Berkeley Pureplay Scratches A Niche
In small Berkeley, Calif. — known for its strong liberal streak — Berkeleyside, created by three veteran journalists, has carved out an online space by finding a formula to covering every aspect of the Bay Area community and engaging its readers.
The Huffington Post has rolled into the Motor City with its newest hyperlocal site, HuffPost Detroit. The site will be edited by Detroit native and Huffington Post news editor Simone Landon.
Datasphere’s Gary Cowan on television station hyperlocal efforts: “TV stations have always been part of the local community — they’ve always had a local focus. Hyperlocal news is a natural extension of that trend, albeit one with uniquely challenging dynamics, especially on the economic front.”
Where traditional community weeklies and dailies were one-stop centers monopolizing area news and ads (and audience), the emerging hyperlocal model is more niche than comprehensive, more fragmented than unified, more personalized than standardized.
Digital Buffalo Reflects A City On The Rise
Hyperlocal news, daily deals and an increasingly competitive online news and sports scene mirror Buffalo’s emergence from its past as a Rust-Belt has-been.
The hyperlocal news is still one of the biggest unfilled niches in Web content. While AOL made a splash last year with Patch.com, Topix CEO Chris Tolles — whose company aggregates news and community discussions around thousands of small towns and regions — says that’s likely just the beginning of the hyperlocal land rush.
