Hyperlocal websites can focus on very specialized topics—stories and issues of interest only to people in a very limited area. So, for example, school board meetings, restaurant, community group meeting and garage sales can receive prominent coverage. Forumhome.org, for example, focus on issues likely of interest only to the few thousand residents of the small New Hampshire towns it serves. Hyperlocal sites may also focus on particular issues. For example, NewWest.net focus on issues relating to balancing economic development and environmental concerns in quickly growing towns in the Rocky Mountain West such as Boulder, Colo., and Bozeman, Mont (see Exhibit 4.3). “Our core mission is to serve the Rockies with innovative, particularly journalism and to promote conversation that help us understand and make the most of the dramatic changes sweeping our region,” the site notes. Much of the content on NewWest.net comes from freelancers and citizen contributors.
Many of the best known hyperlocal sites have sprung up independently, but larger media companies are increasingly interested in the concept as well. The largest hyperlocal network of sites is run by Patch Media, a subsidiary of AOL. Another model for a national company running hyperlocal sites is franchising, such as is being done by 2010 startup Main Street Connect.
The Gannett newspaper chain also made a commitment to developing hyperlocal sites. Rob Curley, who has been called the “hyperlocal guru” for his previous work in Lawrence, Kan., and Naples, Fla., joined washingtonpost.com in part to develop hyperlocal sites for that paper. The first Curley-led washingtonpost.com effort focused on Loudoun County, a fast-growing suburb in Northern Virginia. As of February 1, 2012, the site (loudounextra.washingtonpost.com) returned an error.
These hyperlocal sites included detailed searchable community events calendars and restaurant information, a complete listing of churches (including 360-degree inside views and recordings of sermons) and police blotter information updated every day. “Knocked down mailboxes will be newsworthy,” Curley promised. “What we’re doing is taking the local and treating it like it’s the superstar.” Others at washingtonpost.com have high hopes for the hyperlocal sites. “It's a big effort,” says managing editor Jim BRADY. “When you take our daily traffic and combine it with Rob Curley’s expertise—if it can’t work here, it can’t work anywhere.”
Some journalists, not surprisingly, are skeptical of the hyperlocal movement’s focus on the often mundane information of daily life. Hyperlocal “has the potential to trivialize a media organization’s brand and further saturate news sites with myopic local (and frequently unedited) content, perhaps at the expense of foreign and national reporting,” said an article in American Journalism Review. Still, media companies are searching for new ways to reach audiences with content that interest them, and hyperlocal definitely holds that potential. The BBC’s Van Klaveren says journalistic organizations need to embrace both the so-called “big-J Journalism” and the hyperlocal: “We need to move beyond news to information.”
Read more about this topic: Hyperlocal