Local news is a vertical.
To succeed going forward, local newspapers need to treat local news as a vertical product.
Newspapers, traditionally, are horizontal, serving many interests and needs with a single product.
Web sites need to be more singularly focused.
Look at the way Glam.com now owns the fashion vertical, or how American Idol has create a vertical for own product that now covers multiplatforms (TV, the Web, CDs, books, concert tours, mobile phones, etc.).
Local newspapers should aim for the same ownership of local news and information across multiplatforms, and especially dive deep on the Web -- breaking news, video, community participation, databases, classifieds, IYP, and every thing else a publisher, editor or content producer can think of to ensure complete ownership of local. That's what hyperlocal really means.
The last thing you should do is outsource community participation. You need to own your relationships with your best customers -- your readers and your contributors, the people in the local community that make it what it is -- a community. Letting another company own that relationship is a strategic mistake of monumental proportions.
That's why Media News signing a deal to turn over commenting functions to Topix is just dumb beyond belief.
Food for thought.
You can read more on Howard Ownen's take on Topix by clicking here.
UPDATE: For clarification, The News-Times was once managed by MediaNews for Hearst and during this period, Topix was incorporated into the online newspaper. Hearst took over control on August of 2008. Wikipedia has a decent write-up on the musical chairs...
On September 26, 2007, ten plaintiffs filed suit in response to an arrest of day laborers at a public park in Danbury, Connecticut. Plaintiffs amended their complaint on November 26, 2007.
