MediaPost
Examiner.com is acquiring rival citizen journalism site NowPublic as it seeks to solidify its position as a hub for local news and information.
Started last year, Examiner.com provides hyper-local news across 109 cities nationwide from contributors called “examiners” who are experts in their chosen field. Through the deal, the Denver-based company plans to benefit in particular from NowPublic‘s technology for scanning online conversations on Twitter and other real-time sources to offer “crowd-sourced” news across 6,000 cities in 160 countries.
“We thought if we could get this technology in the hands of our 16,000 examiners, it should be pretty powerful both on the editorial and advertising sides,” said Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair, who expects the number of examiners to nearly double to 30,000 by year’s end. More…