NowPublic, an online collaborative newspaper, was bought for $25 million by Clarity Media, owner of Washington D.C. Examiner, The San Francisco Examiner and Examiner.com, a network of local sites. Philip Anschutz owns Clarity, O2 Arena, part of the LA Lakers and Michael Jackson before his death/
Other potential buyers included AP, Fox News, Glam Media and even Technorati.
NowPublic has citizen reporters in 140 countries. The Examiners claim to have 13,000 citizen journos in 20 markets across the U.S.
Recent hyperlocal news: Old media vanguard the Washington Post shuttered its hyperlocal citizen-j project, LoudonExtra, while MSNBC.com bought neighborhood news network Everyblock. Around the same time, AOL’s local news play Patch just added two new sites under its umbrella.