Link wrap: hyperlocal network, value of readers

Can anyone tap the $100bn potential of hyperlocal news?

From a piece by Michael Gluckstadt on FastCompany comes this interesting idea that the New York Times might licence its hyperlocal platform, Local, to bloggers and freelances in other towns.

The third aspect of the Local’s strategy reveals where the Times sees the most opportunity. If the Local’s test run proves to be successful — meaning that it creates a vibrant content site with an engaged audience — the Times would look to license the Local’s platform to bloggers in other towns as a prepackaged tool kit.

“Our hypothesis,” Schachter explains, “is that there is a swath of people — experts of various sorts, journalists, self-trained bloggers — who would want our assistance in professionalizing their work and who would love to be associated with the Times. We could help those people mobilize their communities and gather local-advertising dollars in extremely low-cost ways. That could work, economically, for these local journalism entrepreneurs, and, at scale, it might work for us.”

A New York Times-branded blogging platform would also come with some unsettled issues for the Gray Lady. Right now, every word that appears on the Local has a Times editor reviewing it. Would the newspaper oversee franchised content delivered under its name in the same way? “It’s safe to say that we would exercise whatever level of oversight was required to protect the standing of our news brand,” Schachter says. Would that even be feasible? “You are ahead of where we are,” he admits.

The chasm between the value of print and web readers
This Colombia Journalism Review piece by Ryan Chittum did the rounds a week or so ago. It looks at what your average print reader is worth to a newspaper versus an online reader.

Print newspapers took in $34.7 billion in ad revenue last year and had 49 million subscribers. That works out to $709 per subscriber (Unlike my “1965” post, I’m not using Alan Mutter’s 2009 estimates, $28.1 billion, since I don’t have an estimate on 2009 circulation. Using his ‘09 estimate, the print figure drops to $573 per subscriber. But total subscribers will fall, too, by an as-yet-undetermined amount. If they fall 4 percent, that will work out to about $603 per subscriber).

Newspapers online had $3.1 billion in ad revenue last year and averaged 67.3 million unique visitors per month. That’s $46 per reader.

$709 (or even $603) versus $46. And you wonder why newspapers still like their print products.

Much more in the post.