Monday, April 13, 2009

Hyperlocal Newspapers

Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone (NYT, registration required) wrote a useful article on hyperlocal newspapers designed to provide rich content about people and events within a few blocks of the reader.

As large newspapers struggle to maintain far-flung bureaus - falling one by one to more nimble online resources - hyperlocal papers concentrate on concrete notions of space.

As the Knight Foundation's Gary Kebbel puts it, “Our democracy is based upon geography, and we believe local information is such a core need for our democracy to survive.”

Hyperlocal papers are a little more sophisticated than the average neighborhood gazette, though, using GPS, sophisticated search techniques, and blog-content gather material. Advertisers are the types of small business that once limited their presence to the Yellow Pages.

Read the entire article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html

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