ISOJ 2010

1. Investigation. Analysis.
Conversation. Intelligence.

2. A Personalized News World
• Newspaper comes to you.
• TV comes to you.
• Internet asked you to go to its sources.
– That was worth it! They were good sources.
– But it was still took away the passive
consumption.
• Now the best of all of it is coming back to
you. But you can interact.

3. The Bundled Model
• Traditional news sources compiled all news you
supposedly needed.
– Competition was to be best at presenting a package.
– From Israel to stock quotes.
– From sports to local news.
– Get it all here!!! Not there!
– A tremendous service.
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4. The Bundled Model
• So we were asking a newspaper to:
– Perform what is an artistic, academic, intellectual
exercise: journalism, photography and design
– Perform a commercial activity: advertising
– Perform an industrial process
– Print, organize and produce a daily “book”
– Distribute it – trucks
– Oh and be a digital technology company too!
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5. Something Happened
• The internet.
• You’re no longer dependent on what the
bundlers brought you.
• You could go look for the best sources on
the news and information you wanted.

6. Unbundling of Content
• Content was unbundled.
– Better sources for news on stocks, Israel
and sports.
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7. Problems
• You had to go to it.
– Removed the leisure from news consumption.
• Too Much!!
• Killed subsidy that funded news operations
– Ad inventory became near infinite, price plummeted.

8. Users Fought Back
• Demanded ability to filter the fire hose.
– Rise of aggregators.
– People you could ‘trust’ to filter.
– Drudge
– Huffington Post
– Your uncle
• Companies responded to need to filter.
– RSS  the return of passive but it was confusing.

9. It Started Coming Back to You
• RSS allowed you to set
up your perfect news
page.
• Theory: Others might be
able to distribute news
better than news source.
• But it’s geeky=difficult

10. What Twitter Teaches Us
• It’s not that Twitter is the answer.
– The answer is what Twitter shows us.
– We can now consume again, rather than seek.
– Filter perfectly to our tastes
– But people now punish publishers.
– Not by changing channel or stopping subscription.
– Simply ‘unfollowing.’
– You get unfollowed, you’re out!

11. Twitter
• NYTimes:
– At its best, the social medium is a perpetual,
personalized news service about topics of
your choosing — whether health care reform,
tech news or the latest episode of
“Gossip Girl” — filtered and served to you by
people who care a lot about what you care a
lot about.

12. Perfect News Sources:
Bundled by You!

13. Challenge for Producers
• We have to be something they want to
bundle.
• We have to decide who we want to include
us.
• We cannot duplicate.
– They’ll punish duplicators.
– Either be better or different.

14. voiceofsandiego.org
• Mission:
– To consistently deliver ground-breaking
investigative journalism for the San Diego
region. To increase civic participation by
giving residents the knowledge and in-depth
analysis necessary to become advocates for
good government and social progress.

15. Investigative Success
• Known around country for journalistic
success.
• Won’t cover anything unless
– A. No one else is doing it.
– B. Or we can do it better.

16. ‘Revenue Promiscuity’
• Generate loyalty and passion of users
– Users to donors to participant members
• Loyalty and Passion of Philanthropists
– Realize without information, whatever else they support is compromised.
• Build Corporate Memberships
– Offer more than advertising.
– Workshops, event presence.
• Content Services
– For profit distributors
– Photostore
• Contain Costs!
– Don’t innovate, incorporate

17. Membership
• Users to donors.
• Donors to participant members.
• Participant members to long-term
supporters, advocates, mavens.
• 1,080 members right now.
– Goal is 10,000 by 2013

18. Philanthropy
• Don’t support journalism.
– Support information.
– If you care about education, government, environment,
housing, anything, you support information.
• Aren’t unaccustomed to supporting public service
enterprises.
– Public broadcasters.
– Museums.
– Arts organizations.

19. Corporate Memberships
• ‘Corporate’ could mean unions, nonprofits,
steak houses...
• Must convince them to support...
• ...then offer service.
• Not content but ...
– Workshops.
– Event sponsorships.
– Web presence.

20. Content Services
• NBC partnership.
– San Diego Explained
– San Diego Fact Check
– Corporate sponsor on website.
– Segment for tv.
– Revenue from both.
– Mission from all.
– Dynamic, interesting resource.
– Perfect.

21. Contain Costs
• That’s the ultimate secret.
– $1M, $2M comparatively not a lot.
– Choose content/engagement innovation or
choose technological innovation.
– Can’t be both.
– If content and engagement, must incorporate
technology not innovate.
– Imagine had we had an extra $1 million...