Recent comments

Build a better CraigsList (6)
- Mac: I have never found a newspaper classified that was easy to use. I assume somehow they are an offshoot of the print media and that is why they are crippled. I encourage every newspaper person to try and use their own website - use it for at least an hour - then see how it compares to drudgereport and craigslist. So far the only use I have for a newspaper is the comics and the Sunday advertisments. Everything else is either too biased to be true or intellectual bubble gum.
- Eric Bates: The strategy you’ve suggested is what we’ve implemented here in Atlanta with ajcexchange.com. Our previous site, ajcclassifieds.com had been losing revenue, audience and listings steadily since the arrival of craigslist. Rather than wait until it all dried up, we made the decision to cut the cord and go all free. That coupled with social networking features, better search engine optimization and a better overall user experience has been a winning formula for us....
- Scott Nelson: A response, and one idea for building a better Craigslist: http://is.gd/nVQp
- Daniel: Personally, I think one could certainly build a better Craigslist. Two points of feedback, however. First, most newspapers should focus on improving their websites before attempting to invent the next Craigslist. Most (actually all) have vast opportunities for both improving their UX and how they sell advertising. Second, the web 2.0 rule still applies here: figure out how to make your tool useful so that people love it before you try and monetize it.
Small business solutions: Beyond the click (6)
- Daniel: An interesting idea. However, given the immediacy of the Web, I believe only a few types of “deadline deals” would work. And those are for purchases that don’t cost a lot of money. With larger purchases, folks may want to do their research before making a buy. But this could be a good play for grocery stores, etc. announcing deals. However, I’d want to see the sales strategy for this. The Web is always a tough sell, and something like this seems a bit...
- kent kirschner: Ads are content…..how many web searches a day are people trying to figure out what car to buy, where to find a local plumber and who has the best pizza in town? I’d say as a %, many more than who would actually be navigating to a local newspaper site. So, let’s take it a step further and put the advertiser in control of their content area as well. Let them self manage their ‘ad’ on an ongoing basis. Reputation management obviously must be left to...
- Tim Windsor: What I like most about this is that it begins to leverage the one strength that local papers have that they don’t explicitly sell: Google Rank. Of course, it would be a good idea to reach out to Google to be sure that this is built in such a way that it doesn’t unnecessarily set off any scam alarms at the mothership, but the notion of organizing commercial content in the same way that news is organized and exposed to search just might have legs.
- Jay Small: I’ll vouch for that, Chris. Our group turned a couple of idea sprints into wireframes and concept taxonomies that resemble — in my view, at least — a completely workable approach to SMBs. The beauty is, this isn’t a technology platform arms race, it’s a human services and skills solution.
- Chris Krewson: What I liked most about this session - aside from the chance to meet so many talented designers and Web developers - was the reception to new or different ideas. Just saying “ads can be content too” was not dismissed or brushed off. Once an idea was floated, others took it, riffed on it, polished it and then got it on paper. I was truly impressed by many of the people in my group and in the room. It was a great experience.
- Charles Batchelor: The really great thing about this is it moves the newspaper away from “web site” thinking. This looks like sophisticated Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It holds value for ad clients for several reason, the least not being the major search engines are providing more localized results. Therefore, with this we have the newspaper sales force fighting Google with judo—using Google’s power to sell against them. Newspapers have GOT to establish themselves as...
March 21st Manifesto (23)
- Paul Balcerak: I don’t really care to crown or demonize you guys like some on this thread have taken to, but I really appreciate you dedicating your time and resources to trying to fix the journalism industry. I remain cautiously optimistic and will keep a very interested eye on this site.
- David Habrat: From the Ad side of the street…TeamR2.0 good start to your list! John, love your zeal. I do not know if activation rates on a kindle platform ROP ads will be comparable to print…study that so you can sooth the fears your advertisers will have. Some additional thoughts as you prepare to meet…The number one online ad crisis is CPM value. Action point 1. Make a pact when you meet on the 21st to drop every Google ad and or remnant ad from your sites. Google will eat your...
- Charles-A. Rovira: I agree completely. Journalism hasn’t made a dime for a journalist outside of working for a newspaper. But you assume that it can’t while it always has. Its about time the creative and editorial processes were actually respected and turned into a revenue generation mechanism. People bought newspapers for the news they contained and it was the tail that wagged the dog of all those ads, which paid for the paper. The Web freed the reader from all those unfocused...
- Mike Donatello: Alan Jacobson wrote: 18. March 2009 at 10:13 am : We’re “wasting time” on this because that’s where the money is. Journalism doesn’t generate revenue, nor should it. ========================= Sorry, Alan, but you just lost me there. Just because no one’s done it well (i.e., generating revenue directly from a fee-for-content) arrangement doesn’t mean that it cannot or should not be done.
- Alan Jacobson: We’re “wasting time” on this because that’s where the money is. Journalism doesn’t generate revenue, nor should it.
- Charles-A. Rovira: I’ve been looking at the task list: 1. Build an effective advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone. 2. Create a better CraigsList. 3. Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses. 4. Re-imagine the homepage and display advertising. Why are you wasting your time doing 1. Apple’s job, 2. Craig Newmark’s job, 3. the impossible (show them and...
- Charles-A. Rovira: The problem as I see it _not_ “how do we create content?” We’re experts at content creation and message massage. Its just that we’ve never been paid for it. _Never_. Our message, our medium if you’ll pardon the McCluhanism, has always been carried and paid for by the advertisers. They gave us a ride, but only grudgingly. If we had credibility, they liked our reporting when it was favorable and could take comfort that our alleged media effects...
- John Winn Miller: As a former publisher and executive editor for Knight Ridder and McClatchy, I am encouraged that someone is trying to be innovative. I have long argued that newspaper companies cannot tweak their way to the future. We need bold ideas, so don’t rule out anything and don’t be intimidated by naysayers. You just might come up with a solution. One idea I would love to see you explore is a partnership with Amazon or one of the other eBook book producers. It would work...
- Mike Donatello: Color me a hopeful skeptic. IMO, one of the biggest continuing blunders of our industry is too much time spent listening to ourselves hem and haw, and not enough time devoted listening to our customers and solving their problems. Please, prove me wrong this time.
- Lydia Chavez: You’re onto something. Look forward to hearing about the results and thank you! Best, Lydia Chavez, UC Berkeley, Mission Loc@l
Talking ‘Bout a Revolution (1)
- Patrick Yen: We cannot solve the world’s problems with the same thinking that killed the Newspaper Industry.
Classified solutions (11)
- Charles-A. Rovira: I got tired of waiting and sent my suggestions off. The worse part of waiting for somebody else to see something is that they might not see what’s right in front of their eyes. Nor do they get the hint, no matter how broadly it given. So I decided to stop namby-pandy-ing about, making suggestions about fixing the medium of what will soon no longer be called the press. I wrote to the most eminent editor, writer, newsman, that I could think of, Sir Harold Evans. Then I...
- Charles-A. Rovira: The paper part of the newspaper is dead … Get over it. The only thing that will remain is going to be vanity presses like HP is proposing with their printing service [ http://magcloud.com/ ] We didn’t fight for the rights of the buggy whip makers either … Suck it up. Journalism however is definitely NOT DEAD. It has been democratized, popularized, localized, opened up, opened on and opened for a new business model. If you worked as an editor or for an editor, you are...
- Mike Higdon: These look like Ernie’s design, am I right? Looks good. I also agree with Ernie in response to Charles. Journalists DO ally themselves with people who are good at this, they are called the sales people. You may not normally see them in news organizations, they are well hidden. Us journalism people aren’t allowed to talk to those sales people, they do nasty business dealings. Journalists should also be thinking about these things. It’s the separation from any...
- Chris Amico: Hey Joey, Good thinking, and deeper into the details than we got in a day, actually. I think tiers are a good way to think about it. A lot of what we’d talked about were simple one-time enhancements–make this ad better–or premium ads over premium accounts. No reason both systems couldn’t coexist, though. Part of the question behind whether to use tiered accounts and/or premium ads is how people will actually use it. For regular power users, a premium...
- Joey Baker: Seems like ya’ll have come with a really solid plan for redoing classifieds sales online. I was really please to see the inclusion of aggregating craigslist as one of the goals. After all, why should newsorgs try to create a new social network when a perfectly good one already exists? The one concern I had when reading the plan is that the premium content very much follows a micro-payment model. This does work, (see: ebay), but it’s not very user friendly. If you take...
- Charles-A. Rovira: Couldn’t have said it better myself. You want new ideas? How about this? What a radical step it would be if we were to actually focus on content and leave the business of broken business models to those who can actually fix them? (Hint: Apple, craiglist and Google are NOT your enemy.) How bout if we fix what is actually broken? The distribution of physical objects is part of the problem, the biggest part. Ally yourselves with someone who is NOT in the business of...
- Ernie Smith: Charles, The only job we’re trying to do is keep newspapers alive. We want our industry to survive. “You’re all trying to do Apple’s and Craiglist’s and whoever else’s job for them.” No. We’re trying to keep newspapers competitive in an era when they’re struggling financially. We’re trying to help them learn to think outside their structures so they can build new, better products. We want to help them compete with Craigslist and build...
- Neo-Conned: “newspapers should leverage their reputation as the most trusted medium” …. most trusted?… LOL, anyone seen my WMD’s lately?. Rumzzy.
- Charles-A. Rovira: What does this have to do with news? If I want to be a reporter or an editor, that implies that I DONT want to be a salesman or to have to deal with supposed clients. The two require diametrically opposed skill sets. Its almost an “either/or” situation. The post office right now is hurting for cash. Junk/bulk mail is down because spam offers much more attractive ROI. The results of a campaign may be low but the costs are even lower. The internet is an all...
- Chris Amico: Part of what we talked about in the group is what a user is doing at any given moment. That’s how we came up with the “I have/I want” split on the home page, and it drove most of our conversation about contextual ads. We figured that each time someone shows an interest in a kind of product–a car, in this case–it’s a chance to offer alternatives, and then to refine those based on filters, getting more feedback along the way. And those...
- Chase: When I go to a Web site like Amazon.com, I really appreciate their “used and new from [enter lowest price here]” link. I think this ‘newspaper Craigslist’ might benefit by having a similar feature. For me, I’m definitely going to click a link that takes me to the lowest priced product. Also, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the lowest priced item…it could be ‘most trusted seller,’ etc. Anyway, this template for the possible site...
A sustainable revenue model (11)
- Robert Ivan: You might be interested in reading my MA thesis December 2008, which starts here: The fundamental problem of newspapers on the internet - The Krugman Paradox http://www.metaprinter.com/200 8/12/the-fundamental-problem-o f-newspapers-on-the-internet-t he-krugman-paradox/ You touch on a lot of the content in there and my conclusion that is that absent online advertising innovations, newspapers must seek alternative revenue streams to achieve economic sustainability. It seems like a...
- Charles Batchelor: Jay, I’ve published magazines and sold advertising and know well the feeling that we need to “do more” for our advertising clients. And, anything newspapers can do, they should do. But, I learned early on that we can’t manage our clients biz. So, what more can newspapers do to create, as you put it, “calls to action beyond a simple click?” It gets into what was called “reputation management” at rev2oh, but I prefer to call...
- Jay Small: What I said was: we sell space on a Web site as a two-dimensional hole, much the way we sell it in print. Online interfaces are multidimensional, layered and, I joked, intertwined a lot like a web … a world-wide … web. We are only now learning how to sell audience based on what we know or surmise about our audience. But we moved beyond even that on Saturday, focusing on the messages businesses want to communicate to prospective customers, most of which should be...
- Charles Batchelor: Jay Small is said to have said: “Right now, we don’t do much beyond the sale” of space. That’s right. Newspaper have sold audience and that’s good. Can newspapers offer ways to enhance the marketers’ relationship with the audience?
- Charles Batchelor: Oops, last line in that last post should say, “Any new revenue ideas that are NOT about using the newspaper’s brand and targeting are not likely not ideas that newspapers can exploit well.” Sorry.
- Charles Batchelor: Mike Poller hit on the two things newspapers need to start working to exploit, especially on the web: 1) Local, targeted reach. (And that is not just zip codes, but age, gender, family status, etc.) Anything the newspapers can do to target a worthwhile audience, do it. 2) Use the brand of the newspaper on all new products. (Once upon a time, we wanted to create new brands independent of the newspaper. And that was fine when we had the time and money. No more. Time to use...
- Mike Poller: cars.com and apartments.com and careerbuilder.com are owned and operated by newspaper groups. These are new brand names, with value, created out of thin air. Newspaper groups could do the same thing with a news aggregation site. Put Drudge right out of business. PRNewswire sells access to newspaper newsrooms, that’s all. Newspapers could band together and create a “pay-to-play” PR submission site that would have PR firms typing in MasterCard numbers every...
- Mike Poller: Speaking as an ad agency guy, my beef with daily newspapers is that they never really built programs for the small business. Dentists, for example, only want to reach people who live/work within a few miles of their office. Everything else is waste. But newspapers wanted me to purchase a zone ad covering half a county, because they could keep the price up. Remember the old saying: “I know half my ad budget is being wasted, the problem is I don’t know which...
- Charles Batchelor: Thanks Jay. I’ll take a shot at answering. As others here have said clearly, one of the goals is to turn local newspapers into more powerful branding channels. I saw this painfully within the regional retailing organization I worked with, but it is true of small retailers as well. And, let it be said that creating and maintaining a brand is no cakewalk for national firms either. Let’s focus on this: In the local community, the newspaper is one of the most...
iPhone solutions (1)
- kent kirschner: First let me say it is exciting that you are engaged in this conversation. A good thing indeed. But I will continue to harp on one fundamental technology that will impact all of what is discussed in this blog: the digital reader. You’ve only mentioned the I-phone here but the iphone, in contrast with a next generation type Kindle pales in comparison. The implications of the soon to be available technology are monumental: no print/distribution costs but you maintain the...
Display advertising solutions (6)
- Mike Higdon: I think this is a great motion forward. I especially like this, “And finally, what if that big ad provided more than a brand message, but an experience? What if that ad “came alive” onMouseOver, just like a photo in Harry Potter’s newspaper, The Daily Prophet? To take full advantage of the Web, advertisers must build true interactive experiences within their ads, with the means to capture the attention, preferences and contact info of potential customers. These ads...
- Brad Flora: What are some examples of actual, moneymaking homepages like this in the wild? If this is the way forward, then surely that’s in part based on the success of someone doing this or something similar, right? This looks a lot like Slate or Salon circa 1997. I find it hard to see what’s what. Perhaps that’s the point. The only organized part of the page is the ads.
- Jason Fry: Great stuff. Pages are very clean and actually coherent — and so I find myself looking at the ad portion instead of instinctively tuning out everything that’s blinking and cycling. That’s what I’ve been trained to do by lousy ad approaches.
- Charles Batchelor: Interesting, Ken. I think that is called “proof of concept.” (It’s new for newspapers, their readers and their advertisers. That’s new enough.)
- Ken Carpenter: Not sure there’s much new here. Look to digital magazines for current offerings: http://texterity.com (sample: http://sportingnewstoday.com) http://zmags.com (sample: http://viewer.zmags.com/public ation/e90b813d#/e90b813d/1)
- Greg Linch: Great work, team! I wish I could have stayed for the rest of the event.
Demos, not memos* (1)
- Charles-A. Rovira: And from what I can see, its a total waste of effort. Why are you wasting your time trying to fix what ain’t yours to fix? You should align you efforts with someone whose business model is broken, yet, like the post office. The internet is eating their lunch too since the ROI on spam is a lot better than on direct mail. A stamp may be cheap but it costs something. The overhead on spam is very, very low. If you made them an offer to store .PDFs (or audio or video...
Improving online display advertising (8)
- Magazine Ads: Interesting content. Just wanted to share some information that I came across in a few articles discussing about recession and how we can adopt a different marketing strategy to promote our business. It’s quite eminent that most of the advertisers and businesses are taking to online advertising medium since the Internet has now become a necessity to reach global audience. However, even today there is still a huge chunk of people who do not access Internet and to reach this...
- Kirk Caraway: Mike Poller, perhaps I’m not understanding what your point is, and if that’s the case, please forgive me. It seems to me you are saying we need to engineer our sites to force readers to click through to more pages to get to the content they want. Because that’s an idea that has been tried and failed. Think about it. If I want to read about marlin fishing, I click on one link, go down one layer, no marlin fishing, just another link, and an ad, which I’m...
- Kirk Caraway: I like the basics of this idea. Size does matter, and sticking tiny banner ads on pages doesn’t work. But I’d like to propose that perhaps just making banner ads bigger isn’t an answer either. Maybe on the other half of the page you should present paid content about the advertiser and the products/services it sells, packaged as a story but clearly labeled as paid. And target these paid content pieces to match the editorial content as much as possible. In other...
- Mike Poller: When advertisers compete, newspapers profit. When an advertiser ads size or color to dominate, the newspapers is rolling in the dough… you need to change the old-style newspaper management mindset. For example: >Home >Sports >Sports>Fishing >Sports>Fishing>Saltw ater Fishing >Sports>>Fishing>S altwater Fishing>Marlin Fishing That’s five pageviews by creating a navigation system that allows readers to navigate through to find what...
- darleene: I really like what you’re saying about putting less on the front pages. I have a hobby site, http://www.weddingdecoratorblo g.com, and I only put two posts excerpts out front. I find it drives users much deeper into my site — since I’ve changed the design of my site, my pageviews have shot up. I also like your suggestion that we make more use of the horizontal space. It drives me bananas that so many sites are still so vertical. I mean, sure, its good for me, since...
- Nellie Bly: One problem with putting just a little out front is that readers think that’s all there is. (This was endemic a decade ago.) But tabs are invisible. Ironically, pure text links gets people inside to more pages. It’s those inside pages that have to list the rest of the section’s links. Yes, I know it’s ugly…
We’re launched (3)
- Patrick Cooper: Yuri’s on the mark. I’d guess a quarter of the room was under 30. Beyond that, the discussions and tone of the day were very age-blind. The mix was good.
- Yuri Victor: There were a couple college-aged journalists in attendance including Greg Linch and Deborah Acosta, as well as several recent college graduates.
- Chase: I think this is a great effort, but I wish RevenueTwoPointZero included at least a couple of college-aged journalists, like myself. Not only would someone my age have an interesting perspective to add to the pool of ideas created at this conference, but we’re also next in line to handle the problems you’ll be talking about today. Also, I wish more attention would be paid to how newspaper are not advertising themselves AT ALL. Occasionally I’ll drive by a lame...
Advertising on iPhone (4)
- Kirk Caraway: I have been working on newspaper websites for 15 years, and all along I’ve been trying to find effective ways to stick paid ads in front of readers. And from the very beginning, the banner ad has failed to produce. Every Eyetrack survey shows people ignore them. Try to make them more visible, and it just annoys readers. The thought of moving this failed model to the iPhone makes me cringe. Readers are seeking out content. If you want them to pay attention to the ads, then...
- Dhyana Sansoucie: I think an advertising model in which mobile advertisers need to offer some kind of discount (half price appetizer, 2 for 1 deal, free xxx) with every geolocated ad would quickly penetrate the consciousness of the mobile phone user. If they know every ad is a coupon to a nearby business, they might voluntarily regularly search for advertisers as they go about their day. In this way the advertising on the phone could be welcomed and not annoying.
Mr. Editor, Bring down this wall! (4)
- Todd Bria: I think this is very interesting to read. I was a Journalism Major in college working on community newspapers, but switched to advertising. For the past 22 years I have worked in the business-to-business media, in the electronics industry. In this world, there exits a business press who cover the “news” offer “analysis” of the market and then media that offer “technical information” and “how to information” that in many cases are...
- Alan Jacobson: David, your comment is your opinion. The research, above, contradicts you.
- Daniel: Advertising kills trust. Content written by advertisers but not clearly disclosed as such would be a death blow to the implicit contract between a reader and the news organization. That’s all I have to say.
Thinking the unthinkable (3)
- Mike Poller: Part of the lure of newspapers is finding the new, discovering the unexpected… On a search engine, I can only find more info about whatever I am searching for. Turning a newspaper page is an adventure that can lead me to something interesting and new. Something I never heard of before, some connection I never made before. This is “news.” We still need photographers, writers and editors to present what they feel is new, different, exciting, enlightening. I still...
- Charles-A. Rovira: The entire profession of journalism is a “marginal cost” as far as the old print media is concerned. Where taking away the primary costs and we now have to become respectable and respected; at least enough to attract enough people to pay for the equivalent of a couple of stamps. The salvation of journalism lies in an unexpected and unanticipated direction but a perfectly logical one: the Post Office.
- Charles-A. Rovira: Newspapers as we have come to know then ARE doomed… No doubt about it. Journalism has to crawl out from behind the masthead, stand up and be respected. The Matt Drudges and Ariana Huffingtons of the world are the way to go as far as representation goes. But even they have problems related to their ad supported business model. Pre-web: If I made big trucks, why would I want to advertise on their magazines? “Trucker’s Weekly” Is just fine by me. Cut to...
It’s not news or advertising. They’re both information. (4)
- Sterling Chen: I think the the issue for the editorial side folks is whether it makes us look like our coverage/criticism was bought off. And since our credibility is related to our brand value it’s not an entirely out-of-date question. When a positive theater review that uses a handout image runs alongside an ad for the same production (and which happens to use the same image), a paper can’t help but look a little dumb. When an altweekly runs an expose on a brothel, yet rakes in...
- Jeff Thomas: What is journalism, you ask? For one thing, it is the lone form of communication that strives to get it right. The essence of journalism, as Kovach and Rosenstiel have said, is the discipline of verification. It’s what separates journalism from fiction, poetry, opera, theater, cinema . . .and advertising. This is not a trivial distinction. Getting it right is crucial to open society. When free people invented the tool they needed to make it possible to remain free and...
- Charles Batchelor: In the past the practical problem in selling this kind of advertising was that it was time-consuming and it got in the way of the flow of news. Contextual ads are why newspapers are turning to Yahoo. I think we are going to see more of this kind of matching in newspapers via the Yahoo system. The data I saw from 300+ local newspapers’ web sites a few years ago told me most (but not all) of their traffic comes from their home page. So, the issue becomes featuring...
- Daniel: Journalism is impartial and generally independent. I agree that you could run a press release in place of your story. Disclosure would be paramount, however, as your brand is generally built from the perception that you haven’t been swayed from commercial influence, and it begs the question of whether you should run the press release on your own site or just link to it.

Follow us on Twitter @ rev2oh

Reading what teens want from news sites @ WIRED, which sounds a lot like tweentribune.com http://bit.ly/1zIKA 2009-04-10
Wondering whether "240,000 subscribers are using our e-Edition" as Freep's editor Paul Anger claims here: http://bit.ly/Klr9e 2009-03-29
Reading "Journalists need to think about the bottom line" in LAT: Journalists need to think about the bottom line: http://bit.ly/98jZN 2009-03-27
Reading "Practical Solution" at Nieman Lab. Thanks, Mathew! http://bit.ly/COnxb 2009-03-26
Reading Jen Saba's blogpost at Editor & Publisher about #rev2oh http://tinyurl.com/ch4kej 2009-03-24
Glad the #journchat crowd is checking out #rev2oh weekend work. More work to do on "jobs to be done" ... 2009-03-23
Seattle PI still running its own obit on homepage http://seattlepi.com 2009-03-23
Wondering why newspapers would rather curse the darkness than light a candle. 2009-03-23
We have ideas for classifieds that can help individual consumers + small businesses. http://bit.ly/bVNbY 2009-03-23
Thx for weighing in on the first round of prototypes. Know we have more to do. Let us know what you would do. http://tr.im/hGU1 2009-03-23
Working to get posts up for Monday. See the site in the morning for prototypes and strategies: http://revenuetwopointzero.com 2009-03-22
RT @cib258: @rev2oh Righto! Doing more for small biz is a HUGE opportunity. 2009-03-21
RT @haikuhijinks: They might save newsrooms: ... RevenueTwoPointZero ... Might give us some hope. #rev2oh ( @rev2oh ) 2009-03-21
In the meantime, get more background at the website and share your thoughts on the mission: http://www.revenuetwopointzero.com. #rev2oh 2009-03-21
That's it for now. Heading to the bar. Long day. Lots and lots of detail to come, including mockups, in-depth explanations, etc. #rev2oh 2009-03-21
Mobile apps would be paid functionality, not paid content BUT there could be an opportunity for paid content by individual market. #rev2oh 2009-03-21
Geo-enabled app would offer customization by locale: "Help people find what’s near them now. It's the ultimate zoned metro section." #rev2oh 2009-03-21
... and tried to remember that "you never know what your users will want later." Leave room for that. #rev2oh 2009-03-21
Mobile team tried to "Keep it simple. Don’t overfeature things." Pared offerings for paid apps from initial list of 30 to 5. ... #rev2oh 2009-03-21
Mobile team proposing free app w/general features and 5-tier upsells for 99 cents each. "Mini Pro to Power Suite" packages. #rev2oh 2009-03-21
More updates...

We’re launched

March 21, 2009

By Matt Mansfield

It’s Saturday and we have started. We began the day with a quick discussion and now everyone is broken into teams working to:

Build an effective advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone.
Create a better CraigsList.
Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Re-imagine the homepage and display advertising.

We’re planning to issue reports from the teams on Monday with as many prototypes as we can accomplish in a one-day sprint.

The participants today are:

Deborah Acosta, Miami-based free-lance journalist (University of Miami student)
Chris Amico, PBS NewsHour Online
Patrick Cooper, USA Today
William Couch, USAToday.com
Chris Courtney, Tribune Interactive
Steve Dorsey, Detroit Free Press and SND Secretary/Treasurer
Tyson Evans, New York Times Digital
Alan Jacobson, Brass Tacks Design
John Kondis, National Geographic Digital Media
David Kordalski, Cleveland Plain Dealer
Chris Krewson, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Greg Linch, Miami-based multimedia reporter (University of Miami student)
Wesley Lindamood, USAToday.com
Vernon Loeb, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Matt Mansfield, SND President and Medill School of Journalism
Logan Molen, Bakersfield Californian
Kristen Novak, USAToday.com
Carlos Roig, USAToday.com
Eric Seidman, AARP magazine
Jay Small, Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group and Small Initiatives, Inc.
Ernie Smith, Express and ShortFormBlog
Mary Specht, Gannett
Kathleen Sullivan, Gannett
Patrick Thornton, BeatBlogging.org
Yuri Victor, Gannett
Kris Viesselman, National Geographic
Jon Wile, The Washington Post
Chrys Wu, Washington Post Digital
Kaitlin Yarnell, National Geographic

All participants are here at their own expense and their views don’t necessarily represent the views of their organizations.

3 comments to “We’re launched”

Chase wrote:
21. March 2009 at 12:29 pm :

I think this is a great effort, but I wish RevenueTwoPointZero included at least a couple of college-aged journalists, like myself. Not only would someone my age have an interesting perspective to add to the pool of ideas created at this conference, but we’re also next in line to handle the problems you’ll be talking about today.

Also, I wish more attention would be paid to how newspaper are not advertising themselves AT ALL. Occasionally I’ll drive by a lame billboard that simply says, “Buy us for news,” but in all honesty, newspapers don’t seem to be saying, “Hey! Look what we brought you (insert list of news the paper broke)…support us so we can keep working for you.”

Maybe that’d be something worth discussing at this conference as well.
Yuri Victor wrote:
21. March 2009 at 4:00 pm :

There were a couple college-aged journalists in attendance including Greg Linch and Deborah Acosta, as well as several recent college graduates.
Patrick Cooper wrote:
22. March 2009 at 7:59 pm :

Yuri’s on the mark. I’d guess a quarter of the room was under 30. Beyond that, the discussions and tone of the day were very age-blind. The mix was good.

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