Hyper-Local Hero: Rob Curley

Or, The Exiting World of Possibilities for Local Newspaper (and a Great Future).

Randy Bennett, VP of Audience and New Business Development at the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), says about Rob Curley:

"He's clearly an icon in the industry, partly based on what he's done and partly based on his personality ... There's so much gloom and doom that gets bounced around this industry, people are hungry for his wild-eyed optimism.

They look at what he's done and say, 'Wow, who knew a newspaper could do this?'"

Rob Curley says about Rob Curley:

"I'm an Internet nerd from Kansas who is in love with local news and the evolution traditional media."

Chuck Salter wrote the story on Fast Company (November 2006) - recommended read.

Dan Rosenbaum says about Rob Curley

Curley gets it -- completely and profoundly:

"The Curley method is to convert small regional newspapers into powerhouses on the Web and make them indispensable to their communities -- as indispensable as print newspapers once were, or should have been, to the regions they served. He counsels newsrooms to focus their resources on gathering local news. With the Web, national news has been "commoditized"; you can get national news anywhere, and local newspapers aren't going to beat out bigger papers -- or other news sites, such as Yahoo -- that provide national coverage."
and...
"When papers embrace their mission to provide local news thoroughly, efficiently and in any manner people choose -- in print, online or whatever other device people may want to start using tomorrow -- audiences will flock to them, Curley says. He points to his efforts in Lawrence, Kan., where the three Web sites he created for the Lawrence Journal-World became the center of that college town's daily life."

Sounds quite different to what WAZsolls reports about Westeins Local Future

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