HereCast is shutting down

HereCast, the website dedicated to content 'by locals for locals', is going on hiatus at year-end. No return date is set and the website will go dark. This blog posted 427 times on HereCast over a two year period.

In an email to casters (bloggers) on November 29, 2019, the White River Junction, VT startup said:

We started HereCast 6 years ago to help fill a void we saw in our local communities. Your efforts have far exceeded our expectations; however, we’ve fallen short of other goals, so we are shutting down the site while we reassess our future. 

This is big loss for residents of and visitors to the Upper Valley specifically and for hyperlocal coverage in rural communities in general. HereCast's content came from locals who were paid from a pool funded from advertising revenue. The site was popular in the region, "reaching more than half of Upper Valley residents month-in, month-out," said the HereCast website. "HereCast showed that — given the opportunity — people from all walks of life will step up to inform and engage their communities."

Growth was a problem.The company "overestimated how quickly we could expand our readership beyond the Upper Valley. We’re growing, but not quickly enough to support the cost of continuing to develop and maintain our platform."

"Second, we underestimated the hostility of traditional media." As reported elsewhere, the regional newspaper Valley News, based in Lebanon,NH viewed HereCast as a competitor and refused to let company advertise in its paper. In the six year history of the local startup, the only news story that I recall Valley News writing about HereCast was to report its shutdown.

As the Valley News and other newspapers fight to survive in the internet era, it was "naive to think they could risk exploring a different future with us under those circumstances," said HereCast.

See also, Site dedicated to content 'by locals for locals' announces shutdown in the Eagle Times on December 3, 2019.