Quality journalism alone is not enough to help sustain hyperlocal news sites. A “live” or social media strategy may help make a difference. This is an observation of several failed attempts at local sites in UK, as well as a most recent one which seems to be “quietly confident” for its future.
There have been attempts to run a local news site to fill the gap left by the disappearing local newspapers. Three such attempts are Saddleworth News, Guardian Local (Leeds, Cardiff, Edinburgh), and Wrexham.
A little history
Saddleworth News: Started in February 2010 by a former Sky News journalist, who wrote a long article chronicling how he single-handedly created this site, wrote quality journalism contents on a daily basis, attracted increasing traffic and traction, but was not able to make it financially viable – he could not sell enough ads to local businesses to make his efforts financially sustainable. He turned the site over to a regional university October 2011. The article he wrote chronicling his experience is titled “Local newspapers’ crisis: my hyperlocal site was fine, but it didn’t pay.”
Guardian Local: In March 2010, Guardian started its regional news pilot Guardian Local, which saw three “beatbloggers” cover Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds for the newspaper. In April 2011, Guardian decided to end this project. According to a blog post by Guardian staff, “while the blogs have found engaged local readerships and had good editorial impact, the project is not sustainable in its present form.”
Wrexham: It was started in summer 2011 and saw a steady growth of site traffic. In 2012, they opened a physical office in town center and has a full-time journalist on staff.
Quality journalism and measurable impact are what the three sites have in common
All three sites boast significant and measurable impact in the community, which is evident in the site traffic volumes and community feedback.
- Saddleworth News: In early 2012, more than 20,000 unique users per month, in an area of only 24,000 people
- Guardian Local: In July 2010, the Edinburgh site had the most monthly unique browsers with 36,588, Leeds had 32,678 while Cardiff recorded 24,160 over the same period.
- Wrexham: Month on month our readership and interaction goes up up and up with May 2012 seeing us hitting 100,000+ pageviews in a month for the first time.
However, quality journalism is not enough for a sustained operation when confronting the economic reality. In the case of Saddleworth News, the freelance owner/writer said he “only ever made £150 a month from ads, a paltry return given I had extended the time I spent writing it to two hours every weekday.” The Guardian didn’t disclose the specific reasons for closing the three local sites; but it is widely guessed to be a financial decision as well.
What is Wrexham doing different to make it “quietly confident” for the future?
Journalism.co.uk published an article June 15, 2012, which took “a look inside local news site Wrexham.com, which first launched just less than a year ago and recently moved into its first offices and took on a full-time journalist.”
If, a year from now, Wrexham still grows strong, here’s some strategies that its owner, Rob Taylor, adopts that (supposedly) make the difference, as quoted from the Journalism.co.uk article. It should be noted that most of the “strategies” below are either not seen on the sites of Saddleworth News and Guardia Local, or not mentioned in the accounts by the founder or operator of those two sites.
At the start he set off by trying to follow a traditional newspaper model when it came to design, but found this to be rather “word-heavy”. Since then a custom design has seen the site evolve into its current form.
Part of the site’s strategy is to offer not just local news content but to be a wider resource for residents and visitors alike. The site operates a weather station and webcams around town offering live footage.
As part of the live strategy the site also recently launched a crowdsourced fuel prices monitor system, offering updated information on the cost of fuel at petrol stations across town.
Earlier this year the site ran a liveblog offering fuel price updates in recognition of fuel-related national news events. This has now developed into an on-site application launched at the end of May which enables users to log into the system via the site forum and upload the latest fuel prices they have seen.
As well as providing the information on its website Wrexham.com also tweets out the latest prices in the morning at around 8.30am and at midday.
The site is also due to launch a free iPhone app and iPad app by the end of July which will incorporate this feature, and the ability to submit prices and have notifications sent to them. Users will also be able to submit stories by taking images of news events which are geolocated and sent to the newsdesk.
He added that the site’s “Wrexham tenner”, a £10 incentive for specially selected story tip-offs and submissions, has also shown that “people are quite excited to be part of the news process”.
