In this guest post, Damian Radcliffe highlights some topline developments in the hyper-local space during 2011. He also asks for your suggestions of great hyper-local content from 2011. His more detailed slides looking at the previous year are cross-posted at the bottom of this article.

2011 was a busy year across the hyper-local sphere, with a flurry of activity online as well as more traditional platforms such as TV, Radio and newspapers.

The Government’s plans for Local TV have been considerably developed, following the Shott Review just over a year ago. We now have a clearer indication of the areas which will be first on the list for these new services and how Ofcom might award these licences. What we don’t know is who will apply for these licences, or what their business models will be. But, this should become clear in the second half of the year.

Whilst the Leveson Inquiry hasn’t directly been looking at local media, it has been a part of the debate. Claire Enders outlined some of the challenges facing the regional and local press in a presentation showing declining revenue, jobs and advertising over the past five years. Her research suggests that the impact of “the move to digital” has been greater at a local level than at the nationals.

Across the board, funding remains a challenge for many. But new models are emerging, with Daily Deals starting to form part of the revenue mix alongside money from foundations and franchising.

And on the content front, we saw Jeremy Hunt cite a number of hyper-local examples at the Oxford Media Convention, as well as record coverage for regional press and many hyper-local outlets as a result of the summer riots.

I’ve included more on all of these stories in my personal retrospective for the past year.

One area where I’d really welcome feedback is examples of hyper-local content you produced – or read – in 2011. I’m conscious that a lot of great material may not necessarily reach a wider audience, so do post your suggestions below and hopefully we can begin to redress that.

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In this guest post Ofcom’s Damian Radcliffe cross-publishes his latest presentation on developments in hyperlocal publishing for September-October, and highlights how partnerships are increasingly important for hyper-local, regional and national media in terms of “making it pay”.

When producing my latest bi-monthly update on hyper-local media, I was struck by the fact that media sales partnerships suddenly seem to be all the rage.

In a challenging economic climate, a number of media providers – both big and small – have recently come together to announce initiatives aimed at maximising economies of scale and potentially reducing overheads.

At a hyperlocal level, the launch on 1^st November of the Chicago Independent Advertising Network (CIAN), saw 15 Chicago community news sites coming together to offer a single point of contact for advertisers. These sites “collectively serve more than 1 million page views each month.”

This initiative follows in the footsteps of other small scale advertising alliances including the Seattle Indie Ad Network and Boston Blogs.

These moves – bringing together a range of small scale location based websites – can help address concerns that hyper-local sites are not big enough (on their own) to unlock funding from large advertisers.

CIAN also aims to address a further hyper-local concern: that of sales skills. Rather than having a hyperlocal practitioner add media sales to an ever expanding list of duties, funding from the Chicago Community Trust and the Knight Community Information Challenge allows for a full-time salesperson.

Big Media is also getting in on this act.

In early November Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL agreed to sell each other’s unsold display ads. The move is a response to Google and Facebook’s increasing clout in this space.

Reuters reported that both Facebook and Google are expected to increase their share of online display advertising in the United States in 2011 by 9.3% and 16.3%.

In contrast, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are forecast to lose share, with Facebook expected to surpass Yahoo for the first time.

Similarly in the UK, DMGT’s Northcliffe Media, home to 113 regional newspapers, recently announced it was forging a joint partnership with Trinity Mirror’s regional sales house, AMRA.

This will create a commercial proposition encompassing over 260 titles, including nine of the UK’s 10 biggest regional paid-for titles. Like The Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL arrangement, this new partnership comes into effect in 2012.

These examples all offer opportunities for economies of scale for media outlets and potentially larger potential reach and impact for advertisers.  Given these benefits, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see more of these types of partnership in the coming months and years.

Damian Radcliffe is writing in a personal capacity.

Other topics in his current hyperlocal slides  include Sky’s local pilot in NE England and research into the links between tablet useand local news consumption. As ever, feedback and suggestions for future editions are welcome.

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There’s a fascinating study on newspaper bias by University of Chicago professors Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro which identifies the political bias of particular newspapers based on the frequency with which certain phrases appear.

The professors then correlate that placement with the political leanings of the newspaper’s own markets, and find

“That the most important variable is the political orientation of people living within the paper’s market. For example, the higher the vote share received by Bush in 2004 in the newspaper’s market (horizontal axis below), the higher the Gentzkow-Shapiro measure of conservative slant (vertical axis).”

Interestingly, ownership is found to be statistically insignificant once those other factors are accounted for.

James Hamilton, blogging about the study, asks:

“How slant gets implemented at the ground level by individual reporters. My guess is that most reporters know that they are introducing some slant in the way they’ve chosen to frame and report a story, but are unaware of the full extent to which they do so because they are underestimating the degree to which the other sources from which they get their information and beliefs have all been doing a similar filtering. The result is social networks that don’t recognize that they have developed a groupthink that is not centered on the truth.” [my emphasis]

In other words, the ‘echo chamber’ argument (academics would call it a discourse) that we’ve heard made so many times about the internet.

It’s nice to be reminded that social networks are not an invention of the web, but rather the other way around.

h/t Azeem Azhar

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(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series on local online news video. The first focuses on content. Tomorrow’s part two will explore design and usability and part three will take a look at advertising.)

Though local news sites have expanded their production of content and made great strides in technological advances on their video platforms, they haven’t exactly reached the next threshold or industry standard in online video. In many cases, this “standard” is being set by media giants like CNN and user-generated social media sites like YouTube. In fact, a recent study shows that watching online video is more popular than Facebook or Twitter. The trend is continuing in that direction and the time spent watching online video has increased as well. And with YouTube now getting into the local news business with its News Near You feature that will grab news clips from sources that are 100 miles from your computer’s IP address, local news organizations should worry.

Many of the local news sites are still experimenting and beginning to define the type of video content they would like to produce. Below are lessons learned from a thesis study that examined how 10 local news sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA market used online video. The conclusions made here, are also gathered through interviews of editors at the respective organizations (Note: Several did not want or could not appear for publication as a result of organizational policies). The full study can be found here (beware it is about 60 pages in length). Below are the sites studied. However, I will also note that the study did not include TheUpTake, which actually provided a lot of online video content for many of the sites below and has had led some great innovations in online video.

• Star Tribune (www.startribune.com) – Daily Metro Newspaper
• Pioneer Press (www.twincities.com) – Daily Metro Newspaper
• Minnpost (www.minnpost.com) – Online-only News Website
• The Minnesota Daily (www.mndaily.com) – College Newspaper, 4-days a week. (Disclosure: I have served as editor at this paper)
• WCCO (www.wcco.com) – Metro TV station
• KSTP (www.kstp.com) – Metro TV station
• KARE 11 (www.kare11.com) – Metro TV station
• FOX 9 (www.myfoxtwincities.com) – Metro TV station
• Minnesota Public Radio (www.mpr.org) – Public Radio station
• Minnesota Sun Newspapers (mnsun.com) – Community Newspapers (Most papers are weeklies).

Here’s what’s working in content:

1. Feature news: Evidence points to most local news sites using video to cover feature stories. That is mostly because these types of stories have visual elements that lend themselves well to video footage.
2. Breaking news: It comes in second place for most produced video and works well. Even if it is raw, most editors agree that breaking news footage can really complement a story and drive a lot of traffic. Videos of the Fargo floods were among the most popular for the Star Tribune, many of them shot as news unfolded. Expanding breaking news video coverage will become less challenging, as more reporters become trained in shooting video. Corey Anderson, online editor at Minnpost.com, said that the veteran reporters at the organization have embraced the possibilities of new media and how video can further enhance their stories. As the technology gets cheaper and economy gets better, Anderson said Minnpost hopes to include video cameras in the journalists reporting “tool kit”.
3. Local video: Local coverage may be the golden rule. Most of the editors noted that local coverage received a more significant amount of traffic for its local videos. It is what viewers want and expect, said Mike Durkin, senior Web producer for Fox 9.

Content news organizations could do without or needs improvement:

1. Limited national news: It’s not ideal, but because local news videos are in higher demand, national videos are not. At least not for these local news sites, or not to the extent that the investment is worth the gain. Local news organizations that currently pay for Associated Press content may want to invest that money into funding more local coverage from its reporters.
2. Talking-head: News organizations should use talking-head video sparingly, if at all. Because users on the Web are easily distracted, this type of video content does not work well.
3. Engaging, shorter pieces: In general, news organizations that are new to video, such as the Pioneer Press, will need to extensively train their videographers in shooting quality video. Beyond the quality, news organizations need to better adapt their video content to Web users who expect shorter and more engaging content. The attention span threshold that most agree on and studies have shown is roughly 3 minutes, though it is expanding with the trend toward watching online TV shows on Hulu, etc. Chris Clonts, Web editor at the Pioneer Press, said his staff aims for 2-minute videos, but is still working on transitioning to the shorter style. “We need to do a better job of picking our subjects, but that is the goal of the attention span we are going after,” Clonts said. Here is the breakdown of average video length based on the 10 most recent videos:

Content that needs more exploring:

1. User-generated content: It could build a strong sense of community on a website. Most of the editors expressed interest in expanding or implementing user-generated content. Durkin from Fox 9 said he thinks user-generated video will be the next big development in online video for many news sites. Currently, out of the list of 10 local sites, only four sites (Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, MPR and MN Sun Newspapers) include user-generated videos. However, the question is whether users will continue to use platforms such as YouTube, rather than going to a news site. Regardless of how successful the user-generated content becomes, it is a low-cost way for a news organization to increase content and traffic with almost no cost in staffing.
2. Live online video: It’s expected to be the next big step in online news video. Some TV stations, like KARE 11 and FOX 9, have done a good job in using live video, but expanding it will be the key in driving traffic through video viewership. Online users expect immediacy, something that online live video will provide. Live video could also increase online competition. For example, newspaper websites may now be able to compete with TV stations in covering live events through a Web stream. Also, live video could be the spark that makes “talking-head” video more interesting and relevant. Live video can bring webcasts, like the Star Tribune’s “News Break”, to life by providing immediacy and an element of surprise to the content.

Tomorrow’s piece will take a look at usability and design and will also include comments from John Daenzer, new media director from WCCO. What’s working for you? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Alex Gamela looks at citizen journalism – or the lack of it – in the Portuguese media landscape

We’ve been watching a significant change in the Portuguese news media during the last few years. From national to local newspapers, radios and TV channels, everyone is building their presence online, with more or less aptitude or quality. Still, the effort is noticeable.

Portugal Diário is a exclusively online outlet that has recently gone through a deep redesign.

But this investment in new platforms of communication doesn’t mean the companies are following the latest trends, or leaving their somewhat conservative approach to the full possibilities of the web. The news websites in Portugal are mostly a repository for print content, since many don’t have exclusively online journalists, and the resources for online content are rather limited, especially as multimedia content is concerned, though slowly the tide is turning, mainly due to the efforts of major newspapers, that are trying to improve and take the step forward in online content.

This scenario, of slow and uneven development of new media content, is useful to explain why the interactivity between media and users is practically nonexistent. Many still don’t grasp the concept of participative/citizen journalism and community, but companies and newsroom managements aren’t the only ones to blame, since there are other factors to consider:

- Portugal has a low newspaper reading index, and despite an increase in the last years, it is still one of the lowest in Europe;

- the Portuguese, as a people, usually aren’t civically engaged;

- journalists, as a class, are quite protective about their job;

- there is no specific training for professional journalists regarding community management, content moderation, outsourced content;

So, if news information still runs downriver, it’s because there’s not only a structural problem, but also a passive-aggressive attitude towards citizen journalism: passive on the citizen part, aggressive on the journalists that defend their status as news bearers with tooth and nail, even if most don’t take any effort to understand the new reality.

To vouch for these changes and current mindset, I created a small survey in which I was trying to understand the conditions and openness of online media to citizen contribution. It was divided in 4 parts:

• company characteristics,
• main types of content and sources,
• forms of user participation, and
• a short opinion on citizen journalism.

This survey was sent to about 50 newspapers, TV and radios with online news features, sizing from national media groups to local companies. The response was baffling.

A quarter of the email addresses available for contact with the website or newsroom’s management were useless, and even after further attempts inviting the remaining ones that worked, only four companies replied and filled out the form.

The results are, therefore, inconclusive. But this is a good example to show how receptive most newsrooms and companies are to outside stimulation, even if it wasn’t only for the fact that the ones that replied are amongst those who are working to develop their presence online, in a well-thought-through, sustainable way, and embracing the new challenges posed by hyper-communication, while the vast majority is selling pigs in a poke.

Two newspapers (one national, the other local), one online news outlet and a TV channel responded to the survey.

• The local newspaper was the least resourceful, with no exclusively online journalists, against the online outlet with over 30 workers.
• The local newspaper had 30 to 50 thousand visits, against the over 330 thousand claimed by the TV channel’s online newsroom.
• All of them prioritized text over video, audio and photography, being video the less used format, except on the TV website, for obvious reasons.
• None used citizen or users as a source, sticking to the journalists’ investigation and agencies feed, although users’ images and videos were welcome.
• All are expecting to open their website to further user collaboration, and when asked about the future of citizen journalism, the best answer was “interactivity is one of the factors that increases the number of visits,(…) and the visibility and acknowledgement of the brand”. This line of thought is still a needle in the Portuguese news haystack.

The most recent reports on citizen journalism in the USA (State of the News Media 2008) show a decrease in user’s participation, though there are new websites and features popping up everyday, appealing to news readers to develop contents and create a tighter relationship with the online editions.

In Portugal, all the news related to media websites’ development is around announcing more multimedia and interactive features, for broadband usage: more video, more comments, more space for users’ opinions and input.

With very few notable exceptions, nothing is really changing; the main difference is that the contributions accepted by media companies are now being sent over the internet, instead of regular mail.

Portuguese users are actively creating their own media, such as blogs and podcasts; and commenting on the news websites, or sending small videos and pictures is still enough for most of them.

And on the day I’m writing this, Público presented a feature that links a news article to the blogs that refer to it, which may mean that the future is not necessarily in the embedding of citizen content, but by promoting the exchange of contents between corporate and citizen media.

But, apart from those small advances to integrate users in the building of the news landscape, there is nothing we may call citizen journalism in Portugal.

The reasons to proclaim citizen journalism as a part of the future of news media may be honest or pure marketing, but the fact is that it doesn’t rely solely on the companies’ shoulders. The main promoters of this movement must be the citizens themselves, and they should be the leading force in changing the face of corporate news, recreating the agenda setting, humanizing and lending depth to news content. The media outlets just have to be ready to accept that.

————————————

After writing this article I even questioned how the local press is slowly commiting suicide. Assymetry is the main characteristic of our media landscape, which kind of follows the rest of the national economic and industrial scenery. The challenge is huge, and I don’t see many people facing it or even taking it seriously, with a few notable exceptions. But this setting is not ours exclusively.

Alex Gamela is the OJB’s Portugal correspondent. He blogs at O Lago.

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The cartograms below show the world through the eyes of editors-in-chief, in 2007. Countries swell as they receive more media attention; others shrink as we forget them[1].

(We also have a nice, embeddable Flash version with hi-res maps)

These maps allow you to grasp several media trends at a glance. First, traditional newspapers are highly selective in their coverage of world news. Looking at the three British dailies, editors favour countries that are bigger and more populous, but also closer to home and better developed. They also give more room to the countries of origin of British immigrants, especially if they are white (look at the size of Australia and New-Zealand). Hardly surprising, but still disheartening, especially when you consider that the only brand that does not advocate objectivity, The Economist, covers the world more equally.

Second, we see that web-only outlets do not offer such a different view of the world. That makes sense, considering the narrowing of the news agenda on the web that was described in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s latest report. Their lack of resources forces them to contract their scope. Smaller issues are better covered by the blogosphere, which seems unbeatable at providing niche news.

The world according to newspapers is a project that came up while writing a dissertation for school. I first published some maps on L’Observatoire des Médias, a French blog. Seeing the response, Gilles Bruno and I decided to go further and keep track of newspaper coverage. We want the maps above to be updated daily (or weekly) in order to pressure editors into covering more diverse issues.

We will build a scraper that will automatically retrieve the data for the 164 countries on several newspapers and a Java or Flash interface that will morph the maps. If you have any skill in cartograms, or data scraping, or if you have funds to buy these skills, you are more than welcome in the team!

[1] Colors indicate the same thing. However, a country can appear in red if it’s in the top 10% but still shrink, as the top 3 countries concentrate most of all media attention.

This article was written by Nicolas Kayser-Bril, one of the Online Journalism Blog’s Virtual Interns.

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