Some concepts take off in mind long before they do so in reality. Mobile advertising is going to take off this year (ongoing since 2006). Everyone with a DVR is skipping through ads. Newspapers need to go hyperlocal with their coverage. The last one is particularly interesting because it is the buzz concept in journalism these days. Since consumers now have access to the nearly any paper, broadcast clip around the globe, the thought for several years has been that hyperlocal news coverage could save community journalism.
If this story on The Washington Post's hyperlocal online endeavor is any indication, hyperlocal coverage may be a lot of hype and not much else. Apparently, The Post put a lot of resources into the project and a year later, it has yet to make a splash. The Baron, in general, dislikes generalizations, so I don't want to paint with too broad a stroke here, but it may be that this type of hyperlocal coverage works in small towns and not in large cities (the story has some evidence to that) or that hyperlocal coverage works only in certain parts of the country. Not enough has been done yet to figure that out.
That said -- and this is speaking as someone who worked for a small-town paper -- I can only see Mr. Wilson painting his fence so many times before I go insane. The hyperlocal movement has to be about more than what people do. It has to revolve around the issues that are important to that community, and when it's done well, that is usually how things work. I just had to make sure to get that warning out there. I saw so many snow-shoveling pictures when I worked in Smalltownsville, I almost developed a rash every time I saw rock salt.
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