The New York Times, December 31, 2006

THE YEAR AHEAD: MEDIA; Seeking to Cash In On the 'Hyperlocal'

By LORNE MANLY

THE business mantra [and cliche] "Think Globally, Act Locally" has flourished for decades. But for plenty of media companies in 2007, the first part of that gospel will be eclipsed by a souped-up devotion to matters "hyperlocal."

Newspapers like The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Los Angeles Times have vowed to amp up coverage of their regions. Private-equity firms are funneling ever-increasing investments into local media outlets like Plum TV, a fledgling network of local television stations in such playgrounds of the rich as Martha's Vineyard.

Web sites catering to ever-more-minute geographic interests are proliferating, like the citizen-journalism site Backfence.com. And a new generation of search engines, like NearbyNow and Slifter, are delving deeper into the local business communities to let people quickly learn just which shop around the corner has the best deal on an Elmo TMX or a 50-inch plasma television.

In this hyperlocal world, little is deemed too small or unimportant. At the Web site of The Naples Daily News in Florida, for example, visitors can get historical home prices, street by street, or every last snippet of information about the area's high school football teams. On outside.in, started by the author Steven Johnson and four others, all sorts of neighborhood information -- critiques of restaurants or of a school's teachers -- is organized by ZIP code.

For more traditional media outlets like newspapers, the impetus to double down on local content comes from the recognition that competitors have sideswiped their readership numbers and bottom lines. For much news and information, readers can easily canvas the Web for better and quicker results. But the home front is one place where publishers believe they can avoid much of that competition; and if they capture more of their readers' avid interest and time, advertisers are bound to follow suit and not flee.

Or so goes the thinking. In a six-point manifesto to the staff of The Los Angeles Times last month, the new publisher, David Hiller, listed local matters first. "Our strategy" he wrote, is "being authentic and indispensable in the eyes of people here, not on the East Coast and not in Chicago."

Brian Tierney, chief executive of the Inquirer's new owner, Philadelphia Media Holdings, has put it more bluntly. "We don't need a Jerusalem bureau," he was quoted saying last month. "What we need are more people in the South Jersey bureau."