Neighborhood watch: Online startups tackle local news

The latest entrant is the brainchild of three media executives who want to launch a string of sites in mid-size cities, starting with Denver.

The business site, known for its snappy style, chart- and image-heavy articles and sheer volume of posts — including many speedy rewrites of news from competitors — sold last fall for nearly $400 million to a German publisher, Axel Springer.

The sector labors under the failure of Patch, an AOL-funded string of "hyperlocal" news sites that reportedly lost at least $200 million before its owner mostly sold it off in 2014.

[...] though, a variety of tiny online startups — many with budgets well below $1 million a year — have built small but loyal audiences over the years, McLellan says.

DNAInfo , a billionaire-backed company founded in 2009 that is now in Chicago and New York, apes traditional newspapers by covering crime, politics and local events at the neighborhood level.

Digital advertising is a $60 billion business in the U.S., but tech companies like Google and Facebook pull in a growing majority of that revenue.

Research firm eMarketer predicts Facebook alone will account for 31 percent of all display-ad revenue, traditionally a mainstay of online publishers, in 2016.

[...] many people turn to social media to learn about concerts, museum exhibits and plays from the venues themselves.

Charlotte Agenda, for instance, does ad deals that put corporate logos on its site along with native ads and promoted job postings.