The Frederick News-Post recently launched a business blog.

In his initial post, Business Editor Cliff Cumber noted that business blogs for small newspapers are rare. “In fact, only 10 percent of papers nationwide — of any size — have a blog dedicated to business; more usually online commentary is reserved for sports or politics,” he said.

In my view, this kind of locally-focused business blog is a great idea. At a recent meeting of the Maryland Chamber’s Membership and Marketing committees, Andrew Rose from Naden/Lean and Jim Mannarino from The Gazette Newspapers discussed “hyperlocal” trends in journalism. You can learn more about this idea in this article from Fast Company.

According to wikipedia.com:

“The term “hyperlocal” is sometimes used to refer to news coverage of community-level events usually overlooked by mainstream media outlets. The increased usage of digital media devices (e.g. photo and video cameras, audio recorders), blogs, new media, and participation in social media, has made hyperlocal media content more widely available.”

I think the News-Post’s business blog is shaping up to be a unique hyperlocal initiative. It’s still early, but the News-Post’s bloggers have already taken a national story, the launch of the iPhone, and drilled down locally by blogging about people camping out at a local AT&T store. They’ve also done some blogging about the Frederick County Chamber. In fact, the chamber has it’s own category, which you can view here.

I look forward to watching how this business blog grows. Some other local paper initiatives I’m impressed with include the blogs recently launched by the Daily-Times in Salisbury here and the podcasts and streaming audio programs made available by the Hagerstown Herald-Mail, here, which include a podcast series from the Hagerstown-Washington County Chamber of Commerce.