Local news color, flavor go a long way

AOL’s aggressive push into the hyperlocal news space with Patch.com is looking a lot like the traditional media chain newspapers in markets across the country. Whether this expansion will prove financially successful or popular remains to be seen, but AOL is up against a growing, independent body of community sites that offer a unique take on geographic areas that Patch may not be able to replicate.

While AOL is obsessed with scale, as seen in its commitment to spend $50 million in Patch this year, and its $10 million venture fund for start-ups, smaller outlets are building local relationships and unique site branding.

As news industry observer and consultant Ken Doctor recently pointed out in his analysis of The New York Times The Local section choosing to partner with news aggregator Fwix.com, the online, local advertising market could be valued at $36 billion by 2014. This number has no doubt attracted the heavy hitters.

Patch has 41 sites in four states – California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York — with six more sites planned for those states and Massachusetts in the coming months. AOL should be commended on bringing original reporting, editorial competition and media diversity to community news ecosystems. In this case, more is more. Also to its credit, Patch is hiring.

But the group, which claims to be a “start-up that’s radically reinventing community journalism,” has the look and feel of a corporate chain business. Like other news networks with centralized operations, Patch has a one-size-fits-all content management system (the banner in the same font for all sites, top news stories on the left, embedded map on the right). This is arguably a branding necessity, but it poses a different familiarity vis-à-vis an organic neighborhood news site.

Patch launched in February 2009 – years after other community news start-ups. For instance, here is a small selection of sites that pre-date Patch and continue to deliver community news:

Class of ’08: Sheepshead Bites (NY), The Ann Arbor Chronicle (MI), The EastSider LA (CA), The Digitel (SC), B-Town Blog (WA), Cal Coast News (CA), and Chattarati (TN), NEast Philly (PA).

Class of ’07: West Seattle Blog (WA), Crosscut (WA), The Rockwall News (TX)

Class of ’06: Davidson News (NC), Red Bank Green (NJ), Broken Sidewalk (KY)

Class of ’05: New West (MT)

Class of ’04: Baristanet (NJ)

Class of ’03: Gapers Block (IL)

I have been observing independent, online news sites since June 2009, when I started compiling start-ups at InOtherNews.us. Of the 70 entries in the directory so far, I have noticed a refreshing individualism in their execution.

TheBatavian’s Howard Owens, in upstate New York, prides himself on each new local advertiser he personally secures for his news site. John Hawbaker at Chattarati, in Chattanooga Tennessee, nurtures a loyal subscriber base that spends a “sticky” average of six minutes on his site on city politics. And the former newspaper reporters over at DaggerPress in the Baltimore suburbs cover municipal government, schools and crime in Harford County “with an edge.”

Moreover, independent start-ups are committed to the new news with a common loyalty to journalistic ethics, multimedia and the latest civic engagement applications.

What does a corporatized online news landscape – MSN and Yahoo are experimenting with high-powered aggregation, Gannett with its InJersey community news network – mean for indie hyperlocals or other small news start-ups, which continue to explore sustainable revenue models?

What does it mean for the quality of local news and its neighborly feel? Like the for-profit news corporations before them, will AOL cut costs with standardization? Will they stick to lucrative advertising markets while skipping less profitable outposts?

Will AOL respond to shareholders first, corporate mandates second, and local news readers last?

Jessica Durkin is a New America Foundation Media Policy Initiative fellow. She is the founder of InOtherNews.us and sister site NewsRedux.us.