The Next Phase of Hyperlocal NYC News?

via outside.in

In recent weeks, we've been following some "hyperlocal" New York City media and journalism developments.

On Sunday, The Huffington Post launched a New York edition, which is partnering with community newspapers like the Bronx News Network and The Riverdale Press and offering up its citizen journalism unit to the online politics and policy publication The Gotham Gazette. (Incidentally, as we reported last week, The Gazette just won a $250,000 grant to build a City Council watchdog wiki that will combine citizen journalism with reporting and fact-checking by the Gazette's editorial staff.)

As my colleague Gillian Reagan recently noted, The New York Times' new Web site The Local, which covers Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, has launched a virtual assignment desk that encourages readers to "Be The Journalist"—the site lists meetings that need covering, and readers volunteer to attend, take notes and file a report to be edited by the blog's staff.

And back in May, we profiled a not-for-profit organization that's campaigning to acquire the ".nyc" top level domain when it becomes available in 2010 in order to set up a city-wide network of neighborhood Web sites.

So we read with interest Fred Wilson's post about local media today on A VC. He writes:

If I was starting The Village Voice today, I would not print anything. I would not hire a ton of writers. I would build a website and a mobile app (or two or three). I would hire a Publisher and a few salespeople. I would hire an editor and a few journalists. And then I'd go out and find every blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube, and other social media feed out there that is related to downtown NYC and I would pull it all into an aggregation system where my editor and journalists could cull through the posts coming in, curate them, and then publish them. I'd do a bit of original reporting on the big stories but most of what I'd do would be smart curation, with a voice, and an opinion.

While we don't necessarily like with the idea of a storied alt-weekly known for its long-form narrative journalism looking like a downtown Huffington Post, what Mr. Wilson—whose venture capitol portfolio includes the local news aggregation Web site outside.in—is proposing seems like a model that would help local media thrive if it was easy to implement. Enter the plug: "The good news is I wouldn't have to build that aggregation and curation system. Our portfolio company Outside.in has built it and they launched it earlier this week. It's called Outside.in For Publishers (OIP)."

Here are some highlights from a statement about OIP on the outside.in blog:

The business model for local newspapers and media companies is undergoing radical change, to put it mildly. They are under pressure to reduce costs, discover new revenue streams and figure out a way to extend their editorial coverage to the hyperlocal level where they can leverage their brand, traffic and sales relationships.

...

Quite simply, everyone is a publisher today.

All of this leads to a model focused on aggregation — automatically compiling and organizing countless sources by neighborhood.

...

But aggregation alone won’t cut it. There is so much content out there. How does a publisher make sure to only feature the best and most relevant content?

They must be able to curate. Local editors know their market best and every local publisher has a unique point of view and editorial voice. Each publisher needs to be able to start with a massive database of stories and sources and pick and choose only the ones that fit their mission.

And you need to be creating new high-quality targeted ad inventory. $100 bb is spent each year on local advertising and analysts predict $15bb will be spent online by 2012. There is not enough quality inventory to satisfy that demand today.

Consumers are also craving relevant hyperlocal info. We see this in our data —engagement metrics for well-targeted hyperlocal content are off the charts. Click-through rates on our launch partners’ implementations of our product are over 30%. The increased adoption of location-aware mobile devices will only accelerate this need.

This is why we have been building Outside.in for Publishers — to empower any local media company to create targeted Neighborhood News Pages and targetable ad inventory for every city, town, and neighborhood in their market. More pages, more content, more ads, less cost.

Mr. Wilson concludes that, "Whether the tools come from Outside.in or someone else, I am confident that this is the direction of the local media business." So will local publishers in New York jump on board?