Running Your Own Local News Website

From Editor and Publisher:

Running Your Own Local Website

By: Hal DeKeyser


Published: January 20, 2011


Ten or 15 years ago, when I was still in the newspaper business and the writing on the wall was coming into focus, I speculated to horrified colleagues that the last new newspaper reader had already been born.


In the five years I've been out of the game, I've come to realize that I was about a generation off. The last new newspaper reader is long out of college.



You could blame papers' emerging buggy whip status on corporate ownership. Those huge corporations dug their own graves through overly leveraged buyouts, expecting monopoly-driven 20-percent-plus margins to run forever. Or blame the Internet, which made 30-hour-old news dropped once a day on your driveway look like a Victrola in an Apple store.



The "what happened" is less interesting than the "what's next," which we all know is online, although consensus on what it looks like ends there. For ex-pats from the trade like me who can't seem to stay in remission, this new era offers the chance to run your own news operation, without the big iron and distribution expense. But the barriers and headaches are numerous.



You do need technology, marketing, reporting, sales, partnerships, hosting, supplies, and on and on. Most of us are underfunded, either hoping to catch a spark or doing it as a labor of love. Or perhaps just passionately deluded.



The ease of creating a local site also creates a lot of noise. Many in the game are doing it on a lark, or without experience in reporting, writing, editing, and dealing with local governments about First Amendment issues. Whatever you do will be lumped in with all that until you prove yourself.



I've made several tries at local online news sites and portals, some as full-time ventures and now as an after-hours sideline until it catches hold. I have learned a few hard lessons along the way. As the lawyers say, your results may vary:



1. What worked to make money in print doesn't work online, at least in my experience. Don't count on making much on classifieds or banner ads.



2. Start slow. Our current beta site, DigitalPeoriaAZ.com, presents the full array of local information - schools, government, business, calendars - but not a lot of original reporting yet. It's important to get the site up, running, noticed by the search engines, and begin creating local partnerships first.



3. As an editor and publisher, I've always told reporters they have to build "what does it mean to me?" into stories, and the same goes for local portals. You have to prove your value.



4. Eventually, it has to make a buck, unless it's just a hobby. Nothing wrong with hobbies, but that's not a sustainable model upon which to build the new American journalism. Our strategy employs the experience of our partners who created the WoodlandsOnline.com site in the Houston area (and now many more). They created a system that gives local businesses an inexpensive, easy-to-use and strong marketing device, one that gets them recognized in the community and in search engines, one that targets the very local customer. Some people use a local news site as a marketing device for their real support business, like real estate, although that might create some conflicts in focus and news credibility. If you've got a better way, run with it.



5. It must be Google friendly. Eric Kintigh, who developed the Woodlands Online site that gets millions of page views, has created a system that often can get local stories and business self-publishing on the first search page within a day, when searched locally.



6. You need business partners who know about things you don't. Four keys are content, technology, marketing, and sales. My role is content and connection to communities.



7. Create partnerships. With all the sites out there, plus good and halfhearted stabs at it by the newspapers still publishing, local entities won't think they need you. Be valuable to organizations, businesses, schools, clubs, governments, and chambers. A media partner would be killer. Woodlands Online has a new partnership with CBS affiliate KHOU-TV, which plays on both of their strengths: being intensely local and regional.



8. Tell the world, through social media, links, and e-mail blasts to opt-in registrants, getting your customers and partners to promote the site and its content, repurposing messages through as many pipelines as possible.



9. Pick your niche and live it. For us, it's local. Another site in the Phoenix area concentrates only on non-school youth sports. Some are business or areas of business, like real estate, or even more narrow niches, such as Hispanic women in business.

I haven't found the Holy Grail of online journalism yet, but I'm convinced something will fill the space vacated by good local newspapers. If you have ideas, please share them. We'll compare notes at either the billionaires' conference or the 12-step program for recovering journalists.



Hal DeKeyser was a reporter, photographer, opinion editor, columnist, and publisher in the Phoenix area for 25 years. He can be reached at hald@whizbanggroup.com.