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Conferences, Presentations & Speaking Engagements

  • Available for public speaking around media transformation and opportunity. Please inquire for schedule and rates.

Content Bridges Services

Press Mentions

  • Ad Age/Nat Ives: It's Back: 25 MORE Media People You Should Follow on Twitter
    25 media types worth following on Twitter.
  • Ad Age: Why So Many Media Companies Stumble Globally
    The few news brands that have succeeded, to greater or lesser degrees, arguably include CNN, Bloomberg, People, Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Economist. Other contenders are the Associated Press, the BBC, ABC, NBC, maybe CBS, National Public Radio, News Corp. and the top U.K. dailies, said Ken Doctor, the newspaper veteran who's now an analyst at Outsell. "If a news-media organization sees itself as covering the wider world, sees it as its foundation, that in and of itself differentiates it from all the local media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- out there," he said. "If, in addition, it has substantial reporting and editing resources, then it can play. The tough part is the part we're in: Who wins the race to ubiquity and can make it pay off?"
  • NYT: If The Globe Were Sold, What Price?
    “The best guesstimate of the real price: a buck. The best of an announced price: between $50 and $100 million,” he wrote in an e-mail message. The devil will be in the details of the obligations that a buyer would assume, he said, adding that “a buck essentially represents a gentleman’s agreement: I take a liability, headache and a distraction off your hands.” He said that the Times Company could hang on to some pension liabilities or other obligations in exchange for a higher purchase price, a number that would give the appearance that it was getting something for the more than $1 billion it paid 16 years ago. He added that no bank would be interested in financing a deal given how other deals have blown up, so “the owner’s own money is immediately at risk.”
  • Economist: It isn’t just newspapers: much of the established news industry is being blown away. Yet news is thriving
    Ken Doctor of Outsell, a research firm, reckons that the Kindle appeals to baby-boomers who would otherwise read a paper magazine or newspaper. The young prefer their iPhones and their aggregators. Indeed, the top four magazines on Kindle, according to Amazon’s website, are the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time and Reader’s Digest. Not much of a youth market there.
  • Forbes: San Diego News Shoot-Out
    "The Union-Tribune is cratering. That opens a hole in the market and the opportunity for some unconventional business models."
  • BizTimes.com: Journal Sentinel faces daunting choices
    “There’s no strategy – this is panic. What we’re likely to see this year (around the country) and what we’ll see in Milwaukee too is (publishers asking) how much they need to cut back and how much they can do to still hold their place in the market. For publishers, it’s about ‘How do we stay alive and stay profitable until we can get to some sort of breathing period?’ (Economic) recovery will not bring back their old business, but it will give them some breathing room.”
  • AP: Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is saf
    The threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers — that this is not business as usual. This is uncharted territory....Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood."
  • Guardian: Seattle mourns the last day of its venerable Post Intelligencer
    "There's a lot less reporting happening, on a national scale. For the 1,500 or so daily newspapers, it's just a matter of getting smaller and smaller."
  • Seattle Times: Seattle's oldest newspaper goes to press for the final time
    "They're bringing the full force of their national relationships and content to bear on Seattle. They [Hearst] could sustain this experiment indefinitely. If it makes a million or loses a million, that's nothing to a company like Hearst."
  • AP: Hearst hopes Web-only Seattle P-I will turn profit
    "It [online-only PI] definitely can make money. They have a head start in terms of the brand and (Web) traffic. They have to run like hell to create a new identity."

What's On My Netvibes

  • Steve Goldstein
    Fellow KR alumnus Steve Goldstein understands the research/info needs of end-use enterprise customers, and he's built a company that is helping satisfy them.
  • Peter Krasilovsky
    Centered on e-commerce of all kinds from Yellow Pages through classifieds and new ad models.
  • Mark Potts
    Mark Potts is an experienced journalist, observer of Internet journalism and an alumnus of the Backfence experiment.
  • John Blossom
    Thoughtful views on a wide-ranging mix of media change.
  • Jay Rosen
    Jay Rosen is a provocateur in the best sense, an NYU journalism professor deeply committed to keeping the press accountable and vibrant in the digital age.
  • David Meerman Scott
    David Scott understands web marketing of digital content. Check out his site and his new book, "Cashing In With Content"

My Work as an Outsell Analyst

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April 17, 2006

Welcome Backfence to the Bay Area

It's been a time of what-are-we-going-to-lose in the Bay Area.  Angst about who will own the Merc and the CC Times and what further cuts they'll make to newsroom staffing? Wonders about the dear old Chron, having sustained a 16% circ knifing last year (what will the new FAS-FAX circ numbers say on May8?).  Sure craigslist is great for buying and selling fridges and tickets, but it's local news reporting shows serious gaps.

So today's announcement that Backfence is coming to the Bay Area -- Palo Alto first -- is a welcome one. Dan Gillmor, late of the Merc, has tried to make a go out of the Bayosphere site, trying a regional community engagement, but running into too many business models issues. So he's tossed Bayosphere into Backfence, and that'll be an experiment worth watching.

Backfence,Backfence_1 headed by  Susan DeFife and journalist Mark Potts, has been encircling D.C. with microsites in Bethesda, Arlington, McLean and Reston. Basically local-local sites, with user-generated posts spanning the kids/churches/things to do waterfront. Intentions of revenue at least, around Yellow Pages, local classifieds, some banners, sponsorships, the usual.

Interesting sites, with word having it that it has been a tougher, slower go than hoped; no surprise there.  It's been a lot of retail work; going community meeting by community meeting to stir up both reading interest and more importantly posting interest. Supply and demand. Readers and writers.  Check out the sites and you can see sprouts, but few well-developed gardens.

The Backfence notion: A regional/national network of micro sites, all over a single user-friendly platform (hey, look at my kids' photos and I'll look at yours; no software hassles).

Lots of competition emerging nationally, including newspaper-driven sites like Your Hub
and Pluck's prototypical site at Austin. Then there's the new Google Calendar, driving its beta into local markets more deeply, also aiming at the same community-oriented market + Yahoo, MSN and AOL's LOCAL efforts. Lots of local ad dollars; just so darn hard to get 'em.

One idea we noodled at some recent conference: why not combine the power of a Backfence with free dailies,  like the new SF Examiner and the chain of Examiners Qwest billionaire Phil Anschutz is starting around the country. That free, print community paper/free microsites might be a winning combo, winning critical mass. Just a thought, and one that need not be left to billionaire telcom execs.

April 17, 2006 in Community ,Citizen, User-Gen, Participatory and Conversational (!) Content, Innovation, News and Democracy |

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» Collective Wisdom on the Backfence-Bayosphere Acquisition from Christine.net
There's been a lot of interesting press today about the acquisition of Bayosphere by Backfence. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a co-investor in both firms, and I serve on the board of Backfence.) It's been amazing to watch the landscape [Read More]

Tracked on April 19, 2006 at 12:48 PM

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