Another answer to the question of “Can Local Scale?”

Here’s another take on the “Can Local Scale?” question with a different stance from a recent post about that topic.

A friend recently brought to my attention a website called TAPinto which bills itself as — you guessed it — “Your Neighborhood News Online.” From dozens of communities spread from New York to Florida.

I had to admit when we began the conversation that I had never heard of this site. (My friend is thinking of starting a TAPinto site for his hometown.) But after examining the model, TAPinto definitely seems to be doing things right that other would-be large-scale providers of local news are not.

According to its website, TAPinto currently has more than 90 local news sites in New Jersey, New York and Florida with a collective 20 million readers in the past year.

But it has some crucial differences from organizations such as 6AM City, Patch and Newsbreak — the main one being local ownership and operation of the actual news coverage, using a franchise model.

Reporting the news is the responsibility of the local editor-publisher franchisee. What that person gets in return for an upfront fee and a cut of ongoing revenues from display ads and content marketing is technical and business support. This essentially creates a path of less resistance for the editor-publisher to focus on creating coverage rather than dealing with glitchy websites and other “back-end” time-sucks.

TAPinto helps in this way by providing a ready-to-use content management system and also business support for things such as tracking and billing advertisers. The local franchisee is responsible for the ad sales, although the parent organization also plays matchmaker for advertisers. The CMS supports local newsletters and also allows publishers to share content collaboratively, if they want. This makes good sense for an area such as northern New Jersey where a number of TAPinto sites are concentrated.

The organization has received positive reviews from leading news innovators such as the Local Media Association and the Lenfest Institute. In a 2020 LMA article, founder Michael Shapiro described TAPInto as “one of the only sustainable, scalable news models in the country” adding that he thought it was “a model that can work in basically any community in the country.” Lenfest observed a few months later that one secret to TAPInto’s success is that “centering your community creates better journalism and better business.” Collaboration across sites and partnering with local businesses is important, too, the Lenfest analysis said.

In other words, the crucial difference is that TAPinto isn’t trying to provide local journalism on a grand scale, but just a platform for it. Local people supply the journalism, and the corresponding engagement with the community (such as connections to local businesses). And that’s what makes the difference in local success.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: journalism, Lenfest Insitute, Local Media Association, local news coverage, TAPinto | Permalink.

Originally published at http://emergentjournalism.wordpress.com on February 22, 2022.