Why newspapers can’t beat neighborhood bloggers — yet

Who covers neighborhood news better? The citywide newspaper? Or the independent neighborhood blog?

In cities where a crop of such bloggers are chipping away at newspapers’ dominance of the neighborhood beat while racking up both page views and ad revenue — like Seattle — the answer to that question is obvious.

It’s all about the blogs, baby.

Neighborhood news blogs — blogs dedicated to writing about their community for their community — cover news with a detail city newspapers never thought necessary, and an entrepreneur’s ambition many of them forgot.

That doesn’t mean newspapers can’t compete in the hyperlocal space. They’ll just want to re-examine a few things before they do.

Because even though their reporters have more than enough talent and resources to meet bloggers on their turf, there’s one thing they often don’t have — one thing that hurts old media’s chances of beating bloggers at their own game — freedom.

Here are two ways that freedom gives neighborhood bloggers a big advantage in hyperlocal coverage.

The 40-hour work week

An independent news blogger is free to research, report and write about his beat 24 hours a day. A staff blogger at a city newspaper is not. For established media that want to compete in hyperlocal space, that’s a problem.

The first reason is trust. There’s something endearing and authentic about the authority an independent blogger earns simply by living in the neighborhood she covers. For readers skeptical of the mass media, that’s a big draw. Mechanical qualities like objectivity and “professionalism,” which are imperfect and suspect in many readers’ minds, can’t compete.

Proximity and consistency build credibility on the neighborhood beat, independent bloggers have shown us. Yet city reporters are often held to neither. Newspapers should think about that.

Then there’s the 40-hour work week. Labor laws, scheduling policies and the dread of overtime pay in tough times keep many newspaper editors from letting events set their reporters’ agendas — which leads to the most organic, flexible coverage.

Independent bloggers, on the other hand, behave like a budding business. They have no timesheets. They work as hard as they have to. That gives them a much greater chance to connect with their readers — a must in the ultra-competitive digital space.

When the same voice tells readers about the late-night fire, the early morning development meeting and the afternoon parade — seven days a week — they will come to trust that voice above every other voice. But under most newspaper work policies, even if reporters want to be there for their community 24/7, they can’t. That limits the speed and depth at which they can forge that connection.

Reporters are limited by their schedules. Bloggers are limited only by their ambition.

Control of product

Newspaper bloggers are on the front lines of coverage. But when it comes to changing or modifying their product to fit readers’ needs, they’re nearly powerless.

When newspaper bloggers see the need for a tweak in their blog’s design, they can’t just do it. They have to go through an editor. A designer. A publisher. The online department. People with the power to make decisions they can’t make themselves.

That system, designed to make the most of the talents of several people, has served the newspaper industry well for decades. But in the race for innovation, such a system can be fatally slow.

In the time it takes a newspaper reporter to write an e-mail to a supervisor proposing a change to her product, an independent blogger already made it on his.

The longer the distance between the worker and the decision-maker, the slower the innovation.

But speeding up this process isn’t so much about giving more control to the reporter as to the reader. Newspapers should feel OK with trying things and seeing what works with their audience.

They should be more comfortable making changes bit-by-bit, without needing to pass it by ten different people and with the relaxed understanding that whatever they change can be changed right back.

Slow, careful deliberation is too much of a crutch. It’s more important to be able to respond to your readers — quickly — than it is to make the perfect choice on the first try.

So now what?

Newspapers don’t have to compete with bloggers in the hyperlocal space. They can choose to focus on what they do best — citywide coverage — and build a collaborative, linking relationship with the neighborhood blogs that with their shrinking resources newspapers have a tough chance of beating anyway.

But many will want to compete. It’s tough to turn down the opportunity to explore as promising a niche as neighborhood bloggers have discovered, cultivated and begun to fill. The question is, how will newspapers manage their disadvantages so that the effort will be worth it?

We’ll see.

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