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Northcliffe launches 20 'community sites' in Local People pilot

Posted: 02/07/09 By: Laura Oliver

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Northcliffe and its digital arm Associated Northcliffe Digital have begun the roll-out of its ambitious plans for a network of hyperlocal websites, first reported on by Journalism.co.uk in May.

Twenty of the LocalPeople sites were launched this week as a pilot in the Bristol area and the publisher will have 50 up and running by the end of the month, Roland Bryan, strategy director  at Associated Northcliffe Digital told an industry gathering this morning.

The new platforms will be evenly distributed between areas with existing Northcliffe titles and those which are not served.

The sites are intended as platform for the local community and not as a traditional community news site, said Bryan, who said the network would be complimentary to the existing thisis network of regional news sites.

"What we are trying to do is to deliver a network of local sites that are aimed at providing local people in quite small communities a place and a space online to debate local issues," he added.

"This is new - it's bottom-up in terms of consumers engaging in things they want to talk about, connecting with the community in the way they want to do," added Mike Rowley, director  of digital publishing at Northcliffe Media.

The publisher hopes to 'differentiate' itself from other groups producing hyperlocal websites by targeting smaller communities of between 10,000-50,000 people.

User feedback on the proposals, which have been in development for more than a year, suggested readers were interested in news relating to communities of 30,000 people or less, said Bryan.

The publisher's regional network of thisis newspaper companion websites already boasts some hyperlocal microsites, for example, the Nottingham Evening Post's postcode-based umbrella sites, which are automatically generated by geotagging content from the Post’s website.

The Local People sites will take the publisher beyond using geodata to create 'an ecosystem for conversation that enhances what we’re doing with traditional newspaper publishing online', said Mike Rowley.

Northcliffe's existing thisis network has a strong reputation of offering interaction with readers, he added. Around 50,000 comments, interactions and votes in online polls are made a month and users are 'in the habit of engaging', he said.

Site design
The template for the Local People sites, each of which will include the area's name in its URL, has taken inspiration from other social media sites and publishing platforms.

Central to the homepage is a microblogging widget, which lets users add updates to different information channels on the site. Updates to the site will be reactively moderated with a reliance on users flagging up inappropriate content.

In the style of a social networking site, users can create profiles and connect to one another to follow individual’s activities. In addition, groups around particular interests, events or issues can be created, which have their own landing pages to aggregate all relevant conversation and information posted to the site.

The publisher has effectively opened up its own CMS system and technology to users, said Bryan.

Content on the sites will be user-generated and led by 'community publishers', who will include a mixture of Northcliffe journalists and paid local citizens, said Rowley.

Commercial aspects
There are no profitability targets set for the network as yet, but the plans will be reviewed after the success of the pilot stage has been gauged and targets may be set in a few months, said Bryan.

Offering a simple advertising option to local businesses will be vital to generating future revenue, in particular targeting those advertisers who want to move online, but are not satisfied with pay-per-click or Google's offering, he added.

Key to the revenue model for the sites will be driving traffic to Northcliffe's business directories and integrating these with the individual sites.

The publisher has teamed up with online directory service Trusted Places to create a tailored business directory for the sites, which will feature user reviews, but also gives businesses the opportunity to develop their own profile on the site.

"We're a platform not a publisher. We hope to commercialise this by using some of UGC to generate a very rich media business directory," said Bryan.

Future plans
Bryan said he could also see the sites developing mobile offerings and the first mobile applications for the sites would be in development over the next few months.

Commenting on this week's launch of an independent news site for Bristol, Bristol 24-7, he said there was scope for partnerships between the Local People sites and other existing news and information providers.

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