Comments on: Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking

By: Found on the Web… Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking: SteveOuting.com | mikolas

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:21:32 +0000

[...] came across the following interesting article while browsing via SteveOuting.com. A good read for everyone working in newspaper industry. Email This [...]

By: Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking: SteveOuting.com | mikolas

Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking: SteveOuting.com | mikolas — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:49:59 +0000

[...] Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking: SteveOuting.com Email This Post [...]

By: bob brouse

bob brouse — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:11:55 +0000

Hi
Think this kind of conversation is important. Mainly for the free information, I am not certain why someone would ask you how your finances work, anyhow, our site water.ca does make money. We have what is called a boil water advisory map and we charge folks to let them know there is trouble with their neighbourhood water. Beats going to the clinic. There are ads sold, we charge for directory upgrades, there are sponsors for the special reports.
Dont learn all this stuff because it fell from the sky I can assure you. Its blogs and sites like these that help. As for newspapers,I havent exactly figured out why they tank, some arrogance, some misguided ventures, the attack of ebay,monster and the like. One fo the things a paper still has, is you the viewer, you read an editorial you dont like you get steamed! the real issue isnt us dying off(the readers) is the being borns(young people) they just count on tv, the web, twitter, unless the paper has a snoop dog special with a twitter site at the end(ask for the action!) not sure how to help you newspaper heads. And..just before mister finance jumps on me,i am accredited at the national press theatre in Ottawa, and was the first accredited web journalist there. Should have tried explaining the internet to the newspapers ten years ago.
all the best in your column and career.
bob brouse.

By: Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Our Continued Wishful Thinking about “Media Localism”

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:58:14 +0000

[...] think they both make some interesting points, [and there is a running exchange going here] but I want to add a few other frequently overlooked points about the whole “media [...]

By: links for 2008-07-07 « David Black

links for 2008-07-07 « David Black — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:33:03 +0000

[...] Response to a critic of my hyper-local thinking – SteveOuting.com “Mark Potts, one of the founders of Backfence.com, a defunct network of citizen-journalism websites, objected to my reasoning, and suggested that the quality of content on Backfence sites had nothing to do with the company’s demise” (tags: internet newspapers newspapersites hyperlocal participatory journalism backfence) [...]

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:54:42 +0000

Mike: That was a mean-spirited comment. Things getting tense out there in newspaperland? … Fine, I can see how you might find Mark and I arguing over businesses that didn’t make it not your cup of tea. On the other hand, his company (Backfence) and mine (which was not hyper-local, but still has relevance because of its reliance on user content) burned through several million dollars in attempts to figure out how to turn “citizen journalism”/user content into a business. I like to think that efforts like that (and there are many others in the UGC space that also failed) don’t just waste investors’ money, but advance things so that others who follow can learn from our mistakes and perhaps crack the code. I believe hyper-local can become an important industry; do traditional media companies want to take part, or let Google, et al have it and get further entrenched in local markets?

To your more personal question, this blog is like many a personal blog: my outlet of expression, and not an income source. I post it when inspired about something; I have no expectations about readership. I continue to write my E&P column as I have for many years; it’s a very small part of what I do. I’m currently working on a couple of entrepreneurial projects; one is tied in with the newspaper industry, the other is not.

By: Mike Hudson

Mike Hudson — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:44:49 +0000

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or how many failed Internet impresarios can argue about a business exactly nobody has turned a profit on while still agreeing that newspapers suck?

Question for Mr. Outing: How do you make a living? It can’t be this blog, since even with a link on E&P you’ve still only managed to generate six comments plus this one in the past couple of days. You’ve written ad nauseam about the lessons you’ve learned when your own business failed, you seem not to be able to afford a daily newspaper and E&P Online can’t be paying you all that much for what, a monthly column.

What is it that you do, you know, to pay the rent?

By: Dan Pacheco

Dan Pacheco — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:36:30 +0000

Here’s a more detailed version of what I posted above: http://tinyurl.com/6mj937

By: mr local

mr local — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:12:35 +0000

enough about backfence already. it’s cooked.
there are plenty of other examples of successful local sites / applications / content. why don’t we start focusing on them rather than continuing to give legs to a dead duck and platform for its creators?

By: Dan Pacheco

Dan Pacheco — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:33:37 +0000

If I can just play devil’s advocate here, I think this comment of yours is telling: “I can’t begin to describe how dull this collection of content is to me.”

In your view, it’s all about you, right? That’s OK, I’m not attacking that statement. You’re hardly alone. Because in my view, it’s all about me. And to my wife, it’s all about her, and my friends are ultimately interested in what they’re into. Sometimes we share interests in common, but in most cases we don’t. We’re all individuals.

One of the biggest problems with editorial oversight is that it makes it easy for us to fool ourselves into believing that we know what everyone else will be interested in. It’s the lure of the ivory tower. The truth is that for any editorial decision you make, only a small subset of people will agree with your choices. You can call that subset a niche.

I can tell you for certain that the regular readers and participants of YourHub, and Northwest Voice, and Bakotopia, and even Backfence and Enthusiast Group sites, really connect(ed) with those brands. The problem is that it’s very difficult to build a business out of just a few niches. That’s not the fault of “citizen journalism,” but a significant problem that can be solved.

A successful niche strategy requires MANY MANY niches. So we should be trying to figure out how to position ourselves as the owner of a network of niches. Let thousands of enthusiasts build their little ivory towers of a few hundred people.

Don’t think this is possible? Check out Ning. Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape) has done it. So maybe the question we should ask is how we can do what Ning has done at a local level, and also leverage the unique knowledge and assets we have for “terrestrial” distribution of content — i.e. print.