Everyblock, Another Missed Opportunity for Newspapers

Bernhard Kappe, Thursday, December 18, 2008 @ 4:25 am

Earlier this year I attended TECH cocktail's first Chicago conference. They've been filling a much needed local networking role for technology entrepreneurs, and their first conference here was both well attended and had a number of good speakers, with a heavy Chicago focus, from Threadless' Harper Reed & Scott VanDenPlas to Everyblock's Adrian Holovaty.

Recent events in the newspaper industry got me thinking about some of what Adrian has been saying on the subject.

Adrian, as some of you may know, developed an influential early mashup called chicagocrime.org that combined crime data from the Chicago police department with Google maps, and after a stint with the Washington Post, started Everyblock with a grant from the Knight Foundation.

Everyblock takes the concept of chicagocrime.org to it's logical conclusion, as a geographic filter that aims to collect all the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. They collect information ranging from crime data, restaurant inspections and building permits to news stories and craigslist lost and found posts to help you answer the question "what's happening in my neighborhood?"

It's what newspapers everywhere have been trying to tackle with their hyperlocal strategy, but from a different perspective: The data is just as important as the story, if not more so.

That local data is what Newspapers are in a better position to collect than almost anyone else, if they made it their focus.  Instead it's a means to an end for them, an end that is rapidly looking grimmer and grimmer.  Meanwhile, folks for whom data collection, aggregation and synthesis are the end and not a means (like Everyblock,  or business focused aggregators like IMS, Lexis Nexis, Factiva, Choicepoint and Thomson) look to have a much brighter present and future.  Just another missed opportunity for Newspapers, I guess.

business rules

Comments: 1 so far

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1. 

   Good call! EveryBlock is a brilliant tool. More:
   http://agitationist.com/why-everyblock-rules-the-neighborhood

   Comment by Agitationist, Tuesday, January 27, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

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