Monday, March 20, 2006

Late last week, Yahoo! News did a low-key soft rollout of an enhanced "Local News" section, which features headlines from local news sources.

Yahoo! News has had a "Local News" tab for some time, but it covered only 30 U.S. markets -- and each market linked to headlines from only one (partner) news source. Now, Yahoo! Local News has been expanded to cover 82 U.S. markets. Each one features several top headlines from three to 10 local news sites, totaling around 400 news sources.

This is the first of a likely series of moves for Yahoo! News to get more localized. But, says Local News project manager (and senior director of product) Elizabeth Osder, that doesn't mean that the company is headed toward hiring local news staffs. Rather, it's simply a move to better serve Yahoo! users in pointing them to credible local news for their communities.

The project is still immature, so not all major media outlets are covered yet. For example, in the Denver-Boulder metro market, where I live, the Boulder Daily Camera is missing. Osder says that's because her team is still in the process of working out agreements with some sites to bypass registration in order to spider for local news.

While the new-and-improved Yahoo! Local News has been seeded with mostly mainstream news sites, Osder says that alternative (credible) local-news sources will be added over time. Yahoo! News users are invited to suggest news sites that should be added to the various markets via an online form. Her staff ultimately will decide which suggestions to act on. So local bloggers or citizen-media sites could turn up here eventually.

This starts to get interesting when you think about Yahoo!'s focus on user content and interaction. Osder didn't have anything concrete to offer, but hinted in a direction where Yahoo! News users could end up rating local-news sources. Ergo, quality local blogs could rise to the top thanks to such a user rating system. I think this is one of the developments necessary to make sense of the wide array of content offered online in local markets.

CORRECTION: This item originally misstated the number of markets covered by Yahoo! Local News. It is currently 82, not 400.

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