The Inside Word: 'Local' Isn't Just About Geography

This story was written by Joseph Tartakoff.

Poster: Rick Ellis

Blog name: State Of Local

Company: AllYourTV.com

Backstory: Ellis is the managing editor of TV news site AllYourTV.comand is helping set up a hyperlocal news site manned by laid-off reporters in the southern suburbs of the Twin cities. He previously was the managing editor at Internet Broadcasting, where he ran websites for local TV stations.

Blog Entry: In his post, Ellis argues that the "local" in local news isn't limited to geography. "For most people online, their 'local' is more personal. Yes, they care about local news, but they also care about their friends and coworkers. They follow sports teams located in all sorts of places, they still keep in touch with the people they went to college with. That mental community they've assembled in their mind is their 'local,'" he writes. "The challenge for local news sites is to find ways to seamlessly provide those personal connections to users. To allow them to track not only the latest weather, but the season of their college soccer team, the fate of a company they worked for 10 years ago and the schedule of their son's high-school band practice."

Postscript:  Ellis ends his post by asking readers for suggestions for what the ideal local news should look like. We turned the question back to Ellis. "For me, the ideal website (would ask) do you have a ZIP code? Do you have kids?" he said. The website would then create a customized page drawing both from the site's own content and other sources (like the latest scores from a European soccer league if that's what a visitor is into). So is the hyperlocal site he is helping to set up going to incorporate anything like that? "I think they're going to do a very basic version of it," he said. "It's a startup with not a lot of money."

Please e-mail suggestions for future editions of the Inside Word to joe@paidcontent.org

By Joseph Tartakoff