"Big moves" for hyperlocal involve big partners

North Carolina-based blogger and free-lance journalist Andria Krewson, writing for PBS's MediaShift, recently took note of five significant developments in the world of hyperlocal journalism. (5 Recent Big Moves In Hyper-Local News, Jan. 19, 2010)

Two of them entailed hyperlocal aggregators raising significant funding to expand their efforts; interestingly both also have partnerships with legacy media businesses (Cowles Media for one and CNN for the other). Two more of her highlights were about other partnerships of "big media" -- The New York Times for one and and Los Angeles Times for the other -- with independent players to provide closer-to-the-audience coverage of parts of their geographic areas. (Actually, the NYT partnership was with City University of New York; the LA effort was with a company that calls itself "A network of of interactive community hubs.") The fifth entry in Krewson's list also addressed a hyperlocal network Patch.com, which has a partnership with a national-brand media outfit (AOL), that is seeking to expand by ... hiring professionals under the job title "regional publishers."

More evidence of the evolving ecosystem for news that has places in the mix for the pros and the independents together.