With her clout and visibility, she may succeed at the aggregation game where others have failed or are struggling. She plans to grab YOUR content and the best local bloggers and citizen journalists — something we should have done long ago. (It’s not too late, but it’s ALMOST too late.)
And she won’t be blowing large amounts of investor money, either. One editor. One reporter. That’s it.
But add all the current and future local bloggers who will be attracted by the opportunity to have the address of: “HuffingtonPost/my name,” and she’ll have critical mass in one hell of a hurry. And those people will be buzzing about HuffPost’s local site rather than your newspaper and its website.
You’ve watched customers walk away from your newspaper’s classifieds to Craig’s List. Do you really think people will go to your paper first and then to her site when they can get it all at her site?
But bringing high-quality local bloggers into your website isn’t enough. To really seal the deal, to really cement the relationship and both reward the blogger and attract more people to your site, you MUST publish their blogs (or excerpts) in your newspaper.
Your print product is a HUGE advantage you have over Arianna. She has no external promotional vehicle; you have what amounts to tens or even hundreds of thousands of daily promotional fliers for your bloggers and your website. Just do it.