Newspaper headlines keep telling us that local news is disappearing from the newspapers because of high costs. The demand for local news by readers is still very high though. Recent research from Pew Research Center shows readers still crave local news very much. “People are hungry for local news and they follow local issues and debates closely.” Publishers are unfortunately confronted with high costs to provide local news to relatively small audiences, which leads to cutting local news from newspapers.
We are all reporters
It’s so easy to take a picture with your phone of something exciting you see happening and post it on social media. The growth of social media has turned us all into citizen journalists with the ability to make the news wherever we are: you and I can help to contribute to local news gathering.
U.S. military soldiers using their smartphones to take pictures of U.S. President Barack Obama.
Offline versus online
But then again: why bother buying a local newspaper (or listening to the local radio station) when the news is out there in the digital world for us all to share and contribute to, updated constantly, and without a cover price?
Seize the opportunity
For example: recent research shows us that there is 60% less online news on local policies in smaller communities in the Netherlands alone. This could be an enormous opportunity for newspapers to jump at. Imagine if there was an easy way for editors and reporters to find and select relevant local news to write a story about? What if it was easy to include the voice of the local people in local news and even turn everyone on the street into a local news provider, without the risk of bad content?
Technology is the key
This is exactly what Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN) (HLN is part of De Persgroep) did with the help of a unique Crowdynews solution. With the Crowdynews platform, an editor can easily find relevant (hyper)local news available on social media platforms, select what is interesting, filter out profanity and display the best content automatically on their news site. HLN is showing content from selected accounts (e.g. Twitter) of people that post relevant news within each district (sports clubs, theatres, police, politicians etc). People are also able to contribute by adding the hashtag #HLNyourtown to their social messages and are invited to become a reporter themselves.
People are encouraged to contribute to HLN by this advertisement to become a ‘social’ reporter.
Jeroen Verkroost (Chief Digital Officer at De Persgroep) told Crowdynews:
“Crowdynews has delivered these sort of solutions worldwide, are best in class in terms of algorithms and are very flexible and open to feedback to improve our results and their product.”
Here’s another thing HLN told us:
”The sceptical editors even embraced the solution as in the end the editor is always in control and they saw how this technology could help them enrich their content.
Result: happy readers and also more advertising income as they were able to attract local advertisers.”
We’re excited to help out both publisher and consumer of news to find the content they care about. What’s your industry, and how would you use Crowdynews’ tools?
Want to know how it works? Get in touch!