Why I hate the word, not the concept, of hyperlocal
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I disagree with the concept. It’s just the word I don’t like. Hyperlocal is just local isn’t it?
Mark Potts has what I think should be a wakeup-call kind of post asking the simple question: What is your hyperlocal strategy.
Now, as I just stated, I would rephrase the question, but the concept is right on. And he argues we may not be around in five years unless we figure it out.
Because competition is coming fast for your most local business, providing news and information to your readers and viewers and monetizing that with advertising from local businesses.
But we are at a disadvantage, and here is why: Newsrooms are used to being the provider of local news and typically reporters and editors have issues with content that many in the industry term hyperlocal – you know the content that fills community sections and that gets high amounts of usage from readers who just love it and want more and more of it and are begging us to print or showcase the photo of little Johnny at his Little League game.
An excuse, I realize, and believe me the last thing I want to do is stick up for this type of mentality. But I don’t think this type of culture change can be taught to a traditional journalist.
So what Potts has done is ask newsrooms, what’s your strategy? He says, correctly, that local is still the industry’s remaining franchise, but many competitors are knocking on the doorstep.
Somebody is going to figure out how to make it work and make a business out of it, and when that happens, newspapers and local broadcasters lose their last unique offering.
So what is your strategy?
Two things come to mind:
1) I agree with the argument for “local” rather than “hyperlocal.” Realize that we’re in a cultural shift from newspapers-as-conduits-to-the-world to news-organizations-fighting-for-relevance.
The term “hyperlocal” signals to old-timey journos that they’ve got to shift gears and start thinking about what readers want from their local news.
2) Putting little Johnny in the newspaper takes way too much time. I sit right next to this poor copy editor who laboriously formats calendar entries, obits, etc. to go in the paper for at least 30 hours per week.
There’s no reason this kind of thing can’t be automated. Then we free up brain cells for local reporting and good design on stuff that matters and what makes a newspaper company more credible than a community newsletter.
I’ll be the first to admit that our current strategy is no strategy. But I’m about to bust a blood vessel from the strain of pulling in the other direction.