TechFlash - Latest Comments in Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

bev — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:47:00 -0000

I would add Tracy Record to your list. She is the only person I know who is actually making a living running a local blog. She and her husband run the West Seattle Blog and they do an amazing job. They are also able to live off the ad revenues which is pretty amazing. She is a great writer and has a background in TV news. Her website is very popular and a great source of information.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

bev — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:47:00 -0000

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

matt — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:53:00 -0000

Mike Davidson is the man.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

orcmid — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:31:00 -0000

I wonder what Mark Briggs of the Tacoma News Tribune (sorry, the old name is engraved in my DNA) is doing now? I loved his approach to on-line-ness, also favor the P-I community engagement with blogs and comments online.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Bentler — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:58:00 -0000

A focus on local advertising for online will kill the company since 80% of the Post Intelligencer's visits are from out of state now. As it stands, what the P-I really needs is an ad service giant capable of providing geotargeted ads based on the reader's locale and matching the content on the reader's screen, and you know who that would be.

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.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Kevin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:01:00 -0000

Great post. Along with The Sporting News, Paul Allen also has TechTV as a media venture he started (and sold). http://seattlepi.nwsource.c...

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

John Cook — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:28:00 -0000

Got to agree Greg that the P-I moved too slowly to adapt, but as one former P-I reporter frequently said: "It is, what it is."

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

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

bill — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:20:00 -0000

There has to be a place for an online news organization somewhere between the Stranger and the New York Times. I would think that a web site that invested in originating a lot of regional content and established trust with the public would be able to thrive. Crosscut's is not yet in this space. It should be a lot bigger, less blog like and more news like. Still, I'm a daily reader of Crosscut.

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.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Greg Linden — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:49:00 -0000

Hoping it is of interest, let me point back to a post I had back in May 2006 on a strategy for newspapers:

http://glinden.blogspot.com...

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.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Mike D. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:27:00 -0000

Honored to be included in the list.

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.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

rjh — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:16:00 -0000

You make a point of how Newsvine had just six employees. The P-I has a staff of 160. How many of those would you need to produce the content for an online site comparable to the current site? Half? A quarter (which would mean a significant reduction in content)? Where would you possibly find the revenue?

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.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Not Sure — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000

The operating expenses of the PI seem to go well beyond your typical web model. Transfering paper content to the web is one thing, but being a true online newspaper might be tough.

Lose the content, lose the viewers.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

John Cook — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:12:00 -0000

I think Alberg and Brewster make a lot of sense and I could see them making a move.

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

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Creative Financing Idea — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:07:00 -0000

Put the globe on eBay and get Paul Allen and Nathan Myhrvold into a bidding war.

Re: Twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com

Mark Morgan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:07:00 -0000

John - That's a great list of players. I'd put my hopes on Alberg & Brewster. They are smart biz folks but also know a thing or two about local media in contrast to most of the rest of the list. Whoever buys the seattlepi assets should read The Five Fatal Flaws Killing Local Internet Plays over on Jeff Jarvis & David Cohn's Newsinnovation site. http://newsinnovation.com/2...

It seems like one local startup after another is making the same mistakes that have killed off so many of them.