INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
SmartNews, the news aggregation app that hit a unicorn valuation last year, has spent its time growing its local news feature
With the United States presidential election underscoring both the importance of local news and its challenges, SmartNews has a huge
opportunity to gain new users.In early 2019, SmartNews had 40 local partners
Over the past year, it has expanded that to publishers in over 6,000 cities, with the goal of covering the majority of the United States
The app also currently has an election news section, with live updates on primary results and sections focused on each presidential
candidate.For local media, apps like SmartNews and competitor Flipboard, which recently launched its own local news feature, offer less
reliance on search traffic for much-needed traffic and revenue
local communities, only about 14% said they have paid for local news, with many citing the availability of free content as the primary
tab, which shows headlines personalized by user location, now drives almost as much engagement to publishers as the default Top News
tab.Founded eight years ago in Japan, where it is now one of the top news apps, SmartNews launched its American version in 2014
are picked by machine learning
Over the past few years, as the political and media landscape in America becomes increasingly polarized, SmartNews has focused on discovery
feature called News From All Sides, a slider that displays headlines about the same topic from publications across the political
spectrum.[gallery ids="1953579,1953578"]For the Election News tab, the slider was adapted for news about each presidential candidate
When it originally launched, the slider had five sections, but that has been pared down to three, with the goal of encouraging people to
local news and election news features, more than fifty people from SmartNews, including Yang, head of global growth Fabian-Pierre Nicolas
and members of its engineering, product, data and marketing teams, traveled through Minnesota and Iowa
More recently they drove through Nevada and California, with Michigan and Florida next on the itinerary
The team sent out surveys on Craigslist and went to places like cafes and churches to ask people about a wide range of issues, including
politics and how they get election and local news in their communities.A lot of people they talked to rely on TV or radio for most of their
If they browse online, they often use their desktop computers instead of smartphones because of costly or limited data plans
Many said they had issues finding reliable local news sources, especially as more publications are purchased by larger outlets
Articles may no longer focus on their communities, for example, or they have to sort through more sponsored content and opinion pieces to
local news publishers, like McClatchy
The content each users sees in their Local News tab is based on their location
The app prioritizes neighborhood news first, then brings in news from next-largest administrative area.For example, if a reader lives near a
large city, SmartNews will display headlines from newspapers published there
If they live in a less densely populated area, it will show articles from newspapers in their county
In the future, the Local News tab may also include information from other sources, including local deals, crime and safety incidents or city
council agendas.SmartNews is taking advantage of election season to get more readers, with marketing campaigns that include running
commercials during debates
In turn, Nicolas said, they hope this will create a healthier media ecosystem by giving local publishers an additional source of inbound
