What do readers have a right to expect from their local news publisher? This question of course has a lot of answers – from quality journalism to a useful UX. What I’d like to focus on here is something we at United Robots often discuss with our publisher clients; the importance of providing unique local content. Or – from the reader’s point of view – having access to a local news site that is the hub of local journalism and information that you can’t easily find anywhere else. The content that defines the community you live in.
A couple of years ago, Steven Waldman, President of Rebuild Local News, wrote a great opinion piece for The Poynter Institute titled How high school sports can save democracy. In it, he talks about how local journalism has a key mission in holding the powers that be accountable through its reporting. But he points out that, crucially, local media also have what he calls a community cohesion role: “Obituaries, high school sports, school board meetings, the new economic development plan, the amateur theater production, a couple’s 50th wedding anniversary — these types of stories teach neighbors about each other, provide basic information on community problems and create a sense of shared interest.”
Locals have a right to expect the big, investigative stories, but also all the small stories and local information that makes the community what it is. From a local publisher’s point of view, it’s about giving readers a reason to visit and revisit your site. Or rather, give them many reasons. Of course, the most important source of unique local content are local journalists, working out in the community and reporting on all the stories that affect its people.
However, with newsrooms increasingly under financial pressure, many cleverly supplement their human journalism with content and information pulled together using AI and automation, combined with local data. That last part is key – with local data, the content is still uniquely local, even though it’s produced automatically.
Amedia in Norway is a local media group who is particularly good at leveraging automation to achieve their local – and hyperlocal – content goals. They have 120 local news titles spread over a geographically large but relatively sparsely populated country and are tasked with making sure they all have enough journalism and content to fill their sites on a daily basis. Rather than producing generic content which could be published by any site, the central editorial team helps the local newsrooms go even more local. They do this by turning publicly available data into hyperlocal content and building tools for their journalists to turn the data into deeper stories about their communities. Says Markus Rask Jensen, Director of News at Amedia: “One of the key findings that we've made is that the more local a news title’s content and its distribution are, the more relevant it is to readers and the better are its numbers. Hyperlocal news with the right timing and context really works, and reader numbers and sales suffer if publications become stale and static.”
Another way to generate community content is by asking locals to contribute information about the organisations and groups they are involved in. The French media group behind Ouest France have built a clever self service and distribution platform for local people, associations and companies. The platform allows locals to communicate and market events across a range of categories such as entertainment, sports, church services, evening courses etc. The events can be published in several formats in newspapers as well as on news media web sites and in apps. The information is of value to both sender and receiver.
I recently talked to one of United Robots’ publisher partners who want to try out automated local real estate content. They are deep into growing a digital subscription offer for readers across their many markets, and they are very clear on why they want to try out content automation. “In order to attract paying subscribers, we need to provide real local value. And that means we need more unique local content.”