Huffington Post To Take on Local Newspapers
Last night at Guardian News & Media's internal Future of Journalism conference, Arianna Huffington revealed that her Huffington Post property is planning to expand into local news. Initially, the site will launch an edited news aggregation site (similar to the main Huffington Post web site) localized for the US metro area around Chicago, Illinois. The site will be managed by a single editor to start. "We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news [sic], not just the political blogging the way we began," Huffington said to the conference attendees.
Launched three years ago in May of 2005 as a politics-focused celebrity group blog, the Huffington Post has since grown up -- a lot. It added original reporting in November 2006, has taken $10 million in venture financing over 2 rounds, has expanded beyond politics to cover media, business, the environment, and other hot button issues, and is the most linked to blog on the web according to Technorati. Now HuffPo wants to taken on local newspapers.
That makes sense given that analysts have predicted that local ad spending will jump 48% this year to $12.6 billion. The majority of those ads will be search advertising, but clearly, local information is hot with consumers. We've written about the rise of hyperlocal information on ReadWriteWeb before -- Huffington and company are seeking to take advantage of this trend. They want to turn the Huffington Post into a national, virtual newspaper group -- think Gannett or McClatchy but completely online.
And that makes sense, too. A comScore study that we reported on in March revealed that 38% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 are unlikely to read a physical newspaper during a typical week, but non-news readers are still voracious consumers of news. They just get their news online -- and not just from traditional newspaper sites.
"Non-newspaper readers are a particularly important segment to reach because they are heavier than average news consumers - they just prefer to consume it in a digital format," said comScore executive vice president Jack Flanagan. "That they are receptive to print, TV, and Internet news brands indicates a broad opportunity online, but the brands that will ultimately win over these key news consumers are the ones that successfully integrate cutting edge digital content with high quality journalism." Clearly, that is a message that HuffPo gets -- their tag line is "The Internet Newspaper: News Blogs Video Community," and Arianna Huffington said last night that much of their venture funding will go toward building out a team of reporters. Last year they hired BBC reporter Elinor Shields to become the sites managing editor.
However, the Huffington Post is an edited aggregator -- a team of editors oversees the site and specifically decides what links get space on the sites, writes headlines by hand, selects images, etc. Last year I wrote for a competitor to the Huffington Post in the political news blogosphere, and from first hand experience I can tell you that it is hard work to gather and post news links and manage original and wire content. It will be interesting to see if HuffPo will be able to scale their local strategy to compete with automated local news aggregators like Outsite.in and YourStreet (our coverage).
Image credit: jdlasica
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Hooray. Our local paper has given up reporting on local news, so I have been looking for an alernative to tell me about what is happening with local politics, crime and courts.
Just what we need. Another site built out of scraps and bits grabbed from places where real reports collect, verify and write. You seriously think HuffPo is going to send anybody out to sit through city council meetings or read documents or watch trials? Not a chance. It will a mass of blah-blah-blah based on someone else's hard work. And when there is nobody left to do that hard work, where will the HuffPos go?
Maybe instead of creating its own Chicago-centric site, Huffington Post should have instead invested money in The Beachwood Reporter, which is already filling this niche with talented reporters and Chicago-centric news.
@Ann Burns:
Do you think this could create more demand and competition for the services of local reporters? If there are only one or two people who have the knowledge and desire to cover a local town meeting, for example, does this improve the market for their writings?
If these big players want to enter local markets and need to cover local news, but don't have the resources or inclination to do so themselves, won't this make local reporters indispensable?
I don't know this particular market well enough to have an answer, but I do know that increased demand in any market is a good thing for suppliers. If newspapers have been pushing local news coverage aside because of costs, and leveraging technology restores profitability, then that will help keep local writers working.
Just some thoughts--I don't have any stake in this.
HuffPost will run into two problems moving into local coverage.
First, there are more than 25 metro areas in the US with over 2M people. Is HuffPost really going to hire 25+ editors to cover all these areas?
A second, more profound challenge is that city-level news coverage is already pretty good. If you want Chicago news, there are lots of sources to go to. What's needed (and where sites like YourStreet and Outside.in excel) is neighborhood level news. Unless HuffPost is making local news more granular, I don't see how they will be adding a lot of value to the current situation.
Thomas, I agree wholeheartedly! But do you really think those sites get the job done? Do they work for you?
For our area, Thomas's first point is right on: Seattle's city-level newspapers are fairly decent (and where they lag, the alternative Stranger and its online Slog fill in some of the gaps); there are a couple aggregation sites trying to get citywide traction but flailing in my personal view thus far - if HuffPo plans to try Seattle any time soon, they're really going to need someone incredible to be heard above all the din.
But to Thomas's other point, I disagree about out-in and y-street "excelling" as neighborhood news providers - all they're doing is redistributing the content that hyperlocal on-the-street level providers are knocking themselves out to produce - those providers are the ones who should be getting some cred for "excelling," at the very least, since they don't get the VC that seems to flow toward the aggregator-coders who wouldn't have anything to aggregate (aside from some government databases) without 'em.
I do want to say that out-in is at least respectful in how it presents our content with clarity as to its original source; more than a few wannabes bury the source, hide the original URL, shrink the link, and spend their VC money devising ways to get their scraped versions of others' work indexed instead of the original.
Anyway, I'll wrap by saying, please directly support your local hyperlocal independent news provider(s). Not the next in the growing line of national companies that are coming along and thinking they can make a buck off what that hyperlocal news provider her/himself probably hasn't yet (we're an exception) monetized.
This could be the Craig's list of editorial, and she do the kind of damage to content he did to classified advertising.
WSB is absolutely right about Outside.In and YourStreet and Topix. Ask a group of your friends if they ever go there. Then ask them if they have ever heard of them. It'll be "no" on both counts 95 percent of the time. Then ask if they've heard of the Huffington Post...
This one is the real one. This is not a drill.
Newspapers could and should have been bringing high-quality local bloggers into the fold for years. They should have been publishing bloggers on the newspaper's website and excerpting (or even publishing it) in the pages of the newspaper itself.
I talk to editors all the time who are worried about blog quality and the paper's reputation. Most believe there aren't any good bloggers out there. When I ran BostonNOW and published bloggers, I had the president of a hospital, several Ph.Ds, doctors, lawyers and, of course, over a thousand very thoughtful, very intelligent "normal" folks.
Editors don't have to publish EVERY local blogger. They can pick and choose the best. Make it an honor to get into the paper and the paper's website (do you really think Huffington is going to open her website to everybody?).
I write more about this on my blog. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts.
— John
Lucy, there is no reporting in the Beachwood Reporter. Not unless you count what Rhodes hears from his barstool at the Beachwood Tap. Point to one scrap of news that you saw there first. Does the Beachwood ever interview anyone, much less cover any news events or file any Freedom of Information Act requests?
All he does is sponge off what others report, linking to whatever news articles fit his world view and adding his snarky, but rarely interesting or original, comments. Whatever news doesn't fit his world view is dismissed as pandering to the powers that be.
Ms. Huffington’s notion that her $10 million in venture financing and her experience as a political blogger positions her to “take on local newspapers” is an ambitious one. She says she is going to start by covering local news throughout the Chicago market – I am curious to know why she views Chicago as the first step to build momentum for her nationwide rollout. Ms. Huffington might note that there are more than a hundred excellent local newspapers providing hyper-local coverage of the Chicago marketplace for decades. Together they have millions of readers, millions of dollars worth of targeted advertising supporting their publications – and they aren’t suffering from the malaise of many large metropolitan daily papers. They’re actually connected to their communities the old fashioned way. They employ hundreds of local reporters and editors who gather news are in the communities daily and an equal number of advertising reps to serve business. They have great websites and strategies for the future.
I couldn't disagree more.
Huffington Post is NOT a newspaper.
You can read more at http://alessandromachi.blogspot.com/2008/06/huffington-post-prints-another-hillary.html
or http://www.Hillary-Wins.com