LostRemote pointed me to Diane Mermigas’ excellent Pragmatic Media Predictions for 2009. It’s a sobering depressing forecast for the year ahead, with dire predictions like “TV and newspaper properties will collapse under the weight of an advertising recession and legacy costs” and “a disaster for local media, which could easily see more than half their ad revenue base wiped out in 2009.” Yikes.
But I’m a “glass-is-half-full” kind of guy, so I found something to be excited about.Â
Local is the new social
Some local TV broadcasters and newspapers will begin to monetize enough to stay in business. Some Internet players will begin to dabble more in this huge void. Relevant local information, social sharing, retail coupons, school and community data, sports scores, car pools, etc. remain a big missed opportunity. It will be delivered to Internet-connected mobile devices, including smartphones. A new player will emerge and do for local content and services online what Craigslist did for regionalized classified advertising.
As I’ve said before, the Internet is a connection platform, not a publishing platform (as most news publishers have used it for). Local media can still win the local ad revenue game if they execute on the opportunity to create value through collaboration and connection and leverage their brand value before it’s too late.Â
Who is going to be the “new player” that Mermigas envisions? I see it as a new role that individual news companies and hyperlocal news blogs will fill, with help from technology from companies like Second Street, Publish2, Pluck and Serra Media, the company I co-founded to attack this opportunity. When an audience connects to a brand they can trust for news, information and community and is encouraged to collaborate with the brand, that audience will happily welcome relevant commercial messages like local coupons and special offers. Then you have effective ROI to sell to local advertisers and you’re back in the game.
Connect and collaborate. Inform and empower. That’s the recipe for true transformation of the local news business.
Mark Briggs 
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