@Newstec: Chicago Sun-Times to expand hyperlocal offering
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 12 June 2007 at 12:37
Tags: Chicago Sun-Times, hyperlocal
The Chicago Sun-Times is planning to “aggressively roll out” between 20 and 30 hyperlocal web sites in suburban Chicago by end of the 4th quarter of this year.
The Sun-Times has been running its NeighbourhoodCircle.com hyperlocal sites in the Chicago suburbs of Mongomergy, Oswego and Yorkville for just over three months.
The areas had been picked as high-growth areas where house-building was happening faster than community-building, with the hope of giving users a way of developing communities online that do not yet exist offline, Sun-Times’ senior director of new media operations John Cary told the Newstec conference in Brighton. The three sites are test-beds for the Sun-Times’ theories of community development, Cary said.
Cary said citizen participation exists in all parts of the sites’ news gathering process, slowly creating community and loyalty to the brand. Schools, churches, clubs and local politicians have all been given areas on the site to provide information about their activities. Initially, these sections were seeded by Sun-Times’ journalists before being turned over go to the groups. However, Cary said, all the sections are edited by the three three Sun-Times journalists who administer the sites before being published.
The sites aim to increase loyalty to the Sun-Times brand and create a new platform for local classified advertising.
Tags: Chicago Sun-Times, hyperlocal
