So apparently this launches at 1:40pm today, and I am REALLY excited.
It is a REALLY interesting new content distribution model for community / municipal news… sort of like the old neighborhood rag (of which many still exist in paper form, like the Sunset Beacon in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco, etc).  It will obviously include some incredibly relevant local advertising, specials & deals, etc with topical, specific content about that city (and it’s surroundings) in Marin.
It’s a great idea, and I am surprised it has been more popular yet… but AOL is doing this ALL over, and I bet it’s one news model that actually works. It will be like a small town bulletin board of relevant info. Â Instead of the dying model of distributing massive amounts of national content into a boiler plate layout that is then branded for smaller cities (IE national news written on a non community level that is then branded into specific markets), this will be producing content that is markedly relevant and vital to the community the site publishes too. Â It will finally create a relevant content distribution model that will quench the locals needs, while still allowing them to consumer national and international news from their existing pillars, which are still fighting confusedly about why they are crumbling.
Just like the telegraph didn’t kill the newspaper, and just like the radio didn’t kill the TV, or social media won’t kill traditional marketing….. this model finally understands that two models can co-exist side by side. Â In this case, the models that are still struggling won’t impact this new approach in any way, and it is likely that we will see more of these grass roots approaches to impacting, relevant news to a geographic area.
Well done AOL. Can you believe you are ahead of the curve? Cheers and good luck.
And if the upshot of all this means I can find the police blotter quicker, easier, and more consistently for a quick chuckle every couple days… solid.
I like hypercommunal news a lot. Hyper-locality, hyper-relevancy, well I am just hyper.
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