State of Local

I’m one of those folks who believes that creating local vertical blogs makes a lot of sense. If you’re a station who has covered Barack Obama for years, why not create a vertical blog with a separate URL rather than rolling the blog into your main news site?

Chicago’s Fox news has done just that, with the blog Obamatracker.com. The blog promises to be a “one stop for all you need to know if you are tracking Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.”

It’s a nice idea, but it’s definately a web 1.0 presentation. While I think it’s a great idea not to obviously point back to the main Fox Chicago web site, the blog would be improved with a better template and a place to out at least some generic house ads–even just some Google Adsense ads.

But it does point to the fact that every TV station has some inhouse expertise that it could roll into a standalone vertical blog. If you have a station expert in the coverage of state legislature, a vertical blog makes sense. Perhaps one of your sports guys is a soccer enthusiast, or one of your editors is a fan of movies.

Set them up in a blog, offer them a revenue share of the ads, and tie all the pageviews and advertising together with your core site.