I was invited to appear on the weekly podcast at Techflash.com last week and the timing couldn’t have been better. John Cook and Todd Bishop wanted me to discuss the hyperlocal news business and, it just so happened, I had a little news to break on the subject. My new employer, King 5 TV, was announcing a new partnership with The Seattle Times and launching a local ad network for hyperlocal and niche websites in and around Seattle.
You can listen the podcast here. My segment starts at around 12:00. (Unfortunately we didn’t have time to discuss other hyperlocal business developments.)
I’m excited to be part of this ground-breaking effort. The original idea goes back several years when Cory Bergman was at King. Its realization was made possible by the persistence of a bunch of great people from the TV station, Belo and the newspaper over the past several months.
There are two reasons it’s exciting to me: 1) if all goes as well, we will be giving hyperlocal bloggers and other independent publishers another piece of the business model pie; and 2) it’s a good collaboration between two competitive local media companies. It’s the kind of innovation that we’ve all been talking about and hoping for.
Mark Briggs 
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