AOP Microlocal Media Forum Part 1

We did intend to live blog this event via Cover It Live but unfortunately we couldn’t get onto the Olswang Wi-Fi or get a mobile signal for a dongle. Instead I made notes in Word and rushed them online in the interval. The event now been covered elsewhere so I’ve decided to keep the notes in a relatively raw format. At the end of this post is this part recorded it-its-entirety.

Sarah Hartley Presentation
Definition of microlocal
Reasons why microlocal exists – technology and closure of local papers
In US quote from Techcrunch: “Hyperlocal sites are becoming a hot commodity”

Examples in UK
Daily Mail – Local People
conversations community gossip rather than small news sites

Foming collaborations
CN group recuiiting citizen journalists – Carlisle get share of advertising on pages

ITN proposing grand alliance – hoping for topslice money from BBC licence

PA are looking into Public Service Reporting pilot (wire service for courts and councils)
Free to anybody for public subsidy

The Guardian :beat blogger

Financial return
Trinity Mirror exploring hyperlocal advertising in the North East
And paywalls

Second trend
Public organising themselves
Collaborating for investigations: crowd sourcing
And some getting fuinding from 4iP

They Work For You
Anything you want to know on local or national Mps.

VentnorBlog
Cover local council meetings – husband and wife team

Help Me Investigate
Investigate issues – using technology to change activity

The Culture Vulture
What do you want? Backstage access that you might normally get

Live events
People’s Voice Media across many media in NW
Salford TV

Pull Jeff Jarvis quote ‘ecosystem of many players with varying motives’

Opportunities
Potential for new partnerships
Possibility of state subs funding
Creation of new revenue streams/business models

14.48
Presentation: Paul Bradshaw
Monetising micro local

No one is selling content – What are they selling?
Platform: About My Area – pay to have hyper local platform
Ads: half hyper local efforts are selling adverts – more using Addiply service
Services: Talk About Local blog itself not making money effectively – helping authorities and PR services and unions with Social Media strategy
Products: t-shirts mugs events BiNS

Low cost = low profits
Multiple revenue streams – print is high cost entry and high profits so spread out streams – NY blog quarter comes from events
New effiiciencies – collaborating with audience process as product broker audience and vendor
New advertising models – based on performance big per thousand people click or complete a sale – Goggle sells on performance
Legacy as handicap

Decoupling + end of monopoly
People never paid for news they paid for package
Niche advertising separate from prices
Platform already paid for
Membership – engage in that online community
Convenience
The 90 degree shift – moving from vertical to horizontal – spend 3 hours 40 on community sites- 2 minutes on newspaper- starting to engage with online communities

Independent’s view
Networked approach – being covered elsewhere I won’t cover it. Link is the content
Process as product – activity of going around area becomes content
Quality not quantity – spend a week on it because think it’s worth more

15.04

You can right click ‘save target’ for the MP3 here or you can listen to it below.

[audio:http://dandavies23.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/aopmicrolocalpt1.mp3]

Part two can be found here.