and small local colleges) that won't be broken by a larger paper nearby or by another major media source like the AP. But you CAN generate original content like features, sidebars and colums that your readers can't find anywhere else. And you can still use the wire, so it's not like you need to staff every single game and practice for Sports Team X.

I think readers don't get enough credit sometimes. Bean counters will always say that Joe Blow doesn't know the difference between an AP story and a staff story. But if you continue to cover Pro Team X with your own writers and your own angles, I think your readers will notice this.

This way, you're generating original content AND writing stuff that the average sports fan actually cares about.

 

There's usually a reason that no other media outlet is covering X, Y or Z.

 

Huh?

I was using Sports Team X as an example of a "major" sports team. If you want that team to be, say, the USC football team, then there's plenty of people covering it. Just using a randon team.

My point is, just because other media outlets cover a team doesn't mean a medium to small paper can't cover the same team if its nearby. And that's the attitude that runs contrary to hyperlocal.