Community building is as much our job as info providing. I think as an industry we’re a bit late to the game, though.

Dhyana

When Charlie Sennott spoke at your conference about Global Post, he left out one of our key differentiators: We will be publishing the work of 350 of the world’s best bloggers from the 53 countries Globa Post will be covering.

One of the problems media are having is connecting to people. What better way to do that than by publishing the riveting work of real humans living, and in some cases surviving, in some of the most fascinating situations in the world? The street-level, real-life stories of people living in countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe are compelling.

And that’s my job as their Director of Global Blog Development (fancy title, huh?!). Along with 14 interns, we have been scanning the Web for the very best bloggers writing in or about our 53 countries. And we have found some incredible stuff.

I have posted samples on my blog where you can see their pictures and read excerpts of their best writing: johnwilpers.wordpress.com.

The combination of correspondents and bloggers will be a very compelling package and add to the success of our business model.

– John Wilpers (jwilpers@globalpost.com); blog: johnwilpers.wordpress.com

1. The vast majority of the innovation taking place and being discussed at the summit was around managing the cost side of the equation and/or models to fund journalism as opposed to funding a business. The level of urgency and innovation doesn’t match it on the revenue side of the equation. We can’t cost cut our way to a compelling business so the revenue side has to step up their game. My next point posits why they haven’t yet.
2. The business side of most of the established news businesses are led by non-innovative Order Takers. In working with sales orgs, broadly speaking I find there are “order takers” and “order makers”. For those not in sales, this isn’t about bossing people around. Rather “order takers” pretty much wait for customers to come to them and/or consider ongoing revenue to be a birthright. They simply need to continue to schmooze and service the account and they’ll be fine. In contrast, “order makers” passionately find new business opportunities whether it is under-served segments, new revenue streams, or different sales approaches to ensure revenue growth. As long as established media organizations are led by an order-taker mentality, their decline will be assured.

While we don’t pretend to have all the answers, NextNewsNet is trying all kinds of different approaches with sites in our network (e.g., SunValleyOnline and NewWest.Net) despite having achieved a modicum of profitability which makes us unique amongst pure play online local news/info sites. This past week we tried a new approach that gives me reason for huge optimism. Conservatively speaking, we should close ad deals with local businesses that are equal to 20% of our total revenue of the prior year using a new approach.

Let me give one example from this past week. We had done research on our site in order to quantify the value of our audience to specific market segments and developed some new ad tools in preparation for the push this week. We called on a real estate broker/office in a market where sales volumes are down 70+% from 2 years ago. Previously, we’d made pitches that hadn’t led to any business. Before we started, the broker said that they were in the process of cutting back on their ad spending and didn’t plan on doing anything with us but were happy to hear about our research. We had a great meeting where they were impressed with the tools and accountability we had built in to our pitch. By late the next day, they told us that they were going to cut their magazine, newspaper and TV ads where they’d seen no evidence of results so they could find money to sign a 1-year agreement with us. That may give pause to those in the newspaper/magazine/TV arena but I’m confident they wouldn’t have lost that revenue had they communicated the value they were delivering. In this economy, one needs be able to do that as that revenue isn’t their birthright.

Separately, we are doing some things to increase our qualified lead flow that borrows from approaches Dell has had success with and it’s going very well. As your comments from Tom Evslin made clear, there’s much to be gained by looking for ideas outside of one’s own industry. One of my favorite business stories is how Southwest Airlines gained a huge competitive advantage by cutting down on gate turnaround time (and thus planes can be in the air more and thus they sell more seats per plane). Where did they get their breakthrough? Not United or Delta. NASCAR pit crews. They had a similar challenge of quickly and safely turning around a transportation vehicle of a different sort and Southwest was able to apply those principles to their business.

See the good quality discussion here http://ultralocalvoice.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/talking-hyperlocal-ultralocal-workshop-at-mashup/#comment-66

cheers

w

Site will be launching in full soon….. very soon (rubs hands together while plotting).

mwwwuahahahahah (evil laugh).

I’m one of those who argue for the higher value of editors. My reasoning is simple: Online news is a competitive business. Given competition, readers will choose between news sources based on perspective, voice, and quality. It is editors that craft and maintain voice and quality. Thus, they (as curators), will form the core of a news source’s competitive advantage.

Good writers are necessary but not sufficient. Their work cannot be distinguished in a sea of searchable articles without the handiwork of a good curator. On the other hand, as we’ve seen from numerous examples of “curated” link lists, aggregated news services, (HuffingtonPost…), etc. a good curator can build a competitive advantage even without on-staff writers. Thus, curators seem to be both necessary and sufficient to build competitive advantage.

bob wyman