Archive for April, 2008

Newspapers Backwards

Image by Flickmor via Flickr
I have had this thought, for the last several years, that our current method of creating newspapers is backwards. We, for example, try to cover a two county area primarily, another six counties to a lesser extent, and another eight counties to some extent. We do so in a [...]

Blogging Insights for Building Community

Image via Wikipedia

Todd of Wediabuzz really liked this slideshow from Trisha Okubo. There are many slides but it moves quickly and is very interesting, and most appropriate for those of us thinking about how to engage and inform our communities. She makes the point, near the end, that communities cannot be built, like products, [...]

Groundswell

Image via Wikipedia
As Web 2.0 explodes, how do we manage the complexity? The holy grail is self management by communities which care. I found this excerpt from Groundswell interesting:
Advertising succeeds by giving the same message to everybody. Customer support representatives read from the same script, because the company can’t treat employees as [...]

Context demands fundamental change

Image via Wikipedia
There are fundamental conceptual and structural issues in creating a local media company for the future. I like the API’s Newspaper Next nomenclature of “Local Information and Connection Utility”, but shortened to Local Information Utility or LIU.
Media connotes being spoken to, or at.
What I am after is a way to create local intelligence [...]

Local Information Utility

Image via Wikipedia

I did not make up the concept of the Local Information Utility. I first heard it in connection with the American Press Institute’s Newspaper Next effort. This has been a massive effort to wake up an industry stuck in a decades old, but previously successful, business model.
Newspapers tend to think [...]

Much to be done

Image via Wikipedia
My name is Chuck Peters (cpetersia on Twitter, and reachable on email at cpetersia@mac.com). I am the CEO of The Gazette Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a local media company serving Eastern Iowa primarily through The Gazette newspaper and KCRG – TV9, an ABC affiliate, along with numerous niche print and online [...]