Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site

This interview took place between TweenTribune‘s managing editor Alan Jacobson and I at this year’s America East Newspaper Operations and Technology conference. If Alan’s name sounds familiar it is because he is the president of BrassTacksDesign, which has provided editorial, advertising and technical support to newspapers from New England to New Zealand for almost 20 years.

RI- What is TweenTribune and how did your idea for it come about?
AJ- Lets go all the way back to 1996 when I wrote an article for Brass Tacks Design entitled Online newspapers: Where’s the revenue? In that article I emphasize the importance for websites to build on a “community of interest” rather than a geographic community such as newspapers have traditionally served. The points being, advertisers would be eager to advertise beside niche content rather than generic news on a website AND the internet is better suited at targeting “communities of interest” than printed newspapers. Newspapers should have 1000 niche sites, not 1 mammoth site attempting to do everything.

I am the father of two tweens and being familiar with the Newspapers In Education (NIE) program it was clear to me that something better needed to be created for all parties involved. The current NIE setup is a disaster. The print product they are pushing not only costs publishers millions of dollars, it is attempting to get kids interested in a product that is going away and filled with adult content. Their online solutions are equally bad. Those sites are not designed with the kid’s best interests in mind. The sites are poorly designed and have wacky logos and colors… I actually did design testing with my kids and their friends, and my friends kids… you know what they like? A well laid out, clean site just like the rest of us!

TweenTribune is a news site for kids, filled with interesting and engaging stories that I select from AP news feeds. The TweenTribune site delivers niche content to one targeted audience, Tweens.

RI- Does it fulfill the requierements of NIE?
AJ- Yes it does. TweenTribune is safe. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 is a federal law stating that it is illegal to collect information including last name and email, about a child under the age of 13. So we set up a system where kids register using other information. The site is secure so there is no linking in or out, lest someone contact a minor. The site is also hosted by us to minimize any situations there.

RI- How do teachers use it?
AJ- The stories at TweenTribune can be relevant to almost any school subject – from social studies, to language arts, to science, to art. Once a teacher registers their class and starts using TweenTribune, the site will automatically generate custom pages showing things like: The stories their class has commented upon and individual comments by each student, on his or her own page. Additionally, all comments by students, are in one report that teachers can sort by students’ names, comments, or dates. Teachers can moderate, edit, or delete their students’ comments before they’re published.

RI- How does the site generate revenue?
AJ- Here is the beauty of this site and lesson for newspaper publishers. There is no need for behavioral targeting, primarily because the site targets demographically AND GEOGRAPHICALLY, because all users provide their location when they register. The tween demographic has never before been available to newspaper publishers, so it’s new revenue. When I wireframed the site, the first thing I drew was the 300 x 250 IMU – (Medium Rectangle) for advertising, everything else flowed around it.

The lesson is that I can charge a higher cpm for the ad space because it is the only one, highly targeted, and prominently displayed. If newspapers had niche sites like this, they could do the same thing, and command higher cpms. Why doesn’t the Virginia Pilot have the world’s premier Chesapeake Bay website? Who else would know that niche better than them? If they built that niche site and monetized it smartly I have no doubt it would be making money on day 1.

RI- What do newspapers get when they sign on up for TweenTribune?
AJ- They get a turnkey news platform targeted to a niche demographic they are not currently serving. They can brand the site with their logo, they can use their content, they control the ad space, they get the idea that this concept can be used throughout their entire media offerings, not just for a tweens (~ages 8-14) site… they get a lot.

RI- Who is using it now?
AJ- We just went live with the TweenTribune platform about 4 weeks ago and The Virginia Pilot is the first newspaper using the site.

RI- What is the site built on?
AJ- Drupal. It is the best CMS for this sort of thing. Drupal is open source and Free. There is a large number of free modules available for modifying the site and there is a large pool of developers who can enhance, modify or repair the site at a moment’s notice.

RI- Thank you for your time. Any takeaways/ final words?
AJ- Visit TweenTribune for more info but remember the greatest takeaway is building news sites with “communities of interest”.

Metaprinter

Internet and Online Strategies

Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site