Local news cooperatives are now in development in San Diego, Chicago, Hawaii and San Francisco. The latter, known as The Bay Area News Project, is building up with a $5 million investment from philanthropist Warren Hellman, who apparently thought it would be a better idea to start fresh than buy The San Francisco Chronicle.

According to an article by James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times today, the 15-person BANP (a placeholder name) envisions potential revenues of $12 million a year with a four-pronged strategy developed by CEO Lisa Frazier, a former McKinsey consultant who is getting paid $400,000 a year.

Revenues are expected to come from multiple sources, including public radio style members and syndication payments from news outlets that use the project’s content. The New York Times, for instance, has lined up to run stories twice a week in its Bay Area edition (as it has in Chicago as well).

The site has snared New West founder and Industry Standard Editor Jon Weber as its editor. It will rely partly on paid interns from UC Berkeley, and is operating out of donated law office space. We’ll follow it — and the others — with interest. With enough of a bankroll, and much lower costs, there is no reason why these sites can’t compete against newspapers, win new types of users and advertising, and save the day for journalism.

I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Pastko, CEO of Coupious a Boulder, Colorado-based mobile coupon platform. Coupious got its start when Pastko and his partner leveraged their experience at Purdue University to launch a Coupious iPhone application in Lafayette, Indiana. While the duo did very little marketing, word-of-mouth marketing helped push their mobile application to potential users. Push seems to be the operative word with Coupious since its model does not push coupons to people based on their geography, but rather allows people to seek on-demand the just-in-time promotional offers relevant to them when they want them and where they want them. Many of its initial customers utilize the platform to run multiple promotions or post “just-in-time” offers to get rid of seasonal items or to push specific menu items.

“In order to win over local businesses, the goal was to replicate the print coupon model to help make it familiar and comfortable to select,” says Pastko. However, unlike print coupons, mobile promotions on Coupious can track the number of impressions, what promotional offerings are performing better and most importantly where impressions are taking place. As Pastko points out, “being able to locate where people are downloading or viewing promotional offerings allows advertisers to understand if consumers are looking at the point of sale, responding to an outdoor billboard, or are in areas of town that might offer new potential for the business.”

While college towns in the Midwest have been a successful launching ground for Coupious, traditional media groups such as newspapers have become the major focus in the past 12 months. Pastko has been careful about his growth plans seeking markets where Coupious can gain a high density of coupons and promotional offerings. “One of the biggest success factors is having enough content to make the application useful. Just like directories, if the restaurants and entertainment venues people expect to see are not in the database of offerings, then people’s desire to use the application decreases significantly.” Coupious’ model is not to aggregate coupons or scrape the Web for other offers, but to deal directly with the advertisers in the market. Pastko is quick to point out that “this gives consumers confidence that this is a legitimate offer and will be honored locally.”

When asked if the recent surge in coupons is a trend born out of the slow economy, Pastko said “coupons and promotional offers are in a trend phase now but the space is going through a transformative revolution where offers will not simply be coupons but will become promotions embedded within key messages making them more relevant and highly geotargeted to the users location. The mobile platform is the ideal device to deliver just-in-time offers, reaching people where they are and when they have a specific need. It’s up to mobile coupon companies to continue to innovate and embed offers within other media to further increase adoption and usage.”

The Coupious application is currently available on the iPhone and Android platforms with work under way to broaden to other application platforms.

Vermont’s Front Porch Forum is a hyperlocal network that has thrived, usage-wise, without relying on much of anything other than its authentic community voice. As recounted in an article in this month’s Yankee magazine by enviro-writer Bill McKibben, the hyperlocal network has expanded to 100 neighborhood nets, reaching 15,000 households. Each neighborhood is limited to 400 homes, and pseudonyms are discouraged in comments.

Penetration of each community is high, with the “flagship five sisters” communities in the Burlington area getting 90 percent reach. There are 25 “issues” published per month, and 98 percent of reviewers read each issue.

Participation is also said to be good, with 50 percent having posted recently. The communities stand out for their activism as well. Active networks of neighbors are using Front Porch to loan or give away items when needed (i.e., canoes).

But revenues remain limited to sponsored e-mail ads and city government public notices. “With a few hundred thousand dollars of development money, we could put this software in a box and set it up anywhere,” says founder Michael Wood-Lewis.

Jon Brod, EVP, AOL Ventures

Patch.com, AOL’s hyperlocal network, will grow from its tally of 30 sites today to “hundreds” by the end of 2010, per an internal memo read by Business Insider (and that we saw on www.netnewscheck.com). The memo sites AOL’s goals to be “the global and local leader in sourcing, creating, producing and delivering high quality content,” and calls local “one of the most promising ‘white spaces’ on the Internet.”

AOL had previously said it would be investing $50 million into its local efforts during 2010. In November 2009, Patch.com President Warren Webster told us that Patch was just starting to sell advertising in the towns that it initially launched in. “We have a multi-prong revenue model, with fixed placement banners, classified ads and other products,” he said.

AOL Ventures EVP Jon Brod, the primary architect of AOL’s local strategy, is our opening keynoter at Marketplaces 2010 in San Diego March 22-24.

DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere’s neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in more than 43 neighborhoods served by Fisher TV stations in Seattle, 40 neighborhoods in Portland and additional neighborhoods in Boise. Each advertiser pays between $30 and $400 per month depending on the tier of services chosen.

DataSphere CEO Satbir Khanuja, a former senior executive at Amazon, says “our timing is precisely right.” He notes that many advertisers had experience with Google text ads, but that the company’s focus on enhanced profile display ads makes more sense. It also brings in more money. “They’d been paying 50 cents to $1 for the text ad, but we can bring in 10 times more from the account,” he says (or $5).

In terms of getting to conversion, the company’s focus on specific neighborhoods rather than DMAs has been key to successfully selling the local accounts and leveraging content from the local media partner and from local bloggers, who benefit from aggregating their audience. “They want to see ‘my neighborhood.’ Things that are really in their community,” says Khanuja.

In New Castle (WA), for instance, the whole town was talking about Blockbuster and the imminent closing of its local store, he says. The company got that. “It is also important that they’re calling from [Fisher's] KOMO-TV News” rather than from a no-name provider, he says. “Our conversion is extremely high.”

Key categories for DataSphere in Seattle and other markets that it serves include groceries, drug chains, dentists and lawyers. “The categories are controlled by the [local] sales agents,” says Khanuja. “It is all green field.”

DataSphere has also launched in markets served by other media partners, such Providence, R.I. It supports more than 130 hyperlocal neighborhoods in all, including 40 in the Monterey,CA/Salinas areas in partnership with Cowles California and its area TV stations.

Fisher has invested $1.5 million in the company, an amount that was part of a $10.8 million B round. Ignition Partners was another investor. Khanuja says the hefty amount will be used to develop the software platform and launch “thousands” of additional neighborhoods. Fisher recently owned and then divested Pegasus News, another hyperlocal platform.

Examiner.com, the Philip Anschutz-backed site that calls itself “the insider source for everything local,” says it is likely to pass 30,000 active contributors, or “Examiners,”  within days, and 85,000 by 2011. The current tally includes 1,234 active contributors in L.A., 1,189 active contributors in New York, 921 in Chicago, 901 in San Francisco, 900 in Denver and 804 in Washington, D.C.

All 240 major markets are expected to surpass 1,000 Examiners by 3Q 2010. The site also has 500 Examiners in Canada, plus a major network of user-generated content coming from its NowPublic site.

Examiner.com, which is largely search driven, differentiates itself from other content aggregators such as Demand Media and Associated Content by its local focus. It pays its Examiners based on a formula that includes page views and other factors. While some Examiners make little more than coffee money, Examiners who hit on a major story can receive hundreds of dollars per article.

CEO Rick Blair said in a statement that “we have the reach, and now we are working on the depth.”

Former AOL Digital City vet Blair is a featured speaker at Marketplaces 2010, which takes place in San Diego March 22-24.

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar  and former eBay VP Randy Ching are setting up a local public affairs and civic news site in Hawaii, where Omidyar lives, according to a post on Omidyar’s blog that was picked up by paidContent. Former Rocky Mountain News Editor and Publisher John Temple has been hired as its editor, and the site is being advised by former McClatchy VP of News Howard Weaver.

Omidyar, the French-born engineer whose brainstorm that there wasn’t an easy way to sell Pez dispensers led to the creation of eBay, said the site was only in “early planning stages” but will debut in 2Q 2010. A central goal is to prove that local news is sustainable.

Omidyar is hardly new to grassroots local media efforts. The Omidyar Network, a foundation, has been an investor in BackFence and Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere, and also was a sponsor of The Media Giraffe Project in 2006, among other activities.

Weaver, in a blog post of his own, says “the new venture intends to demonstrate that a digitally native, technologically fluent web organization can profitably serve targeted readers who want sophisticated journalism focused on local civic affairs.”

Three years ago, BIA/Kelsey created the Marketplaces research program and conference because we saw that local advertising was quickly “verticalizing.” Indeed, money and talent have poured in for the new breed of vertical products that would take their place among existing vertical success stories, such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, Realtor.com and ServiceMagic.

The Marketplaces 2010 conference reveals just how fast the industry has evolved. This year’s event, now under construction, is set to highlight all the major trends in Marketplaces, including:

• AOL’s $50 million investment in Patch.com, and ongoing transformation of its Mediaglow vertical properties (and Mapquest)
• eBay’s renewed efforts to build up classifieds as entry-level e-commerce via Kijiji, eBay Motors and other services
• Examiner.com’s  big bet on local/vertical content, and its network of 26,000 “examiners.”
• Groupon’s “smart mob” theory of local commerce, backed by a $32 million investment, that allows hundreds to make a volume purchase of local services and products.
• Redbeacon, AlikeList and others’ efforts to remake ServiceMagic-like home and trade leads with social media
• Adify and Pulse360’s  bid to verticalize ad networks for local merchants and national brands
• OpenTable’s big bet on mobile to let diners make reservations wherever they are.

The two-day conference takes full advantage of its location in sunny San Diego. It includes rich research presentations, top-flight demos of the latest services, and a preconference showcasing all the best tools of Marketplaces 2010. Come to San Diego March 22-24 to learn, enjoy the unbeatable networking and participate. You can register at early-bird rates here.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS (in Alpha)

• Ethan Anderson, CEO, Redbeacon
• Jeff Beard, CEO, Localeze
• Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
• Jon Brod, EVP, AOL*
• Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
• Jim Delli Santi, CEO, AlikeList
• Todd Dubner, SVP, NCI
• Russ Fradin, CEO, Adify
• Krista Glotzbach, VP, Vast.com
• Mark Goldstein, Chairman, Loyalty Labs
• Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
• Scott Jampol, Senior Director, Marketing, OpenTable
• Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse 360
• David Kidder, CEO, Clickable
• Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
• Andrew Mason, CEO, GroupOn*
• Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity
• Ben Saren, CEO, CitySquares
• Craig Smith, President, ServiceMagic
• Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
• David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder

*keynote

MSNBC.com’s EveryBlock is moving beyond its roots as a hard-core aggregator of hyperlocal data with its first social feature: “Notify Your Neighbors.” The feature, which has been tested for over a month, is similar to other sites, such as Rottenneighbor.com, a real estate tool discontinued in July 2009 that let people complain about barking dogs, overgrown lawns, loud pool parties and smelly garbage.

Notify Your Neighbors has a link near the top of each place page on the site. When users click on it, they get a simple form that lets them post a message. Once they’ve posted it, EveryBlock will publish it to each nearby neighborhood, ZIP and block page so other users can see it. It will also go out as an “announcement” in e-mail alerts and RSS feeds for the appropriate geographic areas.

Site founder Adrian Holovaty says he expects Notify Your Neighbors to get most of its traffic from items where people are “highly incented” to post. He’s guessing that missing pets will top the list, along with crime incidents. Garage rentals, missing mailboxes, water main flooding and community events are other likely topics.

“Use it for classifieds, use it to report local news, use it to ask questions or otherwise pass information to your neighbors … Use it for things we haven’t thought of! You can think of it as a 21st century community message board,” notes EveryBlock’s release.

In other site news, Holovaty says the six-person site has been redesigning its place pages to make them time sensitive. This would make them more of a real-time feed a la Twitter. Some things may be of immediate interest, such as the arrival of a taco truck.

Mapping has become less about radius of where you are and more about what people define as local, how far people are willing to travel and the importance of certain events or locations in their community. While the advertising paradigm has focused on ZIP codes/postal codes, consumers identify more with neighborhoods or specific areas of cities, which sets up a major disconnect.

The clear trend is the linking of social and mapping to drive action and to link people with their network of friends or favorite bands or events. According to Julia Scott, CEO of Bargain Babe, “linking social and mapping allows people to surface activities and deals that you may not be aware of.”

The goal, according to Darrin Clement, CEO of Maponics, is “to add more context to maps to help drive actions on a localized basis and to understand what is most valuable to the consumer to see on a map.”

A unique view of mapping came from Jason Bosek, president of Parking Data Ventures, who said that “parking is a point of necessity to allow people to utilize and take advantage of destinations particularly in urban areas.” Parking Data Ventures is an example of how mapping is becoming more specific to the needs of consumers beyond what is nearby to how to enable getting and staying in a particular location.

One of the main challenges of mapping pointed out by Clement was that “people’s ideas of local are more personalized to their neighborhoods and cities requiring sites to redefine what they consider local and offering layers of mapping choices to better match needs.” With this more personal view of what is local people are seeking ways to find friends, their favorite bands, sports and recreation activities on what they determine is a reasonable distance to travel or walk.

All this will force marketers and site owners to think more like their consumers and offer the mapping choices they need based on the type of search they are conducting and how they plan to travel to the location they have designated.