On Tuesday, the
Chicago Tribune launched
ChicagoNow.com in beta. The Web site, which ChicagoNow Editorial Director Tracy Schmidt described as "Huffington Post meets Facebook for Chicago" at an
SND Chicago meetup two weeks ago, is currently a network of
34 niche Chicago-focused blogs.
Tribune's promo video for the site outlines plans that involve expanding to at least 80 blogs by the end of 2009. The site, which was built on the
Moveable Type blogging platform, is targeted to take market share from Google, Yahoo! and the Chicago editions of
The Huffington Post and
ESPN.
The video also points out that ChicagoNow will become home to the relaunched RedEye Web site, a wildly successful, free niche tab targeted at young commuters in the Windy City that has never really found a comparably successful Web platform to complement its print growth. The promo information claims ChicagoNow will not rely on traditional display advertising but will instead monetize through e-commerce, sponsorships, advertorials and "creative advertising solutions."
Media consultant Mark Potts has applauded the new initiative, saying:
"At its core, ChicagoNow appears to be an effort to create a new kind of local site by aggregating and curating local bloggers, staff material and other content, with a heavy sprinkling of social features, mobile options and other goodies. The video called it "HuffingtonPost meets Facebook for Chicago," which may be a bit strong, but it's a healthy ambition. This is the sort of source-neutral, smartly curated, aggregation-heavy, social-savvy, distribution-prolific local site that every news organization should be doing.
"It's what Web-centric companies like The Huffington Post do naturally. In other words, it's the obvious way to go, the kind of thing people like
Jeff Jarvis and I have advocated for years -- do what you do best and link to the rest, as Jeff aptly puts it. Phil Anschutz's
Examiner.com is quietly
building cookie-cutter curated, aggregated sites around the country, and the NBC-owned TV stations are
doing the same."
isn't the only media company looking to model The Huffington Post's success.
Gannett's relaunched, now Web-only Tuscon Citizen has a similar model. The
Citizen's
Mark Evans explained:
"The operating model we're using is The Huffington Post. Don't jump to conclusions about political bent, it's the way the Huffpo site operates, not what's on it that I'm talking about. The site is a collection of blogs and bloggers who post news, information, opinion and more on the site everyday. There are dozens, if not hundreds of Tucson bloggers. They add a tremendous amount of knowledge and perspective to the total universe of Tucson.
"But each is unique and mostly stand alone. All rely on Google searches, word-of-mouth and a few other modestly effective means to market their work. Our idea is to offer them the economy and power of scale. To bring them in under the
TucsonCitizen.com's big tent where the traffic for each benefits the other. What's in it for Gannett and Tucson Newspapers? Readers. Site traffic. Page views. Impressions. The things the companies sell to advertisers (this is a business, after all). What's in it for the bloggers? Scale."
