• Searchblog, Tuesday, September 8, 2009 9:42 PM

Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are planning to introduce San Francisco Bay Area editions, hoping to win new readers and advertisers by offering more local news. But the papers will need to understand "some pretty specific realities" in order to get a decent ROI. Only then will the approach become a viable strategy for national newspapers that want to capitalize on the contraction of regional papers.

For decades, editors have been trying to crack the code of what makes the Bay Area hang together as a region, and they've all failed," states Searchblog. The answer is to focus on the local Bay Area stories that have national scope, and cover them with the same rigor and depth that you would any major national story.

A good place to start is in fields in which the Bay Area leads. biotech and health, The sustainability story, Asia, and food and wine. It's an open question if strong local editions will mean national papers sell more local advertising. The answer depends on what the local editions decide to do with their content online.

Read the whole story at Searchblog »