State of Local

SearchEngineLand.com posted today that Google News has updated its algorithm.

The two key enhancements:
1) Updates to its “news cluster” when a source adds updated or new information to a breaking story. The site doesn’t simply show the most recent publisher to post a story, but rather rewards the sources that first broke the story. Implications: more exposure for sites that stay with story; opportunity for editors to abuse this by making frequent, meaningless updates.

2) A “signal” that gives weight to a quality publisher who is geographically close the story. While a marquee news brand might dominate coverage of a big story, Google News isn’t forgetting about the little guys with deep roots at the center of the action. Implications: worthy rewards for original reporting with local context.

Google News, in a recent blog post recognizing the struggle to balance quantity and quality, asserts it’s not “just about including every story; it’s about helping you find the stories that matter most to you.” (Hear that, Topix?) Rewarding quality local publishers and the consumer all in one fell algorithmic swoop? One more reason to put stock in news aggregators.

The mall shootings in Omaha and the availability of security photos and 911 tapes forced a lot of consideration in newsrooms about how graphic to be and what kind of warnings to issue to viewers and online readers. At almost the same time as the shootings, a thousand miles away, a smaller but also horrific incident took place and forced a similar weighing of high interest against community standards.

KPHO in Phoenix was providing live coverage of police chasing a bank robber at up to 100 mph when the robber crossed the center line of a four-lane road and crashed head-on into another vehicle. Both drivers were killed in what anyone seeing it would describe as a spectacular and jaw-dropping collision. Some would say that’s what the helicopter chase business is all about.

But cameras immediately pulled away and the station did not show the crash again on TV. Viewers instead saw tape of the chase leading up to a split second before the crash, including smoking brakes on the innocent car. Meanwhile, the KPHO website posted the full tape and kept it up for a couple of hours before news director Tom Bell pulled it down, going instead with the chase leading up to the impact but not showing the collision.

Bell’s initial call is tough to argue with. TV is different from the web, he pointed out in an email exchange with me. It’s on in the living room with grandma, kids and everyone else watching with little expectation of extremely shocking content coming over the air.  Read More… »

About 12 or 13 years ago, I was told by my newspaper editor that I was now the liaison to this thing called a website. The task was to convince newspaper reporters and editors that online was going to be important and they needed to file news for it.

Fine, they said, but we don’t want to scoop ourselves online, right? The answer then was pretty much: Right. The print version of the paper was the 800-pound gorilla, the dog that wagged the online tail. What was good for print was what reporters and editors did first.

But the gorilla has slimmed down over the years; many newspapers have been getting the news first online for some time now. Many an editor now says flatly to his or her reporters: “Your job is to think online first, print second.” And it took top editors saying that, not the newsroom liaison, to make a difference.

In a half year dealing with the news operations of TV stations, I’m still waiting to hear that edict again. Why are TV news operations, with their penchant for breaking news and scoops, so slow to figure this out? On a big breaking story, why are reporters not pressed into helping the online folks? I understand the simultaneous demand to be live on the air, but that’s not an 800-pound gorilla either, is it? My most pressing question: Can anyone give me the name and station of a news director who has said, “Online first, on air second”?

The Financial Times has a great profile of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur in today’s edition (free registration required to read it).

Le Meur has a lot of experience with successful startups, and his current project is Seesmic, a site which he is promoting via a series of daily, often odd YouTube clips.

In the FT piece, he offers up 10 rules for anyone wanting to be successful in business, and I include them here because I think many of them apply to local online news and advertising.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible.
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

How can a local news organization make a big pile of money online? With MinnPost, Joel Kramer offers an interesting answer: don’t even try.

MinnPost, a Minnesota-oriented news site that launched Nov. 8, is a nonprofit operation. Promising a “thoughtful approach to news,” MinnPost aims to serve the public good with quality stories and commentary readers won’t get anywhere else.

The idea is to do good journalism without facing profit pressure from Wall Street or anyone else. You won’t see celebrity slideshows, viral videos or other sure-fire “clickers” here (unless you count goofball contributor Al Sicherman’s poetry contest).

Kramer, former publisher of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, assembed a nest egg of $850,000 from four philanthropic families, including his own, to get the site off the ground. MinnPost also boasts a growing stable of individual donors.

MinnPost’s lineup of contributors also sets it apart from most digital news startups. Kramer is not relying on user contributions or citizen journalists. Instead, most of MinnPost’s contributors are veteran journalists, many of them reporters who recently took buyouts from the downsizing Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press. MinnPost employs several editors, but pays writers by the piece. Read More… »

Take a heap of staff stories. Stir in a cup of AP and aggregated articles. Fold in some user-generated content and material from media partners. Don’t forget that pinch of secret algorithm.

What you get is Pegasus News, a tasty blend of local news, events, commentary and ads. Mike Orren, former publisher of Texas Lawyer, created the recipe more than a year ago to serve the Dallas market. One unique ingredient is The Daily You, an algorithm-based feature that learns a user’s interests and delivers customized content.

Pegasus News was an interesting little experiment – until July. That’s when Seattle-based Fisher Communications, owner of 19 TV stations and eight radio stations in the Pacific Northwest, bought the site and announced plans to duplicate the operation in other markets.

Fisher aims to use its sales muscle to help Pegasus garner more ads and leverage its database of registered users. Nothing frightfully original there. The real cash may come from Fisher’s plan to license the Pegasus model in other markets. The idea is to market an out-of-the-box solution to media companies and others eager to grab a share of local traffic and ad buys.

Pegasus isn’t a journalistic powerhouse just yet. Some of the staff articles are a line or two long. And the lead item in the “Your Neighborhood” section might be a notice about a lost Yorkie. But with the Fisher sale, Pegasus sheds its ma-and-pa status and became a real player in the mad dash for local traffic. Read More… »