Yahoo News Pumping Up Local Efforts

Yahoo News is bolstering its local efforts and building “a staff of editors around the US who will improve the local news experience on the frontpage,” according to a Tweet from Anthony Moor, who was recruited from Dallasnews.com, per Lost Remote. The Yahoo News effort is probably at least partially motivated by revamped local efforts at both MSN and AOL.

Yahoo is building on an area where it has already had some success. Local news modules on the Front Page have been in place for a couple of years, but they are currently automated and based on RSS feeds from local news sites, which gives it uneven results.  Nevertheless, it drives a lot of clicks to local news sites, and likely helps to bring users to Yahoo as well.

At our Interactive Local Media conference in early December, Yahoo’s local efforts will be represented by VP Lem Lloyd, MSN’s local efforts will be represented by Executive Producer Scott Moore and Director Cyrus Krohn, and AOL’s local efforts will be represented by GM Chris Spanos.