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It seems like one local startup after another is making the same mistakes that have killed off so many of them.
It amazes me how some of these start-ups dont realize that new collaborative technologies are going to enable more effective selling from the inside - lastly it also is easier to measure key metrics when you sell from the inside (cost of leads, aquisition costs etc). The conclusion here is its not enough putting out an innovative product but you have to bring sales and marketing innovation as well. The above leads to being smarter with your $$ and helps with the path to profitability.
Jeff Jarvis is super smart and I really respect his writings on new media (and agree with most of them.)
The globe is a Seattle icon so I hope it sticks around in some form.
John Cook
Lose the content, lose the viewers.
It's hard to see this model working and be anything but a money drain, in which case even Paul Allen is not going to be a savior.
rjh: From my standpoint, the answer would be "probably the number of reporters at the P-I". I'm not sure what percentage of the staff that is. 25%? If you went online only and you used a platform that required no tech workers (like Newsvine or WordPress or something like that) and you outsourced your ad sales (may or may not be a good idea), you could probably produce enough content to keep up with the Seattle Times online with about 40 people. If you outsourced some of the content to local bloggers (like the PI smartly already does), maybe you get it down to 30 in-house writers/editors? I don't know... just a guess.
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/05/newspapers-...
To summarize, newspapers should target being the primary source of local information. They should be the place to go for local news as well as the place for local reviews. They should have the best relationships and be the primary channel to get advertisements from local small businesses.
As much as I like the Seattle PI, it is nowhere near this, unfortunately. The Seattle Weekly, Citysearch, and The Stranger are better sources of local reviews. Online sites such as ZDNet and TechFlash are better sources of information on major local businesses such as Microsoft or on local startups. On local news and sports, the PI has to compete with the Seattle Times. And the PI is in no way the primary broker for advertisements from local businesses.
It is a real shame. I very much like the PI, but it moved too slowly to adapt. I hope it manages to find a way to continue.
There might be a technical barrier to pulling this off. Software will live at the heart of such an operation, and software is expensive. I don't know if the existing CMS driving seattlepi.com can be leveraged, but the only alternative to rolling your own state of the art content collation and delivery system is a close, confidential, and undoubtedly expensive partnership with an existing CMS provider.
It would be hugely exciting to see some real money flow into an online version of the PI.
They are in a tough situation for sure, and Mike Davidson's math on the numbers of employees leftover is in the ballpark if not high.
Anyway, here's our latest on the matter: 10 steps to save the Seattle P-I.
http://tinyurl.com/7nkn8n
John Cook
The P-I has a good online reach, about 1/5 that of the NY Times and 1/3 the size of the Washington Post.
A local ad automation gizmo could be handy with portions of the site, though, like a blog syndicate, if the PI folds in local neighborhood blogs with a known neighborhood audience.