ABSTRACT
This chapter describes hyperlocal publishers as entrepreneurial subjects as much as journalists. Whilst running hyperlocal websites has become a useful feature of undergraduate and postgraduate journalism training, it is unclear how many emphasise the need for entrepreneurial skills alongside journalistic ones. The chapter explores the underlying attitudes that hyperlocal publishers have towards the economics of hyperlocal within the context of volunteerism and working for a 'greater good'. David Baines offers a similar story of a lack of authentic community voice in a case study of a major UK regional news publisher's hyperlocal project. Sally Jones and Lee Salter's overview of commercial hyperlocal services similarly notes the potentially compromising tensions between the need for hyperlocal sites to have an emphasis on community engagement whilst also ensuring they attract advertisers. Some hyperlocals described doing paid journalism-related freelance work as a form of cross-subsidy, but others discussed how connected business ventures provided the financial underpinning for their hyperlocal.
