AdAge
National news outlets’ battle to provide local news and win local advertisers is suddenly heating up fast.
The Wall Street Journal’s new weekly San Francisco Bay Area edition will appear for the first time tomorrow, confronting a similar Fridays-and-Sundays push from The New York Times that began there on Oct. 16. The Journal is simultaneously planning to hire new reporters for metro coverage of the New York area, according to insiders who confirmed a New York Times report breaking that news yesterday. And The Times plans to introduce a Chicago edition in the next few weeks, fed by a deal with the new Chicago News Cooperative.
Because no modern newspaper war is complete without incursions from new media, on top of that, The Huffington Post has already introduced sections aggregating local news in Chicago, Denver and New York.
“Any time a national brand can provide any local information or serve their readers locally, they’ll only grow that relationship,” said Michael Rooney, chief revenue officer at The Journal. More…