Flipboard launches local news initiative

Flipboard on Tuesday will announce a new "Local initiative" to gather regional sources and national stories of local interest to users in 23 North American metropolitan areas, including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Toronto and Dallas.

Why it matters: Like other tech platforms, Flipboard is investing in local coverage because of audience demand.

• Where Flipboard thinks it can be useful is to provide local communities with a curated mix of not just news, but also lifestyle information about local sports, dining, weather, real estate, transportation and more.

Details: Flipboard curators will leverage editorial judgement on top of machine learning to pull in news from each of its local collections from an array of local news sources, including newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, college news sites and blogs.

• Some local collections will feature collections of topics that are important to that particular jurisdiction, like Cuba in Miami and wildfires in San Francisco.

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