hyperlocal - 10,000 Words

Patch Unveils A New Site, Focused on Social and Mobile

Mona Zhang — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:00:16 +0000

Patch.com, AOL’s hyperlocal news experiment, is rolling out a new site today. In true new media fashion, the company designed the mobile site first, and the new format places heavy emphasis on social elements.

I got a preview of it on Friday from co-founder and CEO Jon Brod, chief content officer Rachel Feddersen and creative director Abel Lenz, who enthusiastically introduced the site as a shift from the soap-box model to a town square model. “This is a platform for communities to better organize day to day life,” said Feddersen, “we’re about making lives in towns better.”

So what’s different about the new Patch? According to Brod, it’s “the marriage of Journalism with a big J and the social elements of a community platform.” continued…

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Chicago News Cooperative hyperlocal site suspends publication

Meranda Watling — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:33:11 +0000

The hyperlocal Chicago News Cooperative site, which supplies Chicago-area content to the New York Times, announced today it will suspend publication. The non-profit site was founded in 2009. It will stop production to reassess the situation on Feb. 26.

In a letter posted on the site, editor James O’Shea says:

Unlike similar start-up efforts like the Texas Tribune in Austin, the Bay Citizen inSan Francisco and ProPublica in New York, we never recruited the kind of seven figure donations from people of means concerned about the declining quality of news coverage around the country. As a result, CNC never raised the resources to make investments in the business side of our operation that would have generated the revenue we needed to achieve our original goal – a self-sustaining news operation within 5 years.

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Tool of the Day: Meporter

Maurice Cherry — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:00:56 +0000

There are no shortage of helpful apps available for the reporter who needs to cover news on the go. We’ve covered apps for both iPhones and Android devices, and Meporter is a great addition to the hundreds of apps available for journalism.

Here’s a brief video about how the service works:

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Where To Find Original, Local Story Ideas Online

Meranda Watling — Tue, 31 May 2011 11:30:26 +0000

Whether you’re an intern new to a community hoping to impress your boss or a long-time reporter hoping to avoid writing about air conditioner and ice cream sales this summer, knowing where to look for original local story ideas can be a game changer. The best way to avoid being given bad assignments is to be busily working on better ones. Luckily, there’s a wealth of such story ideas available right from your cubicle. Here’s where to look: continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What Everyblock’s Redesign Tells Us About The Future Of Hyperlocal News Sites

Jessica Roy — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:00:28 +0000

Hyperlocal venture Everyblock, owned by msnbc.com, relaunched yesterday with a sleek new design and several fresh features geared towards cultivating neighborhood communities. The site’s previous incarnation served as a kind of block-by-block news feed, aggregating crime statistics, restaurant reviews and local events. With yesterday’s relaunch, new social elements have been integrated into the site that encourage users to share and interact with their neighbors both online and off. So what are these changes, and what insight do they give us into the future of hyperlocal news? Let’s take a look.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.