If this post on a local blog about Brooklyn has it right, the NY Times will be debuting a neighborhood blog project next week on Monday. Here’s the gist:
Look out, local bloggers, the Gray Lady is moving in on your turf. Starting next week, The New York Times will be rolling out a neighborhood blog initiative starting mid-day on Monday. Our home soil of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill will be one of the two pilot sites (the other site will cover Millburn, Maplewood and South Orange in New Jersey). According to an email that was forwarded to us, the subject matter will include “cultural events, bar and restaurant openings, real estate, arts, fashion, health, social concerns and anything else that goes on in the ‘SoHo of Brooklyn.’”
Still according to the blog, the local blog network will be filled with content from the paper’s editors (one for each site) but also rely partially on citizen journalism i.e. unpaid contributions from locals readers who will be able to post everything from short video clips to wedding announcements. Apparently, the network will also feature a map-based real-estate listings section will tie back to the NY Times’ main real-estate site.
Update: Jim Schachter, editor for digital initiatives at The New York Times, confirms the news in comments:
We expect to sell ads to local merchants using our telesales and self-serve ad solution. Our two pilot sites are staffed with full-time NYTimes reporters. That’s not cheap. Obviously, it’s also not a sustainable model. We’re trying to figure out what would be. Can we create a combination of journalism, technology and advertising that people who don’t work for us can adopt? How much or how little oversight by us would be needed to keep the quality high? Would people pay to be associated with us? Would there be enough revenue that some split between us and a non-NYT blogger would work? I’d love to know what readers here think.
The New York Times and blogging, it’s not a new relationship. The institution operates a good number of blogs on its own, it acquired and started using BlogRunner back in November 2007, it co-invested in blogging platform WordPress and Federated Media Publishing, and it’s doing all kinds of good stuff with APIs nowadays.
That said, its Internet advertising revenues are dropping while its visitor numbers are also in decline. The local blog initiative could be a way to counter both trends, although Sarah Lacy could have a thing or two to say about the former, based on her most recent BusinessWeek column on the expected slow-down of the local advertising market.
(Hat tip to Jonathan Butler)
If they connect this to some nice Mobile blogging tools this can be really powerful. Hope they will release the API soon, so Mobypicture can connect!
Wow.
I think this is a truly bold experiment for a mainstream publication like the New York Times. It has the potential to redefine the traditional boundaries between reader and journalist while capitalising on one of the NYT’s great assets, namely its brand and reputation.
I am eagerly anticipating how this will work out, but it it does succeed, it may become one of the most noteworthy stories of the year.
From India
Anjali Sen
Positives:
- Crowdsourcing content – not just news that’s fit to print. Big change.
- NYTimes is investing in online, and not just cutting print costs.
Negatives:
- Too little, too late.
- Tough local ad market.
- Loss of focus. Is NYT a global brand or local???
Is crowdsourcing really a positive here? I know it’s a buzzword and everything, but will random (unpaid) voices under the NYT banner do anything for business? I think it has the potential very quickly bring down their rep.
agreed
freefreebiefinder.com/
I smell google localized ads. This could have a great local ads effect that might show how to keep the small business above water…
On one hand, this could be seen as very innovative. On the other, very cheap. They aren’t going to pay these local bloggers for their content?
I am pretty sure that the appeal of free content was part of their thinking
I totally agree! Article in paper = journalist [paid]. Article on blog = blogger [free]
Kinda sad but true. Aside from the financial aspect, it’s good to see NY Times is at least keeping up with the game, so to speak.
“…the other site will cover Millburn, Maplewood and South Orange in New Jersey”
This sounds like it will be a partnership with Patch.com, which has those three towns in beta for their hyperlocal blogging/news network.
A coincidence, not a partnership.
Hi. I’m the editor for digital initiatives at The New York Times. Thanks to Techcrunch for mentioning our project and to the commenters for offering some opinions. No, to the best of my knowledge, Anjali Sen does not work for The Times!
Anthony: we expect to sell ads to local merchants using our telesales and self-serve ad solution.
Shawn: our two pilot sites are staffed with full-time NYTimes reporters. That’s not cheap. Obviously, it’s also not a sustainable model. We’re trying to figure out what would be. Can we create a combination of journalism, technology and advertising that people who don’t work for us can adopt? How much or how little oversight by us would be needed to keep the quality high? Would people pay to be associated with us? Would there be enough revenue that some split between us and a non-NYT blogger would work? I’d love to know what readers here think.
Hi Jim, is this a partnership with Google’s patch.com? Or is it a coincidence that you’re going into the same three NJ towns?
A coincidence. Also: unless you know something I don’t, patch — however formidable a competitor — isn’t google, the Tim Armstrong connection notwithstanding.
Our Brooklyn site is collaborating with the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. CUNY journalism students will teach residents of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill about reporting and the use of interactive media. They also will maintain a blog of their own about the pilot project, one way that that we will share our findings with educators and journalists. Some students will also have summer internships working on The Local.
Hello Jim,
I think you can actually get some very high quality bloggers to blog for you at a de minimus rate.
As open initiatives such as Wikipedia, Linux, Mozilla, etc. have shown, there is really no shortage of expertise and experts who enjoy the sheer fact of expressing themselves to a wide audience. Most bloggers do so for the satisfaction of “starting the conversation” and being heard, not to make money.
The key issue for you will be quality control/managing conflicts of interest/and protecting your brand. Your brand is reputation is what will allow you to attract high quality bloggers, but it is also what places you at the most risk. I am sure the Jayson Blair episode is clearly on yur minds.
My suggestion?
I believe sunshine is the best disinfectant.
1. Have all bloggers make a declaration that they are not being paid to promote a product/or have other conflicts of interest at the end of every single article they write.
2. Allow people to rate each article on multiple dimensions including: quality of article/insights, objectivity or analysis, and fairness in reporting
This way these bloggers will be putting their reputations on the line with every single article, and readers will be able to call them out whenever they suspect bias or other questionable behaviour.
This will obviously not eliminate outright fraud, but it will go a long way of creating a new model for traditional-new media collaboration.
From India
Anjali Sen
Jim — have to say, i’m an avid online reader of the grey lady and all the blogs (esp. freakonomics, pour, well, carpetbagger, wheels….). Ever think of giving away a Kindle in exchange for a $400 “subscription”? Would seem to be free recurring ad and sub revenue without the delivery burden.
Metblogs has been humming along globally since 2003. the *Ist (eg. Gothamist.com) sites have also been around for about that long. Not knocking the NYTimes for seizing on a great opportunity, regardless they are a little late to the dance.
I wonder if the media business model is plastic enough and will actually create benefit for the NYtimes org.
Apples and oranges.
Gothamist does not blog from a single neighborhood. It’s a citywide blog. Since mid-2007, NYT has operated a City Room (I’m the editor), featuring the reporting of the metro staff:
http://nytimes.com/cityroom
This new effort is a different, hyperlocal approach.
It puzzles me to see how many people look down on the NYT as ‘not getting it’ and being the type of media company that we’ll see perish. From all the traditional media sites, NYT best positioned to be a survivor of the consolidation. Reputable authors creating reasonably researched content, married with an ever more innovative product team churning out new features, it’s no wonder why they are still the gravitational news site no. 1 with tons of direct traffic.
We won’t see neither the media business nor the NYT go away. Yes, future cash cows may look very different from todays, but reaching people piggybacking engaging content on branded sites is there to stay.
Definitely a step in the right direction. If any newspaper outlet can pull it off, it’s NYT. It could be another step in becoming a major media empire if they can sink into major markets.
Fascinating. I just started testing a neighborhood blog with the thought of it being the primary information outlet for the very immediate community. I was hoping the ‘hood would enjoy the benefits of extremely local ads, reviews, and news. It never occurred to me that news outlets would care about content for such small geographic locations. Maybe that’s a commentary on my city’s news coverage. This is exciting. Thanks NYT! Maybe now I can get the neighborhood organization to fund it the project!
One big question will be whether The Times fits smoothly into the existing ecosystem of local blogs or whether it becomes seen as an 800-pound competitor soaking up the already small amounts of local ad dollars available. To date, local blogging has not been a zero sum game, as more blogs have typically meant more reciprocal links. But there’s only so much room on the block. It will be interesting to watch, especially for those of us currently making a living of our local blogs. It will also be interesting to see whether The Times brand will be able to nurture enough good will on a local level to generate reader tips, the lifeblood of any good blog.
“The New York Times Expected To Launch Local Blog Network On Monday ”
What on earth for?
It’s very exciting to see more hyperlocal sites being launched.
Folks like Patch, Neighborlogs, and now NYT are doing some really interesting things.
At least two big questions though:
1) Is there a cost structure that works here that includes full time editorial headcount.
2) How do you manage the inevitable abundance of hyperlocal content? Yes, millburn, nj now has two great sites, but they also have yelp, craigslist, twitter, goodrec, tons of nj.com blogs, and someday facebook status updates.
We at outside.in are trying to aggregate and organize all of that local content to make it easier to find and digest.
Thanks for the nod, Mark. If every neighborhood ends up with a dozen neighborhood blogs, Outside.in will be sitting pretty
Cool to see NYT continue their experimentation with local and community content. You only need to look at what they’ve done with Boston.com’s Your Town and the City Room efforts to see their continuing commitment to figuring out this business.
You can also look at those projects and see the challenges of a centrally owned and operated local content effort.
We built Neighborlogs believing that independent content entrepreneurs make the best local site owners. I hope the NYT is also thinking about ways to have content, resource and financial relationships with these independent sites. Jim, it sounds like this is definitely on your mind. There will always be levels that the big guys can’t scale down to. They’ll need to find a way to connect with the thousands that can.
It’s amazing these online papers have taken this long to take notice to the blog industry. They need to stop focusing on their paper (physical paper), and start focusing more online.
Robin:
Not sure how else to contact you, but thought you may want to know about this domain sale: http://www.doma...51-million/4154
Go Grey Lady!
Long term you have to think that the NYT is trying to figure out a cost-effective model to fill in the void as local rags go down. Here in SF I subscribe to the NYT and the Chronicle. I read both online as well, but if the Times had comics and some decent state and local coverage I’d dump the Chronicle in a minute. Now it seems like they’ll dump me first.
One business model: NYT as the national paper with local editions powered mostly by the blogosphere and user-generated content. That works for me!
Perhaps five years ago this could have been an interesting experiment for the NYT. Today it seems like unfortunate timing — as savvy advertisers continue their spend shift to native digital media companies.
Clearly, the executive leadership at legacy newspapers still believe that they can tweak their old business model in the hope that they will survive.
Meanwhile, they continue to cut the staff from the core competency of the company. And, most forward-looking investors seem to have abandoned the “newspaper industry” long ago.
At the heart of the matter is their inherent legacy cost structure. Just about anything that they attempt to do in the digital arena can be done cheaper, faster and better someplace else.
BTW, soon I don’t believe that there will be any value-add for an Indie blogger to be associated with the NYT brand — any more than it’s a benefit to be associated with Western Union.
Now, if they allow personalization and become the “Local Information and Connection Utility” that Newspaper Next implores them to become, I could be convinced to pay for such a service. (Maybe). At kayanta.com, we are experimenting with applications with the intent to allow consumers, publishers, and advertisers within a locale to connect in novel ways. Perfect application for efforts like the one described here.
King5 TV in Seattle has something similar with CitizenRain.com.
Not surprising that NYC would pursue the same/similar thing.
It’s no coincidence that both Google (aka Patch) and the NY Times have selected Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn as the place for their “Para Sites”: it’s where MaplewoodOnline.com has successfully grown a local online community over the past decade.
Their reporters follow the very active online forum, and repurpose content as “journalism.” Invariably, Patch’s stories are about local businesses, so they can keyword-up their content and re-sell it at a later date. And they’re still being scooped by local print media on real stories.
checking this out
Local news, restaurants, listings, readers letters etc?
This will affect local newspaper web operations much more than the so called blogosphere.
The word blog has been inserted into this story by the NYT as a shiny object to distract – the real target here is traditional local news operations.
As a resident of one of those test site areas (NJ), and a local (print publisher) (yes, a true dinosaur) I will be watching their project with great interest.
Can an online site, no matter the amount of muscle behind it, serve the community where it resides – both the town’s residents and small business owners?
Boring and generic. Will they evolve into relevancy quickly enough to matter?
If local public will get a chance to write a post, the blog might get filled with spam.
They will require a strong monitoring system and large number of human resource to authorize these posts.
sales of news paper may go down.
I think you can actually get some very high quality bloggers to blog for you at a de minimus rate.
They will require a strong monitoring system and large number of human resource to authorize these posts