Local News and Ad Industries Eye Sweeping Realignment With Users (Part 1)
The solution to digital news media’s woes, according to Bill Densmore, will necessitate a total transformation of the news industry to create more transparent and mutually beneficial relationships among publishers, users, and advertisers. It can happen through what Densmore calls the “Information Trust Exchange.”
Local Media Consortium Touts New comScore-Validated Reach
The 75 newspaper groups and broadcasters that comprise the Local Media Consortium have always pitched advertisers that their “premium” content pulled in big numbers of readers. But LMC’s stats on unique visitors to its members’ 1,600 digital platforms were produced by a crazy quilt of measurements from individual publishers. The result was totals so high […]
Nashville ‘Indie’ Home Page Media, Now 5 Sites, Expands ‘Where There’s a Need’
Kelly Gilfillan launched her Home Page Media Group in suburban Nashville in 2009 smack in the middle of affluent turf that had been long “owned” by Gannett’s the Tennesseean. Having expanded her model to several nearby communities since then, Gilfillan is on track to hit $1 million revenue by 2017.
Washington Post Uses Its Journalism to Breathe New Life into Display Ads
The display ad, which has powered the revenue behind much of online media in the past, has taken a lot of flak in the past couple of years, as many publications have touted new formats (like native advertising) as the future. But Washington Post Director of Ad Product and Engineering Jarrod Dicker thinks the paper’s […]
Daily Voice Shows Scale and High CPMs Can Mix in Hyperlocal News
Trying to scale community news has many pitfalls. Sites that go for scale can end up publishing glorified “bulletin boards” as they seek to spread budget-limited journalistic resources across multiple communities. The end result can be bottom-fishing remnant CPMs that can be as low as $1. Carll Tucker, CEO of six-year-old Daily Voice, which recently expanded into North Jersey, says its scaling model has produced average CPMs that “hover a few pennies under $8.”
Missing from ‘Spotlight’ Movie: How News Sites Pay for Top-Quality Investigative Journalism
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team uncovered the pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church, but for all the acclaim the reporting won, it didn’t save the paper from a catastrophic financial decline that nearly put the Globe out of business. To understand how such journalistic success could be followed by such financial failure, Street Fight spoke with Dan Kennedy, associate professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, who has written extensively about the subject.
Swiftype’s Riley: Site Search Can Make News More Compelling
The importance of relevant searches extends beyond search engines. For publishers, custom site search that helps make better decisions about how to maximize the impact of their content, know and understand the likes of their users, and increase their level of engagement can make a material difference in their business. “The key to building a relevant search experience is blending complex signals together and ensuring your site search algorithm is always improving,” said Swiftype co-founder Matt Riley.
Classroom as Incubator: University of Florida Produces National Health Site for Young Adults
Every institution of higher learning has myriad news sources, from official newspapers to social media platforms. Some college publications have ambitions and appeal that transcend the campus boundaries. One such example is The Student Body, which emerged from a class at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville and now aims to reach a national audience.
The Challenge for ‘Indie’ News Sites: Monetizing Highly Engaged Audiences
When they met at their recent Chicago convention, independent community publishers and editors talked a lot about what might be called “reve-news.” On everybody’s mind at the Local Independent Online Newspaper (LION) Publishers’ annual meeting was how to monetize news. Even weddings and obituaries can contribute to local news publishers’ bottom line.
Franchises Make Scale Profitable for TAPinto.net’s Two-State Network
TAPinto.net has taken its New Jersey-centered franchise model for community news to adjacent and competitive Westchester and Putnam Counties in New York State’s heavily suburban Lower Hudson Valley. In this Q&A, founder and CEO Mike Shapiro explains how he’s been able to scale his seven-year-old community network through franchising, and do it largely through self-financing.
How Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Uses Quality Journalism to Pay the Bills
Like other dailies, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has taken big hits in advertising and distribution revenue on the print side, but it’s still profitable. To find out how the Journal Sentinel uses quality journalism to stay in the black, Street Fight spoke with editor and senior vice president George Stanley.