The announcements from AOL and the Guardian are significant but don't really tell us much about the future of hyperlocal. Surely nobody was surprised that shortly after taking over HuffPo AOL announced that Patch were going to try and persuade bloggers to give them free content. The Guardian's closure of its local sites has more to do with the pressures caused by the collapse in revenue in its core business. The national title is very dependent on job ads from central and local Government which are much less prevalent than they used to be both because there are fewer jobs and clients have discovered cheaper and more effective ways to find staff. From what I saw of the Guardian 'beat blogs' they suffered from the same smug worthiness that has alienated so many readers from their print title.
The point about 'industrialized' hyperlocal does seem to be a good one though. There are an increasing number of examples of successful examples of commercialisation of hyperlocal news coming to the fore both in the US and UK. They haven't just popped up recently but they appear to be getting more attention as this sector is deemed to be hot.
The local newspaper industry didn't appear overnight. It took several decades for the majority of communities to have their own publication and there were many false starts. In the early stages these were almost always started by local entrepreneurs. The most likely path for digital hyperlocal is a similar one.
The sketchy evidence that is available so far suggests that a sustainable hyperlocal site needs a number of conditions to thrive. The optimum population coverage seems to be in the range of 30,000 - 70,000 i.e. big enough to provide sufficient revenue but small enough that the audience have a shared identity based on locality. The ideal demographic seems to be family formers from prosperous communities who own their home. A moribund or non-existent local newspaper also appears to be an important factor. A cluster of sites in a metropolitan district seems to be a major aid - even if they don't have common ownership they appear to become mutually self supporting. London seems to provide the best example of this but I am not as familiar with what is happening in US cities.
With these conditions in place sites can and do generate revenues in excess of six figures (US dollars or pound sterling). As the concept has been proved there are likely to be many more examples springing up over the next few years. These are not going to come from the 'industrialized' sector whose future is set to be providing sites to sub-optimal areas which haven't had the right conditions to develop their own site organically. Whether economies of scale and an ability to con bloggers into writing for them for nothing will compensate for this and make their business model viable is doubtful.
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