A key to the sustainability of journalism has always been local advertising. But now new competitors to the local newspaper -- and to web local startups -- are developing technologies for reaching into the local market and selling local advertising online. In Santa Clara, Calif., this week, the Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J.-based consultancy, is running a conference focused not on news or journalism but on the business of selling local advertising through search engines and other strategies. "Drilling Down on Local '07" is the name of the event. MGP2006 alum Peter Krasilovsky is one of the curators/organizers of the conference and he engineered the The Media Giraffe Project receiving a free "press pass" to the event with the expectation we would "blog" about the event.Rather than multiple posts, we've created an aggregation wiki page from which you can link to some specific reports as we file over the next 24 hours or so: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Kelsey-drilling-down-local

-- bill densmore