If you’re a consumer of news on the Internet, you’re probably aware that there’s way too much out there for a human being to consume from the social media and news reporting websites.
As of today local news stories are mostly scattered across social media platforms with a handful getting covered by traditional media. Local news is certainly not scarce, however, there ceases to exist a single platform dedicated to just local news.
Local Press Co, a hyper-local news app simply consolidates all local news stories with the help of the very individuals that report them today on a platform that’s purpose-built for it.
According to Local Press Co’s founder Punit, users will find a lot of value in this stream of local information, whether it’s a news about local street event or any local political party. Because it’s essentially an unfiltered stream which they are trying to do in an organized manner.
Local Press Co allows individuals to report and follow news from in & around their neighborhood.
With the hyper-local & mobile first approach, users can report news within seconds. All it takes is a headline, image, category & location. Once added, news stories are served to relevant users based on their location and radius preferences.
The power to validate news is also vested with the users. The ‘vouch’ & ‘dismiss’ actions directly impact the credibility of a news report & its reporter. Other than validating, users can also comment, share & subscribe to news reports.
Key Services Of The App:
- Individuals report local news as it breaks
- The news is then served to nearby users based on their radius preferences
- The power to validate the news is also vested with the users
- Users can also share, subscribe and comment on other’s news reports
Key Features Of The App:
- Location Radius – The radius can be altered in order for the news received to be ‘more’ or ‘less’ local
- Battery Saver – Continue receiving news updates from your default location even when location services are turned off
- Trust Score – Active reporters are assigned a trust score based on accuracy of news being reported
- Filter Content – Decide which categories interest you and only get news from those
- Report & Share – Simultaneously post your reports on Twitter & Facebook
- News Verification – Use the ‘Vouch’ and ‘Dismiss’ actions to validate the news stories reported
Story Behind The Beautiful App
Unlike most entrepreneurs, the idea wasn’t the start of a journey for the founder. It came along the way.
Punit was keen on doing something of his own right after completing his college. But, none of the ideas he had back then were good enough. So, he joined Directi to see things through for a few months. Things went well and he ended up spending over 7 years there. Towards the end of it, Punit reached a point where it was impossible for him to think about something independent from his job.
He knew that he had to start sometime and also what was holding him back. So, he quit his job, took a few months off and started ideating. After a few not so good and monetarily unviable ideas, he conceptualized Local Press Co. It was something that he could see himself using and once he was sure that he could put up enough cash to make it happen, the work on making it a reality began.
While Punit was heading the Business Development & Hosting Sales teams at Directi, Andrea was a part of his team. After she quit the job, they just got together once and Punit ran the idea by her. She liked the concept and agreed to help out. They’ve been working together ever since. From a responsibility perspective, Andrea handles the online marketing and content part of the business while Punit handles the technology and finance bit.
Other than Andrea and Punit, the team has 3 other members working with them. Rahul Nanda, who is a social media influencer himself, handles the entire social media outreach. Disha works as a Content Editor and is responsible for overlooking all the news on the app and Aanchal is lending a hand as a Marketing Intern.
“As the key feature of the app is crowdsourcing local news, another major hurdle was and will continue to be the ability to ensure that the app has a good amount of relevant content and is free from abuse and spam. We have definitely gone back and forth on this one but we have been able to create a workaround to ensure the app works seamlessly,” says Punit.
Leave a Reply