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David Cohn :"Hyperlocals are hit or miss based who runs the site."
 David is the founder and Director of Spot.Us. He has written for Wired, Seed, Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times. While working toward his master’s degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Cohn worked as the editor at newassignment.net, which focused on citizen journalism and ways news organizations could explore the social web. He has been a contributing editor at NewsTrust.net, and he is also the Editor-in-Chief at Broowaha, an expanding citizen journalism network. He is a GEN board member.
You announced yesterday that you will work with UC Berkeley's Journalism school. Could you detail what your role is gonna be?
Berkeley's J-school runs three hyperlocal sites: Missionlocal.org, RichmondConfidential.com and OaklandNorth.net. I will be working with these three sites.
I'll be teaching the students web skills and also working across all three sites to come up with models of sustainability. Our goal is to explore various revenue models and see what we can do to show that a hyperlocal site of high quality can earn money.
Do you already have ideas about the kind of products you will be working on for the school's hyperlocal websites?
Yes. A few. One of them is that we will be doing "Social Ads" which are explained here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/63161200/Social-Ads-Factsheet-Mission
We will also create a marketplace where local artists/crafters can sell their goods online.
Another thing we may try is an ad-network across the entire Bay Area. And perhaps other ideas will present themselves. We will remain open to everything.
Hyperlocal has been very hyped a couple of years ago, but the challenges of that kind of media, in terms of ressources and business model seem hard to overcome. What do you think about that in general, and in the case of Berkeley's websites in particular?
It is a tough nut to crack. It poses a few very interesting problems which, in truth, I am not sure how we can overcome them. I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what would work. But that's what makes this an exciting project to be working on. The main challenge is one of niche and interest.
Hyperlocals have a strong niche – with an interest based on geography. The fact is, there is a bigger audience for niche around interest topics that have nothing to do with geography. For example Apple. There are plenty of sites that cover Apple (the technology company) all the time. There is a strong interest in that niche. Whereas a hyperlocal geography – has a "large" potential audience – but penetration is tough.
What do you think of what is happening to Patch.com currently, with a huge investment from AOL and a much smaller revenue that is not likely to grow bigger? Is the AOL strategy that's wrong, or the concept of hyperlocal?
I would say: It's not that hyperlocal is flawed – it's that it requires a certain finesse which is hard to pull off in mass. Hyperlocals are hit or miss based on who runs the site.
They need to ooze passion and personality about that community. Hiring 800 people to run 800 hyperlocals across the country – surely there will be a lot of those folks that don't necessarily have the passion oozing from them to make those sites work. Lots of those sites will fail.
Whether or not AOL has the cash to accept those kinds of losses is a question for their CEO. If they do – then great, the sites that succeed will be lessons for them to build off of. If they don't have the capital to continue after acceptable losses – then they have a problem.
Do you plan to teach more in the near future?
I don't seem myself as a "teacher" as much as somebody that happens to teach things occasionally. I always make myself available to anyone and everyone who might have a question and in that respect, I do see myself teaching. But I don't think I'm going to focus on academics as a full time job. What I like about this Berkeley position is that I am given room to try real world experiments with their hyperlocal sites which are very much real world organizations.
You are one of the best-known example of what has been called entrepreneurial journalism, with your venture Spot.us. A couple of years on, what is your analysis of this particular status?
Spot.Us is doing well actually – well enough for me to step back. We are actually going to announce soon (in the coming weeks) plans that will allow Spot.Us to scale aggressively.
I think it's time for Spot.Us to scale beyond what I can do with it. I feel honored to have taken it as far as it has gone – and I'm ready to hand off the reigns. If anything – it just shows that this is an exciting time and that a determined entrepreneur can make it work.
You have recently written about the necessity to be able to fail in order to succeed some day. What do you think of the behaviour of big media groups regarding that question of innovation?
Parts of the media ecosystem are embracing failure and what I'd call the "agile and iterative" process (which includes failure). But other parts of the media ecosystem are not. I'd say the journalism "community" is very open to failure.
Meanwhile the journalism "industry" is not. Within the industry they suffer from a dilemma where failure, which could lead to long term success, would cause short term loss. It's very tough for an industry to take that long-term view.
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