AOL and Hyper-Local—Good Luck With That

(page 2 of 2)

Many hyper-local efforts have been largely automated in an attempt to keep costs down, but as a result, much of the content seemed homogenized and stale. Both AOL and a similar effort from the New York Times called The Local—which is relying on journalism students to power one of its local sites—are trying to avoid this problem by hiring people to work in each of the local centers they're covering.

When Staff Is Inexperienced

That approach can get expensive very quickly, however. And while there may be plenty of out-of-work journalists around due to newspaper industry layoffs, are there enough talented writers and reporters to staff all the local sites Patch.com has in mind? If not, the company will quickly have to come to grips with the wildly varying quality levels that "citizen journalism" can produce (each Patch site has a single professional journalist who works with volunteer and freelance staff).Some feel that whatever happens with AOL and its expansion, it can't help but be good for business.

A Patch expansion would be a tangible sign that Armstrong is starting to put some muscle behind his vision of a new journalism model, one that involves Patch.com on the hyper-local side and Seed.com on the user-generated side (Seed, which is directed by former New York Times writer Saul Hansell, contracts out content to freelancers in the same way that Demand Media and Associated Content do). The AOL CEO started building the foundations of that model even before he arrived at AOL, by investing in Patch.com when he was still a senior executive at Google, through his private investment company Polar Capital (he also invested in Associated Content).

Can Armstrong succeed where so many others—including experienced journalists—failed so miserably? He's certainly devoting an awful lot of AOL's money to the attempt. If he too comes up short, it will be the biggest blow to hyper-local yet.

Also from the GigaOM network:

Could the Kindle and iPad Kill Quality Content?

Comcast Gives the Gift of Storage: Does Anyone Want That?

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pre-roll Ad

Google Can Now Buy & Sell Energy; What Next?

Does Blogger Outreach Still Work?

Provided by GigaOm—

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.