Huffington Post targets newspapers

Chicago will be the first metro targeted for local coverage by HuffPost.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huffington_post_going_local.php

 

Logical. Trib and Sun-Times are both in the midst of meltdowns.

 

Only problem is, if they hire "local aggregators" to do the work of editing local news, they still need someone/thing to provide the news. Like, say, a team of reporters, which, in most markets, is really only provided by the newsrooms of newspapers.
So until Huffington & Co. start hiring actual reporting staffs, they actually have an interest in keeping newspapers afloat. A smart newspaper might even reach out to them in some sort of content-providing deal. (Yes, I realize there are few newspapers that many people would describe as "smart" when it comes to business tactics these days. But one can dream.)

 

This is likely the first step in Huffington pissing away her franchise.

Can't say that really bugs me.

 

Newspapers desperately need to find a way NOW to prevent sites like HuffPo from leaching off their content. It's been eating at me the past few days, ever since I read the Big Lead interview on SMG. Or was it the other way around? Either way, the guys says that he starts each day by reading the New York Times, the LA Times, and other papers. That's where he gets his info. Except he's reading all of that for free. Sure, he ends up linking to those news sources. But the Portals are the ones that draw traffic and advertising, not the individual pages that contain stories.

So HuffPo is going to Waltz into Chicago, "aggregate" (internet-ese for "pilfer") the local news, and make money off of newspaper's capital.

I don't begrudge Huffpo or TBL. Newspapers allow it. Even encourage it.

I'm sure HuffPo will end up producing a much more interesting, much more user-friendly portal for its local Chicago news than either the Sun Times or the Trib has.

It's OK, though. I'm sure industry leaders are hard at work through the night attempting to come up with a solution. Oh wait, maybe not, I just saw one of them walk by me with a glazed expression mumbling "Blogs" to no one in particular.

 

I don't understand this. If people are jumping to a story at New York Times.com, how is that story not drawing traffic and advertising? And what's a "portal"? I'm confused.

 

PW -

The longer the amount of time a User spends on a web site, the more valuable that user is to advertisers. Newspapers are competing for the same advertising dollars as sites like the Drudge Report and The Big Lead. So if users are accesing a newspapers content through a site like the Drudge Report or The Big Lead rather than the Newspaper's own home page, it does little good.

We need Consumers to be their own Aggregators, surfing to newspaper web sites and accessing their information that way. Instead, portals like The Drudge Report cherry pick the top stories, and Consumers access those stories that way, spending more time on the portals than on the actual web site of the newspaper.

That presents two problems:

1) A story that gets linked on the Drudge Report sees a spike in traffic, but the Drudge Report is the site that is actually garnering the traffic that equates to serious Advertising dollars.

2) Without newspapers' stories, sites like The Drudge Report don't exist, and thus the competition for advertising dollars is smaller.

 

OK, got it. We all need to start charing for content. Seriously. Take the short-term hit on Web hits, but drive these MFers out of business.

 

Problem is, it has to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

If every single news organization charged for their content, the Portals would be shit outta luck. But if only one newspaper does it, readers will simply go elsewhere for their content.

I don't have the answer. But I'm not being paid to have the answer. There are a lot of supposedly smart people making a lot of money whose job it is to come up with a solution.

Shit, another one just walked by holding a digital video camera.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant.

But if, say, you could get the WSJ, NYT, LAT, ChiTrib and WaPost in on the deal ... that would be a nice damned start.

 

Strong!

 

Second.