(Annette Moser-Wellman)

Let's say you represent a local newspaper in a mid-size town. You've heard about the trends toward hyperlocal news and reporting and are intrigued by the possibility of offering your readers neighborhood coverage. But the budget certainly doesn't warrant more reporters. And scouring the Internet for stories online? Inefficient and probably not very effective. However, technology tools have emerged promising to solve these very problems. In our recent Media Management Center report, The Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization, we heard industry leaders like Adrian Holovaty at EveryBlock portend the day when hyperlocal news would be available at the fingertips. In fact, by the beginning of 2009 EveryBlock was operational for search in eleven cities.

We interviewed Mark Josephson, CEO at Outside.in to check out the current state of the hyperlocal news industry. Outside.in is a news aggregator a la Google News, but they focus on scouring news and organizing local news. They track blogs, newspapers, municipal data and even Twitter feeds. They push it through eight different algorithmic filters and categorize for over 35,000 neighborhoods in the US.

"It's an incredibly exciting time to be working in media and especially local media right now," says Josephson. "We see trends that position the local media space to be one full of innovation and green shoots of hope. In the future, the number of sources in any market is not going to be fewer. There will actually be countless more folks creating content. This will force traditional market voices that have editorial sensibility to take advantage of that opportunity and embrace aggregation."

Outside.in's unique visitors have jumped from 1 to 5 million in the last six months. The reason? They believe it's due to their technology platform that allows publishers and bloggers to share, source and profit from local content. If you are a Charlottesville Daily Progress or a Seattle P-I, you can create neighborhood news pages for the neighborhoods in your market. You can also share your feed with the network and get greater exposure for your content. If you are a blogger, you can geo-tag and promote your own content. Furthermore, the system is self-serving, which allows publishers, bloggers and advertisers to transact completely online.

Josephson goes on to talk about 100 billion dollars in local advertising spending, and the fact that 15 billion of those dollars are online today and more will be ahead. Outside.in positions themselves as a service to the consumer markets by organizing all the local content available and distributing it to those who have need of it. Perhaps more importantly, they serve publishers, bloggers and advertisers by managing ad inventory and ad dollars between those local buyers and sellers.

But is the demand for hyperlocal news growing with consumers? "That's tougher to predict, " says Josephson. "Perhaps the general public isn't yet aware of the availability of the resources on-line. I thought I'd check out a neighborhood within Seattle that I know well and that interests me. Belltown is a progressive, artsy community popular for its restaurants, nightlife and, well, crime. When I entered Belltown on Outside.in, I found a plethora of information. And not just Seattle Times content, but the not-for-profit news Real Change, that focuses on the issues of the homeless in Seattle and is distributed by homeless on street corners. There were blog entries written by Belltowners and blogs for Belltowners. There was Seattle 911, a police blog that listed the most recent trespasses and even a Seattle crime map that highlighted the Belltown incidents. They have over 300 different sources in Seattle alone, with over 700 stories a day flowing from their system. That's a tremendous amount of content."

He's not kidding. I'm not sure hyperlocal news has reached the tipping point where consumers want or need that much information, but for those like to dig deep on their neighborhood, technology platforms like Outside.in provide it. Josephson is clear that Outside.in is a technology company rather than a journalistic enterprise. But making sure information is shared freely is an important service in the era of 0's and 1's, and democratizes the ability for all parties to participate.

"There are going to be more news companies in the future," predicts Josephson. "They will be smaller and different than traditional sources, but no less important."


Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization and Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age, both published by the Media Management Center.

This TechScout article is part of a series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. Click here to view other articles in the TechScout series.

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