The partnership between the Seattle Times and a group of Seattle community news blogs has drawn national attention and praise and helped put the Pacific Northwest on the map as one of the leading areas for media industry innovation.

But most large company hyperlocal efforts have not been hits. We've noted the poorly planned attempts of big media attempting to scale down to hyperlocal community news before. I recently had the opportunity to talk with a high ranking employee at a big media operation who is involved in rolling out a cookie-cutter effort to create neighborhood sites across a metro region. This is what I learned.

I can't name the employee, the city or the organization because I don't want him or her to get in trouble -- and most of what I learned would definitely cause some furrowed brows in upper management. But I can tell you that all of this is exactly as I heard it as I talked with the employee recently as we discussed their next 'big' effort in the space.

Meet Employee H. For Hyperlocal. Employee... (more)

Poynter Online writes this week about Seattle's local news scene and includes profiles of some of the city's leading sites including Neighborlogs-powered CapitolHillSeattle.com:

Carder believes there is constant demand for neighborhood news. "It's as simple as wondering what that siren you just heard on the street outside was all about. Draw lines from that. The sirens are also local businesses: What's opening? What will it be like? The sirens are city projects: Where should the next park be built? Where did that money go?" he said. "Some media outlets stopped answering those questions. Some did answer them and went out of business. Some never bothered."

Neighborlogs features run deep. Community news providers get:

• An easy-to-use content editor and site manager
• Built-in geolocation and community features
• Forums, classifieds, aggregation tools
• A cutting-edge, small-to-medium business focused self-serve advertising service

And it's all free. To add a new opportunity to the Instivate family of services, this week we are rolling out InstiAds. The new self-serve ad service takes the Neighborlogs advertising system and makes it available on any community news and information Web site regardless of platform, codebase or service.

You can register for the InstiAds Beta here.

The new service lets anybody set their own prices and provide advertising services designed for local businesses. Here is a look at the self-serve wizard:

The service also includes easy to use Logo + Text layouts that allow businesses with limited budgets to create and update great looking display ads without a graphic designer.

If you are operating an existing local news and information... (more)

Allow us to introduce one of the newest members of the Neighborlogs family of sites, the Buckingham Herald Trib from Arlington, VA.

Here's how site owner Steve Thurston describes his site's mission:

The Buckingham HeraldTrib is a news web site for the neighborhoods of Buckingham, Arlington Forest, Ashton Heights and surrounding Arlington.

Readers can submit their own work (especially calendar events!); they can post comments at the end of any story, or they can write emails to the editor: heraldtrib@gmail.com. All emails are considered letters to the editor, unless the writer explicitly writes that they are not.

I am interested in advertisers who are interested in reaching a local, Arlington, audience. Unlike the "Google Ads" model, I believe there is a market of people who get their news on-line, but prefer to shop, eat, and conduct business face-to-face. I am looking to Arlington advertisers who see the potential for that market, and want to reach a hyper-local audience, too.

Steve moved the Trib from Blogger...

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• The Aurora Seattle blog harbors a positive response to an attack on the neighborhood's character.
• New Neighborlogs Blog, The Buckingham Herald Trib, starts off right with an extensive news essay on a student project fighting for affordable housing.
• San Diego Dtown updates its community on a multitude of food news from around San Diego. 
• Lake City Live takes up the never-ending task of covering local politics with an update on the Lake City Chamber of Commerce. 

(Via: Central District News)

• A Belltown local wins the prestigious Macarthur Genius Grant for filmography.
• Central District News highlights the popular local business review feature on Neighborlogs sites.
• Gay Cap Hill and Capitol Hill Seattle team up to bring readers the trailer for the 2009 Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
• Another film festival over in San Diego, and its Neighborhood blog rolls out a comprehensive guide to the fun.
• The South Lake Union Blog recaps the ups and downs of SLU's criticized streetcar.

Seattle is at the forefront of a wave of independent, local online news and information. It's fun to watch the trends. Political and news online wonkfest Publicola today announced they are hiring an advertising rep.

We'll go them one better. We hired an ad rep on Friday. Meet Eric Kelly eric@instiads.com

Eric will be leading the way in ad sales on the Neighborlogs network of neighborhood news blogs. Drop him a line today if you'd like to have your message associated with truly local community news and information. Eric can get you hooked up across the Neighborlogs network, one any of the sites utilizing our services like SeattlePostGlobe.org or TheSunbreak.com and any of our partner sites.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• Capitol Hill Seattle was packed with everything from guitar playing rabbits, schools dealing with swine flu, and a cougar scare this week.
• Up and coming Neighborlog Gay Cap Hill covers the Seattle Orcas, a swim team for gays, lesbians and friends.
• Belltownpeople.com reports on a weekend pet parade boasting live music, contests, and other festivities. 
• Eastlake Ave. discovers a 30 year tradition in the Eastlake Zoo cook off competition for best chili, not giraffe stew.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• ParkroseGateway gets readers ready for streets filled with school goers with bicycle and pedestrian safety posts.
• Central District's Garfield High School won its first football game of the year, and its neighborhood blog was there to capture it.
• San Diego Dtown goes a little bigger with their coverage of a Chargers player's tussle with the law.
• Capitol Hill Seattle moves off the hill to cover a back-to-school nightmare: H1N1 at the University of Washington.

With Big Media sniffing around (here and here) the hyperlocal space in Seattle and also gearing up for a go in Portland and these 6 new features rolled out to everybody using our service and tools, we thought it might be a good time to compare and contrast Neighborlogs vs. Big Media 'Hood Sites.

Here are some features to consider if you find yourself making the decision between contributing to a big media local news effort or building something real for your community.

Ready to start your own Neighborlogs site? Send me a note or register for our Beta today.

We're happy to announce several new Beta features for Neighborlogs that we believe will make your local news and information sites even more important parts of your communities.

• Site features control in Admin
  In your site's Admin, you will now find a Site Features section (under Site Appearance). You can toggle on/off Neighborlogs features using this new control panel.
• Classifieds
  Some of you have had these for awhile -- the rest of you, welcome to the free community classified advertising game. You can see how they work on my site: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/classifieds Look for a new section in your Admin to create the Classified Ad Categories.
  
• Forums
  Your Neighborlogs site can now have communty message boards. Example: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/forums To create your Forums categories, create a Forums section in your Admin's Categories management section and the add child categories.
  
• Aggregation
  This one is powerful and totally Beta! Check it out. Like the other new features, you'll need to turn...

(Photo: Lucas Anderson/Neighborlogs.com)

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

This week: Stories from across Seattle written by the Neighborlogs intern.

• From Capitol Hill Seattle, mayoral coverage on Mike McGinn's new vision for a 'Government 2.0'
• A band of permaculture lovers paraded through Ravenna on a garden bike parade. 
• Capturing a 17-year tradition in the Central District, our intern spent the evening documenting an annual summer block party.
• An in depth view on privately owned public spaces featured on the Belltown Neighborlog site.

(Photo: OSKA Architects)

• Central District News makes good use of their business directory, posting the latest from the local business reviews on the site.
• Our Parkrose and Lake City blogs were on top of local scammers and robberies for their respective neighborhoods.
• A comprehensive post from Josh Mahar over at Capitol Hill Seattle covering new neighborhood plans for Seattle University.
• Covering a local neighborhood association, the Interbay District Blog provides readers with energy saving tips for their computers.

Today's Seattle Times announcement is a happy thing for the four community news businesses involved in the hyperlocal partnership including my own site, CapitolHillSeattle.com.

But the partnership will be meaningless the next time there is breaking news in a neighborhood not named in the press release. If this partnership does what it is supposed to, the system of communication and the internal news culture that the Seattle Times is trying to build will be put into motion to connect Seattle's news audience with community news providers across the city. That change is much more important than today's announcement.

The systems, procedures and, maybe, technology the Times will develop around this partnership have the potential to drag big media forward to give community news a begrudging respect and change the interaction with the independent news sites from ignorance to respectful attention. It won't be an immediate change but the new habits are starting to be formed already. When these initial partners break... (more)

Bus Plow Originally uploaded by AdonisPhotos

Many will say that Seattle's incumbent mayor Greg Nickels failed to make it through the city's primary and into the fall general election because of snow.

But the weather wasn't really the problem. The problem was information. Seattle was hit with a situation that required systems of communication and information distribution that it did not have. The city's dying newspapers couldn't keep up and City Hall's various departments were too busy trying to dig out from underneath the snow and ice to turn to their antiquated systems of information distribution. They couldn't connect information to the neighborhoods and streets where it was needed. The County's Metro bus system fared no better despite its established Web site. There was no planned information core to power Seattle. And so it slipped on the icy sidewalks and tried to make the best of it.

But the best wasn't good enough for the mayor to keep his job.

The lesson for the surviving candidates Joe Mallahan and... (more)

First, we'll start with one response we saw to this plea from Seattlepi.com's 'community editor' for people in the next neighborhood on the Hearst target list to join their corporate 'hood blog effort:

Why blog for someone else when you can run your own blog? In other words - I wish the Hearst P-I luck in finding quality writers to blog for free.

It's a fair question. Here's the mail the writer was responding to:

My name is Vanessa Ho and I'm the community editor for seattlepi.com. I'm working on launching a neighborhood news blogs in Belltown, and XXX suggested you as someone who's interested in community issues.

I'm wondering if you - or anyone you know - might be interested in being part of a new team of volunteers writers to blog on community events, land-use issues, public safety, qualify of life, new businesses, and other news in Belltown. The goal of the blog is to foster community engagement and connections, and to be a place where people can learn about the neighborhood.

I'm asking each blogger...

(Photo: Centraldisctricnews.com)

• The bloggers in San Diego invite their readers to pull a "Ferris Bueller", and play hooky from work as summer comes to a close.
• Foster-Powell PDX starts an 11-part series on the best things about living in Foster-Powell.
• Our Capitol Hill Seattle blog shows no fear when faced with corporate competitors in the hyper-local biz.
• A dump truck runs into a local business in Central District, and CDNews had up to the minute coverage including video.

This month has been an incredible turning point for Neighborlogs and our mission to enable content entrepreneurs, journalists and community members to create lasting, high value local news and information Web sites.

• We lost a colleague
• There was a significant investment in the local news and information space
• A big media-driven neighborhood news effort launched in Seattle
• A big media-driven neighborhood news effort died out east
• Another big media-driven local news effort launched targeting a few select Seattle neighborhoods.

We are more determined than ever to succeed. For one, our investment of money, time and effort in creating community news tools and services has been validated. The purchase of EveryBlock by MSNBC shows that local is soon to be at the core of news gathering and delivery. Meanwhile, the nearly exact duplication of our feature set by Fisher Media's KOMO Seattle neighborhood news sites shows that we knew what we were doing when we launched Neighborlogs more than a year ago. KOMO's limp execution... (more)

I'll be part of a panel on hyperlocal news blogging at Saturday's Digital Journalism Camp Portland.

Hyper-local news: What works and what doesn’t

• Cornelius Swart, editor, Portland Sentinel

• Ken Aaron, NeighborhoodNotes.com

• Justin Carder, Neighborlogs

• Moderator: Michelle V. Rafter, journalist

You can follow the conference action on this feed page. If you are coming to this post after hearing what I had to say in the session, the links below are background that shape my opinions. If you are coming to this page before the session, see you on Saturday!

What works and what doesn't

1. Be part of a local ad network even if it's a partnership between only two sites.
2. Create a respected news and information site in your community and reach out to advertisers who want to associate their message with this resource.
3. Learn from respected, brilliant, handsome pioneers :)
4. Start a site in Portland.
5. Find solutions so you can do these 7 things a hyperlocal skeptic says you can't:...

(Photo: Lucas Anderson/Neighborlogs.com)

• The bloggers at Foster Powell PDX review a local public garden that provides free lessons and information on natural, organic gardening. 
• Our Neighborlogs intern braved the record breaking Seattle heat for a photo tour featured on the Eastlake Ave site.
• A brand new Seattle based blog, Seattle League of Urban Gardeners, provides readers with a creative and easy way to plant around the neighborhood. 
• The editor of CDNews wrote a strong opinion piece that laid the ground for a great neighborhood discussion.  

Yesterday, I was writing about a fire that destroyed a building in a city 35 miles from the neighborhood I typically cover. There were family and business connections -- the store that burned is owned by the mother of a local restaurateur -- so I was gathering information and needed a photo.

There is a good community of neighborhood bloggers here in Seattle so I'm accustomed to reaching out to other news providers when I need a hand. Yesterday, I gave collaboration a try.

First, for background, I asked Tacoma hyperlocal news and info site Exit 133 for a photo of the store as it was before the fire. I also asked Tacoma's daily newspaper for permission to use a photo from the day after showing the fire's aftermath. I didn't even ask for a money shot of the fierce battle to control the flames.

Here's what I heard back from the Tacoma News Tribune:

**** has forwarded your request to The News Tribune Library which handles republications. We do not grant permission for other web sites to post our images on their...

(Source: Interbay District Blog)

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs Network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• An up and coming Neighborlogs blog in Central-Cocoanut Sarasota brings the neighborhood together for a summer-long scavenger hunt.
• A great new Seattle blog covering all things about the new light rail, Seattle By Rail, gives us the back story behind the new trains.
• Dough Schwartz over at Capitol Hill Seattle provides an extensive tour of the the rail from around the area. 
• A Seattle blog from the Interbay District features a guest writer with a great piece on the design of the neighborhood.

Everything we do at Neighborlogs is geared toward one thing: giving people the ability to create and maintain great community news and information sites. It goes beyond tools and web pages. Part of survival for many neighborhood blog efforts is figuring out a way to financially support the effort required to maintain a useful site.

So we're happy to announce an important Neighborlogs milestone. Today, we are proud to feature our first network advertising partner running across the Neighborlogs Seattle network of sites. Here's a look at the STITA Taxi campaign from the Eastlake Ave site:

The network advertising component joins our already powerful self-serve ad system built into every site to give site owners multiple potential revenue opportunities. We've also built in a commission process that richly! rewards sites for originating network buys.

It's an exciting development for our business and for the businesses that are building on our service. If you are interested in associating your message with original,... (more)

The big guys are starting to notice: Neighborhood news sites draw a large, loyal, valuable audience, and can open up a whole new world of small business advertisers.

There's an example here in Seattle, where the new online-only Seattle PI (owned by the Hearst mega-corp) is seeking volunteers to contribute to neighborhood blogs. The PI owns the site, the content and the business. They'll provide the technical platform and some training in important skills like "Twitter." In return, the PI gets free content and a piece of the market in hyperlocal content.

Anyone with a web browser can launch a blog on any number of free services like Wordpress, Blogspot, and our own Neighborlogs. And once they have their own site, they own the content and the opportunity to monetize it with local advertising. In fact, there are at least three neighborhood blogs in Seattle that are bringing in more than one thousand dollars of advertising per month, and a half dozen more earning in the hundreds.

So if anyone can launch a blog... (more)

How broken is the big news business? People get excited when big media give up links on their precious homepages and point to other Web sites. Bad news, big media. Your 'aggregation' is broken. It's slow and it decays to a narrower and narrower set of sources. For an example, pop by your local big media citywide news homepage and check out the list of the few third-party sources they link to day after day. It's a small set that in no way represents the breadth and diversity of the true local news web around you.

A step in the correct direction is Outside.in's OIP service. Outside.in for Publishers is an attempt to give local publishers tools to aggregate their local news web. It allows a publisher to set up feeds from sites and information sources that are added to a stream of (mostly!) relevant aggregated content. It's a start toward the edited, or curated, news web.

OIP is open for adjustments n

Much of what the big media so-called aggregation doesn't accomplish is achieved by the OIP service. It's fast, it'... (more)