If I had my way, we would have had subdomains on our site for both geographical and categorical reading. Local tv news will always have SOME appeal, but not because we're doing our job better than national networks, but because we're local. It's amazing how many don't get that. Yes, Fox and CNN are our competitors, but if local news wants a chance, we have to fight them on our strengths. And it's the exact same with our websites and the websites of any other news outlets.
... What a revolting development.
Watch your local evening news, and if your station does the 5-6:30 model, it's almost certain that the 5:30-6 section will focus on national news, occasionally different anchors, and will have the lowest ratings. The three 30 minute sections' ratings usually follow this model: ¬_/
And news stations will tell themselves "Oh, we put national news in the middle because it has low ratings." I get that if you're forced to play the short view and juts have to fill time. But I do honestly think that if you put more effort into that, over time, you could cultivate a worthwhile news show there. Possibly even just make the 5-6 one hour, and use the expanded time to help flesh out the rest of your stories and make them all run an extra minute longer.
It's just as someone who's worked nearly all of my post-high school life (being 31) in local news, it's always frustrated me how only a few hours a day of local content are produced locally in most places. I think it's a vast misuse (unuse?) of available resources.
I'd say the solution is going to be a hybrid approach like they've taken. An aggregated "top stories" print solution, a web presence, and mobile presence all highly targeted at the local area.
Newspapers need to lose the national news, I don't need to read a story 24 hours after it has been disected on the web and cable channels.
I'd also say forget looking for a solution on the web. The answer is mobile with a twitter style continously updating feed of local news and sports.
People don't have or won't take a half hour to read a newspaper but they've got five minutes here and there throughout the day to see what is happening in their local area.
Want total anonymity? Then you can subscribe. Willing to fill out a profile so we can target ads, then your feed is free.
What advertiser wouldn't want to reach twenty something college educated women in Podunk? Fewer, more targeted ads inserted in stream that get better results.