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It's come to this: local news like Google news
Tue, Sep 8 2009 10:49 AM
| newspapers, website, Indianapolis
| Permalink
One theory about how newspapers can survive in a paperless future is the notion that they can become the prime sources of local news. What the President says can be found everywhere. What the Mayor says must be found on a local news site. The theory holds that what used to be called a newspaper's newsroom and now is called an "information center" is well-equipped to become the dominant local news site.
That dominance would mean advertisers get exposure from everyone looking for local news. Being on the welcome page or the main sports page would collect lots of impressions.
What would happen to that dominance if the readers go somewhere else for a news digest and then directly to the story about what the Mayor said? This happens already in a limited way if you use, for example, an iGoogle home page that gives you the top stories of your local paper.
Now an entrepreneur named Yiyi Liu has begun a revolution in that thought. Based in Montreal, his operation, called "City and Press," has taken what Google does in a universal way and made it local. In 30 cities, including Indianapolis, Liu has started local news aggregation sites called "(city).cityandpress.com". In Indianapolis, of course, it's www.indianapolis.cityandpress.com.
How this works, apparently, is that they capture RSS feeds from every local news outlet and publish them on the city-specific site, with stories categorized as "news,", "sports," "business" and more. On each city site, they promise to stop using material generated by a news outlet, such as TV station, on request.
This creates a problem for a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station. Does management want to be left out of what could become the prime index of local news or cede that role to someone else and take the linked hits? The revenue for a "City and Press" site is likely to be small, a least at first, but its overhead is minimal.
As we know, things online are moving faster than we ever expect. How news outlets respond to this advance could be crucial.
That dominance would mean advertisers get exposure from everyone looking for local news. Being on the welcome page or the main sports page would collect lots of impressions.
What would happen to that dominance if the readers go somewhere else for a news digest and then directly to the story about what the Mayor said? This happens already in a limited way if you use, for example, an iGoogle home page that gives you the top stories of your local paper.
Now an entrepreneur named Yiyi Liu has begun a revolution in that thought. Based in Montreal, his operation, called "City and Press," has taken what Google does in a universal way and made it local. In 30 cities, including Indianapolis, Liu has started local news aggregation sites called "(city).cityandpress.com". In Indianapolis, of course, it's www.indianapolis.cityandpress.com.
How this works, apparently, is that they capture RSS feeds from every local news outlet and publish them on the city-specific site, with stories categorized as "news,", "sports," "business" and more. On each city site, they promise to stop using material generated by a news outlet, such as TV station, on request.
This creates a problem for a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station. Does management want to be left out of what could become the prime index of local news or cede that role to someone else and take the linked hits? The revenue for a "City and Press" site is likely to be small, a least at first, but its overhead is minimal.
As we know, things online are moving faster than we ever expect. How news outlets respond to this advance could be crucial.
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