In the days before the internet, you wouldn't call something "hyperlocal." "Local" was adequate. If you needed to get specific, terms like "neighborhood level" or "community beat" might work.

With the growth of the Web (and the resulting trends disrupting journalism and advertising), venture capitalists, media companies, journalists, and bloggers have taken to renaming the local beat as "hyperlocal."

In the early 21st century, a variety of content aggregators sprung up to present local content (scraped from both traditional media outlets like newspapers and new media like blogs, event calendars, and Twitter feeds)-- partly out of the convenience factor for consumers (if I live in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood, I'm more interested in news about Thousand Oaks than I am about Kensington)-- and partly because the niche audience means that advertisers trying to reach a specific geography will pay a premium for targeted ads.

Since this content is more narrowly focused than the geographic area served by a TV station or newspaper, which might cover an entire state, county, or city, the suffix "hyper-" is used to distinguish it from local news.

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