With blogs such as this one, or our friends over at Neighborhood Notes, or even the sites managed by Willamette Week and Portland Mercury, will Portland readers be interested in giving another Portland-centric blog some love?
Seattle-based Fisher Communications (owner of local TV station, KATU) is launching a series of neighborhood blogs in all of its markets, with the Portland blogs slated to go live this fall. The Seattle set of “hyperlocal” blogs launched this week with 43 neighborhoods from which to choose.
While the objective of launching the blogs is to compete with newspaper sites like the Oregonian, in Portland, at least, they will likely be more in competition for readers from the host of local blogs who provide insight into a wide range of topics from music to politics to sex to foodcarts and everything in between (and a lot more I’m probably leaving out).
The Fisher-owned sites will also provide opportunities for businesses to purchase ad space, which I hope will trickle down to the local writers – and readers – who are generating the content for these blogs in addition to content provided by Fisher’s network of reporters. If not, that would be a shame.
At best, it will genuinely provide another opportunity for Portlanders to learn about what’s going on in their community and despite not being local itself, provide an opportunity for Fisher Communications to hear from its Portland-based audience very quickly. At worst, the content will generate the level of comments that one can read over at the Oregonian, which make me cringe on most occasions.
Let’s hope for the best.
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Great. More blogspam. Until a site generates real content they blow. Neighborhood Notes, until recently, was 100% pure blogspam…reposting and reposting and reposting other people’s content (now they are just 80% blogspam). Ditto for the Oregonian’s “local bloggers.” All this being said…yes…lets hope for the best.
I think neighborhood blogging has a ton of potential, and as yet, that potential is pretty much untapped. So I’m pretty happy to see anybody giving it a shot. I hope they have something new to bring to the table…and by “new” I mean something that will be effective at engaging community leaders and helping them develop effective Internet-based voices in their community.
To my mind, that has a whole lot more to do with organizational strategy than it does with technology or marketing. It’s all very doable, but I’m not sure traditional media companies are the best equipped to do it. But I don’t begrudge them for trying…not at all. The Seattle sites linked above look like a decent start.
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