Start-up Mainstreet Connect is trying to fill the gaps in community news reporting. With a recently-announced $3.97 million of first round funding, editor, publisher and chief executive officer Carll Tucker hopes to have a national network of 3,000 news sites by 2013.

Tucker spent 20 years in the community news business, publishing 15 local papers in New York State via his company Trader Publications, which he sold to Gannett in 1999. Concerned by the closure or threatened closure of thousands of US community newspapers, he more recently started to think about how to create a good quality online community news medium.

The market he decided to target was the "mainstreet moms," whom he described as "the backbone of the consumer economy." A large national network of these community sites would be a "very powerful medium" for conveying news and taking advantage of commercial opportunities, Tucker believes.

What Mainstreet Connect essentially does is to supply interested business people in small towns with the resources necessary to launch their own site: the content management system, the sales management system, an accounting system, technical tools and other programs, and training on how to create a high quality news product. These local affiliates are in charge of reporting local news, "according to MSC's standards and procedures," Tucker specified, as well as selling local ads and managing communications.

Deep community involvement

In the communities it enters, MSC forms a local volunteer advisory board, made up of people who would typically be MSC's core audience: those who are deeply involved in community life. "They critique us and they tell us what they want from a community publication, they introduce us to the leaders in their community, they recommend story ideas and they use social media to push the site out into the community," Tucker explained. The main marketing push is via this board, along with poster advertising and sponsorship of local events such as school plays.

A team of professional journalists who all "have deep roots in the community" is in charge of producing content. The editors all have significant experience, and their work is combined with that of "a very exciting group of younger journalists whose whole experience is online." There are some more magazine-like sections on each site which hold content common to all the sites, produced by the same time, such as food, or real estate. Other news on schools, sports and neighbours, for example, are specific to each site and produced by dedicated journalists.

The sites are very local, aiming to bring a "very intimate and very interactive" spirit to the communities of less than 20,000 people. "Everything we do is about neighbours, we really want to bring some of the intimacy of going there everyday and seeing somebody you know or who you have heard of," Tucker elaborated.

One example of a feature on the sites which is very community-orientated and which would never be in a larger news publication is 'Neighbourhood Chefs.' People nominate their friends or neighbours who have a good recipe, and MSC puts together a short piece on the individual and their recipe, which the 'chefs' are then likely to send on to their friends. There is also a 'Local heroes' section that highlights the work of members of the community.

High levels of reader engagement

So far MSC has launched seven local sites in the North East of the US. The first, Daily Norwalk, was launched on March 18 and that and the newer sites have been growing consistently in terms of readership, said Dorian Benkoil, a consultant to MSC. "Visitors are coming from within the communities," he said, and loyalty and frequency are higher than at a typical news site, with 58% of visitors coming back. Of those repeat visitors, 95% come at least every week and 70% come more than once a day. The average time on site is 4 minutes 10 seconds, and four pages per visit. Benkoil also specified that the traffic comes largely directly to the site rather than via search, and said that he finds this "an indication of a very strong presence."

MSC is supported by advertising revenue, though Tucker explained that "we don't sell advertising as such, but we sell annual visibility packages." The idea is that a local business can have a "storefront" on MSC's "digital town green." Advertisers can sponsor an 'our customers come firs' section for example.

Is community news the future?

Like many sites that have recently sprung up in the UK, Tucker was adamant that a community news project has to be organic and "grow out of its community." Its staff have to be rooted in the community, it will not work to have people who feel when they are sent to a small town "as if they have been exiled to Siberia."

Unlike a project such as the Czech Republic's Nase adresa, however, which values and relies on community input, Tucker stressed that MSC's emphasis is on the professional journalist. "I think that the idea of citizen journalism is a pipe dream, and a little insulting to professional journalists," he said.

With the current ubiquity of general news sites, hyperlocal initiatives which target specific communities with news that they cannot get elsewhere has the advantage of being able to offer both readers and advertisers with something unique, and which is genuinely relevant to their everyday lives. Will a model emerge that can be highly profitable on a large scale?