Flipboard Launches Local with Deep and Diverse Coverage for 23 Cities

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Flipboard, a curated content platform for people around the world, is launching a new Local initiative bringing together regional sources and national stories of local interest to users in 23 North American metropolitan areas (see list below). This initiative builds on Flipboard's mission to surface great journalism to inform and inspire people about the world they live in.

A Knight Foundation study from October 2019 found that people not only have greater trust in local media, but believe that local media is better at "covering issues Americans can use in their daily lives." Flipboard's new Local offering brings regional news, sports, dining, weather, real estate, transportation and more from a variety of sources together in one place and connects Flipboard users to the information that shapes their world.

"The goal of this initiative is twofold: to offer our readers the best in both local and national news and information, and to support local publications and broadcasters that are looking to reach and grow their audiences in new ways," said Marci McCue, vice president of content and communications at Flipboard.

"We applaud Flipboard's thoughtful efforts to elevate local news to its users and are delighted that two of our largest metros, the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, will be part of this inaugural initiative," said Jessica Gilbert, senior director of product and experience, McClatchy. "We're excited that our high impact local journalism, including investigative, opinion, sports and 'news you can use' will be surfaced and look forward to continuing to collaborate with Flipboard on spotlighting local journalism."

The first 23 Local sections will be featured in the Explore Tab inside the Flipboard app. These destinations include content from local news organizations, such as newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, college news sites and blogs, that share their stories on Flipboard.

Some publications curate Flipboard Magazines to organize their content based on local interests and relevant city topics. For instance The Miami Herald has 15 different Flipboard Magazines on everything from The Miami Heat to Cuba; The Chicago Sun-Times curates 24, including Chicago Politics and Chicago Education; and The Mercury News has 37 magazines on topics such as The San Francisco 49ers and California Wildfires.  When articles are "flipped" into their Magazine, Flipboard's topic engine classifies the content and surfaces it to people interested in related subjects. This helps publishers and broadcasters drive traffic to their stories—local, national and even international—that may not otherwise see their news.

For this initiative, Flipboard's machine learning algorithms classify content specifically related to the 23 metro areas and then recommend these stories to followers of the relevant cities to local audiences based on their IP address. Content comes from local sources sharing RSS feeds, Twitter feeds as well as Flipboard Magazines curated by publishers and people on the platform.

To get content onto Flipboard, publishers create an account and use the Flipboard bookmarklet to start curating content into the platform or submit their RSS feed to Flipboard. From that moment on, content will automatically be analyzed and indexed by AI, giving people a way to discover publisher content based on topic.

Now when people download Flipboard in one of the cities listed below, they'll be offered the local section as an option to follow. Existing users can find these city sections in the Explore Tab inside the Flipboard app and in the topic recommendation cards featured in their For You feeds.

First Twenty-Three Metro Regions

1. Atlanta
2. Austin
3. Boston
4. Chicago
5. Dallas
6. Denver
7. Houston
8. Las Vegas
9. Los Angeles
10. Miami
11. Minneapolis-St. Paul
12. New Orleans
13. New York City
14. Philadelphia
15. Phoenix
16. Portland, Oregon
17. Sacramento
18. San Diego 
19. San Francisco Bay Area
20. Seattle
21. Toronto 
22. Vancouver
23. Washington, D.C. 

About Flipboard

Flipboard is an award-winning curation platform, where people go to understand our time and share the stories that are worth our time. On Flipboard quality articles, videos, podcasts and products are curated every day for millions of people around the world. It is a platform that lets people spend time on their interests, develop deeper understanding and share the best ideas with others by collecting them into their own Flipboard Magazines. Download Flipboard for free in any app store or visit.

SOURCE Flipboard

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