Written By Kate Zimmermann | January 25, 2007 | Share This |

Today the L.A. Times announced that it will begin shifting from a print to an online news source. In addition to adding video, photo galleries, social features, interactive calendars, and local information to their website, the Times will “phase” their print edition into a smaller, sparser paper. The transition was evidently inspired by an internal report that found the Times to be “web-stupid”. The group cited leadership problems, lack of adequate focus on the website, understaffing, and “creaky” technology as key problems that were stalling the paper’s growth.

The idea behind the transition is that news should break first on the web, and second in print. Said James O’Shea, editor of the L.A. Times, “the redesign will question and challenge every section of the newspaper.” One of the most interesting additions to the Times online will be it’s “hyperlocal news” section. LAtimes.com writes, “Those pages would rely heavily on content such as community calendars, crime statistics, school test scores and neighborhood discussion groups.”

The notion of “hyperlocal” news was brought up last week by Chris Anderson on his Long Tail blog. Anderson coins it as the “Vanishing Point Theory of News,”

“Our interest in a subject is in inverse proportion to its distance (geographic, emotional or otherwise) from us. For instance, the news that my daughter got a scraped knee on the playground today means more to me than a car bombing in Kandahar.”

Hyperlocal news also caught the attention of Search Engine Watch, who today theorized,

“The opportunity exists, to create attractive and unique local destinations…This could involve personalized news readers (a la MyYahoo!) that bring together national news, local news, classifieds, directory listings, local weather and sports, movie listings (traditionally all siloed into different search buckets). This can all be customized with RSS, and can offer a unique local experience.”

Arguably, Facebook has already achieved a model of providing “hyperlocal” news to users, through their News Feed. Whether or not that can be re-applied to a national news source remains to be seen. Certainly the L.A.Times is moving in the right direction - as I predicted, at the beginning of this year:

“As newspapers move increasingly online, publishers will look for new ways to differentiate online to offline story coverage. Online coverage will be more up-to-date, though with less editing and faster turnover, whereas offline news will encompass a more analytic voice, incorporating reader feedback (that was perhaps, generated online).”

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