State of Local

This recent Newsweek article has sparked a lot of comment in online news circles. The premise (which is drawn primarily from Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult Of The Amateur” ) is that audiences are moving away from user-generated content and back towards content written and edited by professionals. It’s an idea that is appealing to many local news companies, which are struggling to find the best ways to integrate UGC into their web sites. In fact, the article was brought up in a phone call I had with one local news executive earlier this week. Aren’t people tired of all that “amateur” stuff?

No, no, no. The thrust of the Newsweek article is that readers find professionally edited sites such as Maholo or Google’s new beta site Knol much more useful than they would Wikipedia or even perhaps YouTube. And not surprisingly, executives with those companies tend to agree with the premise.

The problem with the article (and the discussion) is two-fold. The piece doesn’t give any indication that it’s a trend that is applicable to online news operations. In fact, there are a number of studies that trend the opposite way. Readers are indeed looking for a trusted local news source. But they see UGC content as part of that mix.

The second problem is that by walking away from UGC content, local media companies also walk away from a potential ad revenue stream that has an almost unlimited upside. UGC content is notoriously difficult to monetize, especially as a stand-alone web site. But consumers do consume the videos, blogs and message forums at an impressive clip.

So a professionally edited site that includes a wide array of UGC elements is in many ways the best of two worlds. There is already a trusted relationship with local advertisers, which allows online sales reps to sell the more problematical UGC pageviews as part of a larger mix. But the local news site benefits from the larger pool of users and pageviews. Consumers of UGC also tend to be more engaged with the web sites they visit, which is a healthy side benefit for local news operations.

To be blunt, the days of a local news site ignoring user generated content is over. There are some serious questions about the best ways to integrate it into your site, and that’s part of the discussion we have here at IB.

But despite what you might read in Newsweek, user generated content is not “out,” it’s just evolving.