We’re heading out to the Online News Association Conference in San Francisco. We’re super excited that we’re exhibiting this year! If you are headed out to ONA09 too, come check out our booth! We’ll have reps there to answer any questions about content aggregation and curation or set you up with a free trial.

We’ll also be following the #ONA09 conversation on Twitter with our @onespot account.

See you at ONA09!

There is still time to vote on our SXSW panels (also known as #sxsw).

Voting is super easy: start voting for and commenting on our panels!

Here is a reminder of the panels we submitted:

We are so excited to plan these panels and conversations. We hope you like them enough to vote and attend! Voting ends September 4th!

See you at SXSW 2010 and thanks for your support!

As voting for panels continue, we’ll focus on one of our panels every day. Today, it’s a technology and content panel: Online Video Killed the Publishing Stars.

Panel Description

Possible Panelists

Questions this panel will answer

VOTE FOR THIS PANEL

We are so excited to plan this panel and the other 6 we have submitted. We hope you like them enough to vote and attend! Voting ends September 4th!

See you at SXSW 2010 and thanks for your support!

As voting for panels continue, we’ll focus on one of our panels every day. Today, it’s a technology and content panel: Newspapers vs. Content Aggregators: Fight Night! (You know you want to see what goes down between big media and aggregators!)

Panel Description

Possible Panelists

Questions this panel will answer

VOTE FOR THIS PANEL

We are so excited to plan this panel and the other 6 we have submitted. We hope you like them enough to vote and attend! Voting ends September 4th!

See you at SXSW 2010 and thanks for your support!

The working title for this post was “The Mouse That Roared,” a riff on the mascot of ESPN’s majority owner, Disney. But there’s nothing mouse-like about ESPN. And, unlike the film of the same title, ESPN isn’t marching on newspapers’ turf with white flags at the ready. The 30-year-old network calls itself the “Worldwide Leader in Sports,” a nearly irrefutable claim when one tallies the Borg-like reach of its cable channels, local radio affiliates, blogs, international sites and more.

Accordingly, tremors from Sunday’s news that ESPN is adding local sports coverage – with plans to go hyper-local (think softball leagues) – have rippled well beyond editors’ offices. With local readers and ad dollars in the crosshairs of sports media’s biggest, best-funded promotional howitzer, this is a vastly bigger worry for newspapers than Google News’ parasitical attributes.

Why? Consider this stat from the Times story: “In less than three months, ESPN Chicago has become the city’s top sports site, attracting about 590,000 unique visitors in June… Second place went to the Tribune’s online sports section with 455,000 unique visitors.”

What’s amazing is not that it happened, it’s the velocity with which it happened. The Tribune has been the authority on Chicago sports for 162 years; ESPN only needed three months to undo that.

And it’s not just the sports desk that should be worried. Last month, the Huffington Post announced its plans to expand into local news. Resistance is futile.

Of course, competition from ESPN, HuffPo and other national outlets isn’t news to newspapers, which have traditionally relied on the defense that national outlets lack the well-sourced local beat reporters to compete head to head.

Until now,as Dan Shanoff notes:

Indeed, ESPN has been poaching talent from local papers for years, a trend exacerbated by local newsrooms’ collapsing budgets. Now, it appears, these chickens have come home to roost.

Fortunately for newspapers, this is a war that can be waged on the cheap. According to the Times article, ESPN primarily will use existing resources and need only 15 new staff members to run the Dallas, Los Angeles and New York properties.

How is going local such a high-leverage move for ESPN, HuffPo, et al? In a word, aggregation. Check out ESPN’s Rumor Central pages, where ESPN culls non-ESPN content by topic area, bundles it with internally-generated content, and charges its “Insiders” subscribers for access. Per Shanoff:

Actually, it can be more efficient, scalable and effective than that. Just ask OneSpot clients like the Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle or others. Instead of relying solely on the selection of a single editor, blogger or intern, these organizations tap into the hive mind of thousands of editors, bloggers, Twitterers and others who link to the best of the web. The key is quality content aggregation with smart curation to select the best of the best. And, as ESPN has proven, quality, curated content can also be monetized. Let us show you how.

ESPN’s blitzkrieg into local markets may resemble Amazon.com’s takeover of so many retail categories. Both are category-killer brands executing ruthlessly clever online strategies while incumbents, beholden to brick-and-mortar interests and budgets, struggle to keep up. But ESPN is winning by outsmarting, rather than outspending. With nimbleness and creativity, newspapers can fight fire with fire.