Public radio - The Power of Local in a Global Era

Can a strong well executed local strategy compensate a station from the perceived loss of bypass? The world is going direct and the consumer wants to time shift - so bypass is going to happen anyway.

Here is Chris Anderson of Wired on the topic. This is why he has stopped listening to NPR:-

The Vanishing Point theory of news

Chatting with colleagues about "hyperlocal" journalism as the future of newspapers, I finally came up with the right metaphor for a phenomenon we all experience: that 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.

Am I proud of this? No. But it's true. And it explains why I've stopped listening to NPR (I can't think of a worse way to wake up than to a news report that begins with the words "Another bombing in Baghdad..." when I know that one of the main reasons for the attack was to get covered by the international media in the first place. Plus it no longer counts as news to me.)

I call this the Vanishing Point theory of news.

There's nothing new about this (it's a truism of the American newsroom that Paris, Texas counts for more than Paris, France), but it bears repeating. The future of media is to stop boring us with news that doesn't relate to our lives. I'll start reading my "local" newspaper again when it covers my block.

So this is a sample of one - "Big deal Rob!" OK but he is really in touch with the trends isn't. Isn't Chris worth listening too.

OK here is more evidence that local local is a big money maker. (This is loosely quoted from a great new book called Made to Stick that I will review in full next week)

The most successful local paper in America is the Daily Record in Dunn, North Carolina about 40 miles from Raleigh. It has 14,000 residents. It is a blue collar town. The local diner is packed in the morning with people eating big breakfasts and the waitresses call you "Hon". The town recently got a Walmart.

So an ordinary town - right?

But everyone in Dunn reads the local paper. In fact more than everyone in town reads the local paper. The Daily Record's penetration is 112%. To get 112% one of two things must be true. People from outside Dunn read the paper or some households buy more than one paper.

Please have a look at their web site - what might happen to your station if you covered your community like this? Mind you having a trial where a wife castrated her husband with her bare hands takes some beating as a headline! Look at the photo section - Pets - I love it.

How would you like that kind of support? What is the Daily Record doing that you could do in your station?

Hoover Adams, has been the publisher for more than 50 years. He believes that papers should be relentlessly local in their coverage. He is a zealot about local coverage. "All of us know" he wrote in a memo to staff "That the main reason anybody reads a local newspaper is for local names and pictures. That's the one thing that we can do better than anybody else. And it is the thing that our readers can't get anywhere else."

The Heaths (Dan and Chip - the authors of Made to Stick) then go on to make the point that we all know this to be true but that we tend to fail to execute. "The average local newspaper is loaded with with stories, analysis of pro sports teams and spot photos - nary a person in site."

Hoover is relentless in keeping the focus truly local. He adds "The fact is that a local newspaper can never get enough local names. I'd happily hire two more typesetters and add two more pages in every edition of each paper if we had the names to fill them up"

Chatting with colleagues about "hyperlocal" journalism as the future of newspapers, I finally came up with the right metaphor for a phenomenon we all experience: that 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.

Am I proud of this? No. But it's true. And it explains why I've stopped listening to NPR (I can't think of a worse way to wake up than to a news report that begins with the words "Another bombing in Baghdad..." when I know that one of the main reasons for the attack was to get covered by the international media in the first place. Plus it no longer counts as news to me.)

I call this the Vanishing Point theory of news.

There's nothing new about this (it's a truism of the American newsroom that Paris, Texas counts for more than Paris, France), but it bears repeating. The future of media is to stop boring us with news that doesn't relate to our lives. I'll start reading my "local" newspaper again when it covers my block.

So this is a sample of one - "Big deal Rob!" OK but he is really in touch with the trends isn't. Isn't Chris worth listening too.

OK here is more evidence that local local is a big money maker. (This is loosely quoted from a great new book called Made to Stick that I will review in full next week)

The most successful local paper in America is the Daily Record in Dunn, North Carolina about 40 miles from Raleigh. It has 14,000 residents. It is a blue collar town. The local diner is packed in the morning with people eating big breakfasts and the waitresses call you "Hon". The town recently got a Walmart.

So an ordinary town - right?

But everyone in Dunn reads the local paper. In fact more than everyone in town reads the local paper. The Daily Record's penetration is 112%. To get 112% one of two things must be true. People from outside Dunn read the paper or some households buy more than one paper.

Please have a look at their web site - what might happen to your station if you covered your community like this? Mind you having a trial where a wife castrated her husband with her bare hands takes some beating as a headline! Look at the photo section - Pets - I love it.

How would you like that kind of support? What is the Daily Record doing that you could do in your station?

Hoover Adams, has been the publisher for more than 50 years. He believes that papers should be relentlessly local in their coverage. He is a zealot about local coverage. "All of us know" he wrote in a memo to staff "That the main reason anybody reads a local newspaper is for local names and pictures. That's the one thing that we can do better than anybody else. And it is the thing that our readers can't get anywhere else."

The Heaths (Dan and Chip - the authors of Made to Stick) then go on to make the point that we all know this to be true but that we tend to fail to execute. "The average local newspaper is loaded with with stories, analysis of pro sports teams and spot photos - nary a person in site."

Hoover is relentless in keeping the focus truly local. He adds "The fact is that a local newspaper can never get enough local names. I'd happily hire two more typesetters and add two more pages in every edition of each paper if we had the names to fill them up"