Flipboard, a content discovery platform curated by people and publishers, rolls out its Local initiative to 15 additional cities in the United States and Canada, including Kansas City, Mo.; Hartford, Conn.; Columbus, Ohio; and Montréal, Quebec. With these new additions the total number of metro areas with deep local coverage from a wide array of local sources reaches 50.

By curating and collaborating with local newspapers, radio and TV stations as well as blogs, each local feed covers news, politics, real estate, traffic, dining, sports and weather, coronavirus and elections. For instance, people who follow Kansas City will see stories from The Kansas City Star, Patch Kansas City, Kansas City The Call, and The Pitch, as well as local radio and TV stations.

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With this latest release of the Local initiative, users have the option to personalize their local feed for the first time by selecting from sub-topics related to the metro area they are in. When they swipe to the “passion picker” and select their city, topic tags such as the names of sports teams, nearby towns, and topics such as local politics and real estate show up that they can then select. By using this new option, one user can include updates about local sports teams, while another can create a feed that focuses on local coronavirus news.

Local Notifications

Additionally, Flipboard will begin testing localized notifications in June. The test starts in three cities––Houston, Chicago and Philadelphia––to see what type of notifications users find most helpful. Initially, anyone in these cities who follows local news for that metro area in Flipboard will receive a notification on their phone when an important local story breaks.

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“We launched our Local initiative at the start of 2020 and we’ll continue to expand this program over the course of the year,” said Marci McCue, vice president of content and communications at Flipboard. “It seems more relevant and important than ever as our communities grapple with the impact of a pandemic, racial injustice and unemployment making the need for reliable, local information more critical than ever.”

According to research, people in thousands of communities across North America rely on a single source for reliable news and information. By bringing together a range of outlets, from traditional newsrooms to the best blogs, Flipboard makes a plurality of topics and perspectives easily accessible again.

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