More Local Loco Action: Guardian UK Gets the Bug
August 21, 2009
Short honk: I don’t want to dig too deeply into the efforts of a traditional newspaper company to get more traction in the Webby world. You will want to read Online Journalism Blog’s “The Guardian Kicks Off the Local Data Land Grab” and ponder the implications of the write up.” The idea is that a newspaper wants to hop on the hyper local toboggan before the run dumps the sledder into the snow at the base of the mountain. Mr. Bradshaw, the author of the article, wrote:
Now The Guardian is about to prove just why it is so important, and in the process take first-mover advantage in an area the regionals – and maybe even the BBC – assumed was theirs. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone: The Guardian has long led the way in the UK on database journalism, particularly with its Data Blog and this year’s Open Platform. But this initial move into regional data journalism is a wise one indeed: data becomes more relevant the more personal it is, and local data just tends to be more personal.
For whatever reason, hyper local information is getting as much attention as real time search and Twitter. I wish the Guardian good luck with scaling, monetizing, and marketing. My thought is that the hyper local crowd will want to move quickly before Googzilla wanders through this information neighborhood. Finding is a big part of the local information challenge. The deal breaker will be monetizing. The Guardian may well have the most efficient monetization method known to man. I hope so. The Google’s a good monetizer too.
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
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One Response to “More Local Loco Action: Guardian UK Gets the Bug”
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I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Guardian does something new and innovative – they built the fantastic crowdsourced application to look at MP’s expenses claims (http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/), using open source code, in a very short time indeed. They have also realised that online newspapers have a potentially global readership (I read somewhere they have 7.5m US readers and have thus introduced US-targetted advertising) where most UK newspapers are still thinking far too locally.
You’ve talked a lot about the imminent doom of traditional newspapers, I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, but I think the Guardian is working very smart and may even benefit from the new world order.