Michael Shapiro shares how Hyperlocal News Network supports local journalism with tech solutions, considering brand autonomy and collaborative content sharing for publishers.
Michael Shapiro appeared as the first guest on the Small Press, Big Ideas podcast, and now he’s back as the first repeat guest on the show!
If you haven’t listened to Michael’s story of founding TAPinto over 15 years ago and growing the company into a bootstrapped, profitable franchise model that proves that there can be a sustainable future for local news, go back and listen to episode one.
On this episode, Michael talks about his latest venture, Hyperlocal News Network, an offshoot of the technology platform that TAPinto has developed over the past decade and a half.
A few years back, Michael began having conversations with existing news publishers who shared the same sentiment: they loved what TAPinto did for its franchisees, but they didn’t want to change their branding or necessarily become part of the TAPinto network.
This is where the seeds of Hyperlocal News Network were planted. HNN offers the same robust back office and publishing capabilities of TAPinto, but with the flexibility of allowing publishers to keep their own branding and choose what features they’d like to use in an à la carte fashion.
In addition, HNN allows its publishers to share content with others on the network, and join in the same regional and national ad buying network as well.
In this episode of the podcast, Mike and I discuss dive deep on exactly how Hyperlocal News Network works for publishers, who could potentially benefit from it, the possibilities of the network growing across the country, and a lot more.
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