State of Local

Greg Sterling wrote today about the sudden awakening of newspapers in response to years of eroding subscribership and the loss of classified and regular advertising dollars. As a result, the newspapers have been aggressive in their pursuit of joining consortiums (e.g., Yahoo) and aligning strategically (e.g., Blogrunner, Zillow) which are both good tactical first steps. But why are the newspapers stopping there?  Why aren’t they pursuing cross-platform partnerships with equal zeal? Shouldn’t they also be thinking about partnering with the local TV stations, the local radio outlets and more? Singularly, probably none of these has enough clout to outright “own” a market, but combined, couldn’t they build the kind of engaged local audience that advertisers simply couldn’t dismiss?  From a small business perspective, just having a shared business profile might save me countless hours and I can continue to work with a trusted outlet. And better still, my ads are going to reach many, many more eyeballs than I am accustomed to. Sign me up!

I think that the traditional media has for so long competed head-to-head against one another, that the notion of now working together must still be too frightening. Granted, it’d be a lot of work to coordinate such an endeavor, but cooperating and aggregating content sure seems to me to be a better way to remain viable in the consumer’s and avertiser’s eyes. It’s got to be tiring to have to fight for content ownership all the time, especially when the end result is you’ll only own a small piece of it.