How Atlanta Readers Use the Web for News

Media Audit’s latest Web traffic ratings for Atlanta show we spend more time on Google, Yahoo and Weather.com than anywhere else on the Web, by far. More than any local media property, whether print or broadcast. That tells me something. There’s an opening for someone to do “local” correctly.

The business model isn’t clear yet. While Web advertising generates respectable dollars, TV stations, newspapers and radio stations still carry enormous overhead that makes it impossible to dedicate the necessary resources to their Web properties. But sooner or later, they will.

It’s going to be a hyper-local format. It will be the go-to place to read about why that restaurant closed or if the rumor is true about that new development going in. High school sports coverage with photos and videos submitted by the parents and a hyper-local “Craig’s List” for garage sales and ratings of local car repair shops.

The trouble for big local media players today, as Media Audit shows, is that they just aren’t in the business of providing relevant local news. Local TV is so intent on fast paced, visually appealing features that informed viewers aren’t sticking around. Local radio news is practically gone, the victim of industry cost-cutting and consolidation. Print is trying to make sense of the new economy by reducing and reassigning staff…the deck chairs on the Titanic scenario.

No, the business opportunity for the next Internet bubble will be hyper-local Web sites that will eventually get bought and consolidated by a big media company: a combination of mass media and hyper-local for a new age.