Interview With NYC.is Founder Susannah Vila

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Robert Ivan

After receiving the following email Tip, I approached NYC.is founder Susannah Vila for an interview.

“…a friend of mine who’s a grad student at Columbia University launched a kind of localized New York City version of Digg. Rather than using the editor curator approach — like Huffington Post — all the users of the site are New Yorkers that submit NYC-related stories and vote up and down on them to get them to the front page. The site also allows users to publish their own blog posts into the news stream, so it’s also becoming a place for community journalism:

http://nyc.is/

Anyway, I thought this was neat and interesting because this isn’t your typical VC-funded start-up, but rather a grad school student who’s working on all this stuff from scratch. And I think it’s a cool approach to more localized news. I thought you and your readers might find it interesting.

Thanks for the Tip! Keep them coming. The following interview took place in the form of an email Q&A between Susannah Vila and metaprinter founder Robert Ivan. Enjoy!

RI- Are you studying journalism at Columbia?
SV- I study political science and public policy.

RI- What got you interested in journalism?
SV- I became interested in how people get the information that allows them to be active citizens. I wanted to be a journalist because I wanted to inform and engage people. I want to work towards engaging more people with their government and their communities. I will probably be doing many different types of things with that goal in mind.

RI- Are students still clamoring to get jobs with traditional media outlets?…or is there something new to reach for?
SV- I think it depends on the student, and on the j school they came out of. CUNY and Medill are doing great things to foster innovation and an entrepreneurial attitudes. But while there are indeed many exciting new prospects for journalism in play right now, they do not offer a steady paycheck, so the understandable attitude among a lot of people my age is that they should do whatever they can do to get a full time job.

RI- What do you think of Jose Antonio Vargas leaving the Washington Post?
SV- I do think that it, at least to some extent, reflects larger trends in journalism. HuffPo is constantly innovating and adding new features; it mixes the work of paid, professional bloggers and reporters with unpaid and, not necessarily formally trained, ones. They’re growing while the Washington Post shrinks. And it’s because of this the Vargas will be able to start his own thing from scratch, which is always exciting. Continue reading →

Interview with Journalism Online LLC Strategy Consultant Merrill Brown

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Robert Ivan

BIO: Merrill Brown is the founder and principal of MMB Media LLC, which provides clients with management and strategy consulting, corporate, editorial and program development, business analysis and marketing services. Since the founding of MMB Media, clients have ranged from companies in the news, information and wireless businesses to a large foundation. Brown serves as Chairman of the Board of NowPublic.com, the leading citizen journalism company in the world. (bio provided by Journalism Online LLC)

RI- what is your affiliation with journalism online LLC?
MB- I am the strategy consultant at the moment, this is a start-up so we all have varied roles.

RI- I see in your Bio that you are an advisor to evri.com, a site that looks and feels to me like a news aggregator, does this complicate your involvement with Journalism Online LLC?
MB- No, it’s not an aggregator at all it is a natural language search site that builds related topics pages for new sites and others. Our largest distribution deal is with WashingtonPost.com and if you look at the bottom of every new story page you’ll see our widget there. Continue reading →

Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Robert Ivan

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! Continue reading →

Interview With Loren Widrick | TownNews CMS

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Robert Ivan

At the America East Newspaper and Technology Conference I learned that the Press of Atlantic City will be replacing their current website with a new one built on the TownNews BLOX CMS. The new site will launch on ~~April 13, 2009~~ April 21, 2009 and it can’t come soon enough. Would you believe that this is how the navigation “works” right now on the old site?

Navigation, if you can call it that.

Advertising and AP add-ons throughout the site pages as well as link mazes make the existing Press of Atlantic City site user-unfriendly. I sat down with TownNews regional manager Loren Widrick at the TownNews booth to learn more about how they were going to help the PressofAtlanticCity.com improve their site. Continue reading →

Q&A with Journerdism Founder Will Sullivan

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Robert Ivan

Will Sullivan is the “Nerd in Chief” of Journerdism.com. A constant student and teacher, Sullivan works from 9-7ish as the award-winning Interactive Director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He’s innovated at more than a dozen news organizations from Sydney, Australia to Toledo, Ohio in roles from photographer to Editor in Chief.

RI- You are responsible for projects like Walking With Angels, what exactly do you do on a daily basis at STLtoday.com and what is your latest big project?
WS- Just to be clear, the Haiti project you refer to is from a previous job as Interactive Projects Editor at The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Florida. At my current job as Interactive Director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I help try to bring the newsroom into the 21st century and beyond. My recent big projects have been working on search engine optimization training/development changes within the newsroom, marketing and IT departments, as well as some new social media initiatives.

RI- What types of social media initiatives?
WS- We’re working with reporters to use social media tools to report faster and converse with their audience. We had great success during the 2008 election using tools like Twitter and Qik to report live from events and are building on that getting more people on board: http://www.stltoday.com/twitter

RI- Are you responsible for this seizure inducing layout or did someone’s grandson get to do the web design during March Madness?

WS- Holy Toledo! That’s quite remarkable and news to me. I believe it’s an total-page-buyout ad campaign though, not normal design (as you can see all the ads on the page are paid for by Mizzou). It’s a premium ad placement package that’s very expensive. Continue reading →

News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability – Interview with Don Carli

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Robert Ivan

Interview with Don Carli Executive Vice President of SustainCommWorld LLC, and Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Communication.

Don has been a leading researcher, author, educator and speaker addressing the sustainability of media supply chains for the last decade, and for over 25 years has been a respected media technology and marketing strategy consultant to major advertisers, agencies and publishers.

RI- Why are newspapers and other traditional publishers pushing the issue of eReaders as a communications medium when something like less than one third of one percent of the reading population of the United States owns these products? Is it a paper sustainability issue? Is it a cost issue? What’s the justification?

DC- Other than pushing the “cool” factor, one of the main selling points being made by marketers of eReaders is that they are greener than print. It is little surprise that the common view held by consumers who don’t know the backstory is that going digital means going green and saving trees. Many are in for a rude awakening. When subjected to “cradle-to-cradle ” Lifecycle Analysis eReading is not nearly as green as many naively assume it is.

There is no question that print media could do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener. Computers, eReaders and cell phones don’t grow on trees and their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable. Continue reading →

Tera Digital Publishing Showcases their GNportal

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Robert Ivan

RI: what is “a single media newsroom”?
TDP: The ability to produce content for all mediums from one location. We can be described as a content management system for newspapers, Solely for Newspapers.

RI: why are newspapers coming to you?
TDP: they are seeking to consolidate into a single newsroom. Financial pressures have forced the issue.

RI: What is the main product?
TDP: GN3 is the main product.

RI: With all the consolidation, is the business is booming?
TDP: Yes, we are doing well. Big jump in foreign interest especially in Latin American companies.

RI: do you deal with large chains like gannett or advance
TDP: Not so much as our foreign sales, but it’s changing.

RI: How do you sell?
TDP: Through resellers mostly.

RI: Who are your biggest competitors?
TDP: We like to think we are in a league of our own, but Saxotech is a competitor.
RI: innovation at Tera ?
TDP: GNportal (good news)
RI: What’s that?
TDP: Laura our project manager will tell you about that. Continue reading →

Second Street Media Solutions Owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard Discuss Upickem

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Robert Ivan

Interview with Second Street Media Solutions Co-owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard to learn more about their fastest growing product, Upickem, which is an online contesting platform.

RI - Simply publishing content on a website is not enough. How does Upickem bring news sites into the internet paradigm?
MC - By virtue of the way contests work, ie. participation, we make newspaper news sites much more interactive with their target community.

RI - How do you drive user engagement? How do you build communities?
MC - The contests engage a passionate community. “cutest dog contest” for example generated 4.5 million pageviews, 6800 dog photo submissions, over 1million votes, and 15,000 registered users for The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The users who register to participate in the contest provide the paper with their email info that can be used to drive participation in future contests. Continue reading →

Q&A with Baristanet Co-Owner Liz George

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Robert Ivan

Baristanet.com is a leading independent news site in NJ. Many news media experts consider Baristanet to be a whopping success in a sea of general interist news site and blog failures (traditional and nontraditional). Business is good at Baristanet and they are enjoying a growing community presence. At O’RIELLY Tools of Change 2009 Future of News panel discussion, Jeff Jarvis went so far as to suggest that New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, enter into some kind of partnership with Baristanet to share resources.

Following the TOC 2009 event I wanted to learn more about this hyperlocal hero. What follows is an email Q&A between metaprinter.com founder Robert Ivan and Baristanet.com Co-Owner Liz George. Enjoy!

RI- Introduce yourself and tell us what you do on a daily basis at Baristanet.

LG- I’m Liz George and I’m the co-owner and editor of Baristanet. My partner and the site’s founder Deb Galant started Baristanet in May 2004. Her initial partnership did not work out; we started working together in August 2004 and soon after became partners.

On any given day, I’m either writing for Baristanet, editing the stories from other writers and contributors, assigning stories, updating the site with breaking news, answering requests from readers, community organizations, businesses, etc., and working on developing new aspects and features of the site, new projects and alliances. Some days, Deb and I will meet, but typically we do most of our work virtually and fill in with phone calls and emails. Deb handles more of the ad sales end of things. Continue reading →

MetaFilter Founder Matt Haughey Q&A – Including a Few Newspaper Answers

Posted on December 18, 2008 by Robert Ivan

Q&A with MetaFilter.com founder Matt Haughey. As Wikipedia defines it, MetaFilter is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss interesting content that users have discovered on the web. From personal use I know that Ask.MetaFilter.com is one of the most useful sites anywhere for “querying the hive mind”. Enjoy!

RI -“MetaFilter is one of the oldest (1999) online social sites. What keeps it going where others fail? (Author’s note, I think of mefi a as social site but only in the broadest of terms. Or rather, it’s become more social over the years (the first few years, there wasn’t all that much discussion on the posts, now the most popular posts have hundreds of comments)…”

MH -It has consistently grown ever since early 2000, when I think it hit enough of a critical mass to be interesting. As to why it keeps going – it probably has something to do with it being what it is first and foremost. When I think of other online social sites that come and go, they’re largely offshoots of some other service that didn’t fit quite right. MetaFilter has always kind of been its own thing and has stayed interesting enough to attract interesting people that continue to contribute to it everyday. Continue reading →

Metaprinter Interview With CSM Editor John Yemma Discussing Newspaper Business Models

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Robert Ivan

Regarding this post and his comments, Robert Ivan conducted an email interview to let John Yemma state his case.

RI: We seek to interview any person or company doing innovative things in new media or traditional media. We prize innovation here at metaprinter and encourage media organizations to come on and trumpet their achievements. The goal of the interview is to find out a little bit more information than what can be found already online or in print.

JY: Excellent idea. And good for you for seeking that information via interview.

RI: I’m not a journalist. However, some recent interviews I conducted were with Jimmy Leach, Editorial Director for Digital at The Independent and Alan Murray, Deputy managing editor and executive editor, online for The Wall Street Journal.

John, my intention with the very first post was commentary and analysis of the video interview. I am sorry it displeased you so much. I found that video through Google while researching information regarding newspaper business models. As I said in that post, I admire your consideration in utilizing diverse revenue streams, but I am concerned that they are unsustainable because they rely on:

JY: Robert, it only displeased me because it didn’t seek answers to specific questions. In that video that you cite, Len Witt was asking specific questions to which I was giving specific answers. It isn’t logical to expect that all of your questions would be answered by my answers to Len. At any rate, we’re past that now since you’re asking specific questions and I’m responding below. Peace.

——————————————— Continue reading →

Interview with Jimmy Leach, Editorial Director for Digital at The Independent

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Robert Ivan

We seek to interview any person or company doing innovative things in new media or traditional media. We prize innovation here at metaprinter and encourage media organizations to come on here and trumpet their achievements. The goal of the interview is to find out a little bit more information than what can be found already online or in print.

To follow up the piece we wrote about the Reddit / Independent partnership I conducted a short email Q&A with The Independent to learn more about the partnership. Below is the interview.

October 27, 2008

Meta: Introduce yourself
Independent: Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at The Independent

————————————————————————– Continue reading →

Digital Innovation and Green Initiatives at PressDisplay.com

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Robert Ivan

Telephone interview with Igor Smirnoff, Director of Strategic Development for PressDisplay.com

With sustainability and environmental issues dominating business strategy these days I became interested in what types of applications were available to newspaper publishers to reduce their carbon footprint. I discovered NewspapersDirect and their Smart Edition ePaper solution. Smart Edition is a version of their PressDisplay.com offering for newspaper publishers to serve up PDF versions of their content online.

In the past I have been critical of newspapers simply digitizing their newspaper and putting it online. I feel this is an under-utilization of the capabilities which the internet and high speed broadband connections offer. I was skeptical of this application, but wanted to learn more about their technology which is more dynamic than a simple reader. Continue reading →

Interview with Alan Murray: New WSJ.com marks the beginning of a period of rapid innovation

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Robert Ivan

Telephone interview with Alan Murray, Deputy managing editor and executive editor, online for The Wall Street Journal. This is transcribed from a telephone interview between Alan and I, so don’t kill me if I flubbed a word. Some answers are paraphrased.

First, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I will disclose to you and my readers that I am a print and online subscriber to The Wall Street Journal and some years ago I worked there as a press operator in South Brunswick New Jersey.

META: Alan, after my review of the new website for WSJ.com I was left wanting a little more information regarding the specifics of the new website. Metaprinter’s readers also are interested in some site specifics so I hope this phone interview answers those questions.

META: How long has it been since the site was redesigned?

ALAN: The site was built in 1996 with the intention of being a news service for our paid print-newspaper subscribers. The site underwent a slight redesign in 2002 but until yesterday remained relatively unchanged throughout that time.

META: What prompted you to launch a new site?

ALAN: As I just mentioned, the site was not meant to do what it was trying to do as of late. The new site was designed and implemented to be a news website for subscribers, the general public, (and, Metaprinter assumes, advertisers). In the last one and a half years alone our website traffic has more than doubled. We wanted to better serve that audience.

META: Who did the site design and development? Was it in-house?

ALAN: Early on our in house team worked with Avenue A/ Razorfish for design and other things. Later we worked with Sapient to build and launch the site. Our in house team was involved throughout the entire process.

META: What was the biggest technical departure from the old site?

I didn’t ask this question but id say it’s the emphasis on community and interaction with their readers. The old site didn’t have many opportunities for dialogue.

META: WSJ is in a unique position where many of its paid subscribers come from Wall Street financial institutions. As those institutions collapse and cut back, do you see it impacting your paid subscriber revenue model?

ALAN: Large financial institutions represent a very small portion of our million plus subscribers. Most of our subscribers are small to medium size business owners, CEO’s, CFO’s and individuals interested in business finance.

META: As the only large newspaper with a paid online subscriber model, do you have any plans to go to an advertising based model?

ALAN: many of our offerings are already free to the public and advertiser supported. Sections like politics, and features like our videos and blogs. In the next few months we plan to open up our new community feature to non-subscribers however they will be required to login with their real names.

META: Linked in has a similar model no?

ALAN: Having a community with people interacting is nothing new. We want to test the notion that our unique subscriber base will build a community for intelligent, high-profile discourse.

META: Thank you, any final comments?

ALAN: Our new site is not the end of the line. It is a launch pad for new applications and innovation. It marks the beginning of a period of rapid innovation for WSJ.com. Stay tuned for lots of new developments and thanks for taking notice.

META: Thank you Alan.

End of Interview….

Well readers, Mr. Alan had to catch a plane, but that quick phone interview certainly shed some light on the thinking and planning that goes on when launching a site. Again, this is not a redesign. This is new programming, new applications, a new way of approaching the interaction of between man and machine and the evolving technology behind it.

Change is good
Change is bad
What is the only thing that stays the same?
Change is

Online is the future but does not account for enough of the revenue stream yet to be self sustaining. What did I learn from this interview? Hire kick ass developers, journalists, and editors to differentiate your news site from everyone else. Offer a real value addition to people’s lives. Even better? Do one thing and do it so well that it becomes your brand. News agencies that don’t do this will be swallowed up by other successful site and papers, speeding up the print to online transition.

Twitter Immortalized In Newseum, Biz Stone Q&A

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Robert Ivan

As you all know I took a trip to the Newseum in DC recently. In what I think is their new media section I came across the infamous “tweet heard round the world”. I contacted Twitter to get more info and they responded quite quickly. Thank you Mr. Stone!

My email to Twitter:

I couldn’t help but notice your appearance in the Newseum in Washington DC. There is a mention of how Twitter beat out the multibillion dollar Bloomberg News Service by 22 seconds in reporting the May 12th earthquake in China this year.

Introduce yourself
How do you feel about being immortalized in this nation’s news museum?
What was that experience like? Did they call you? Write you? Send a Tweet?
Was the China incident a one-time thing or will Twitter continue to influence the future of news reporting?

Their response:

Hi Robert,

My name is Biz Stone and I’m the co-founder of Twitter. Yes, the Newseum folks emailed with a few questions about how Twitter works and I answered them. We’re happy to be included in the collection. The China incident is by no means isolated on Twitter.

Two weeks ago there was an earthquake in Southern California and Twitter started collecting first-hand reports the same minute the quake struck at 11:42am. Nine minutes later, the AP send out a wire. During those nine minutes, Twitter collected 3,436 updates from people on their way to work, school, the doctor, etc containing the word “quake.”

Later that week another quake struck China. There’s also floods, windstorms, Olympics, and any massively shared event you can imagine surfacing on Twitter in real time. Have a look at the trending topics at search.twitter.com to get an idea of how it works.

Because Twitter has a massive real-time feed of what people all over the planet are seeing, feeling, thinking, and doing we believe there are some interesting compliments to existing news services. We’re just now beginning to explore these opportunities.

Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.

Interview with Rob Katz, VP of Business Development with Lulu

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Robert Ivan

Rob Katz, Vice President of Business Development with Lulu.com answers some questions from Metaprinter regarding the recent launch of Amazon.com’s competition website CreateSpace.com and what impact this will have on their business model.

For those of you who don’t know, Amazon’s CreateSpace is offering cd, dvd, book, print on demand, and self publishing services. They are the first big competitor to challenge Lulu.com.

I want to thank Lulu for agreeing to answer my questions and without further ado I give you Lulu.

1. When Amazon announced it was buying large quantities of Indigo presses (Dec. 4, 2006), you must have had some inclination this direct competition was coming. How did you prepare for it?
This is a highly competitive industry. We have known that for some time and there are a lot of respected competitors out there; recent announcements just further validate what Lulu has been working diligently on for the past 4+ years. Our focus is to continue to create products and solutions that best serve our customers while managing the areas we look to expand into strategically.

2. How do you differentiate yourself from Amazon’s service?

Lulu has grown to be an industry leader in the print-on-demand and self publishing areas with a focus on empowering creators. Over the last year, Lulu has expanded those product and services offerings to larger content creators, corporations, educational institutions and rights-holders. The ability of Lulu’s platform and product offerings to scale to meet the needs of such a wide ranging group of users is a distinct competitive advantage.

With a solid and growing foundation of our core community – more than 1.2 million registered users and more than 4000 new works published each week – Lulu now also has partnerships with Universal Press Syndicate, Getty Images, the National Institue for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD, the Association of National Advertisers, and many others who leverage Lulu’s scalable platform to buy, sell, create and manage digital content.

Lulu also provides creators with access to the most extensive distribution system available all the while allowing them to retain complete control over their content and pricing. With Lulu’s unique Published By You services, creators literally become their own publisher. Their books are listed on the three major industry databases and available to more than 60,000 retailers, both online and brick and mortar, as well as added to the Google Book Search database.

Lulu also takes a very global view of our business. The site is currently translated into six languages and with offices in Raleigh, NC (headquarters) as well as London, England and Hamilton, Ontario (CA), we are committed to remaining aggressive with our international focus.

3. What can we expect in the future from lulu?

Lulu will be going through a major site re-launch, targeted for late August. The new architecture will be reflective of Lulu’s growth and be geared to work to better meet the needs of our growing and diversified user base. With the new release, Lulu will also be unveiling the Lulu StudioTM , a web-based publishing application; Our primary goal for this tool is enabling our users to create projects that result in professional-quality physical products through the utilization of industry standard typesetting methods and technology. This leading-edge solution will allow users for the first time to incorporate licensed content from Getty Images, Collegiate Images and others on a per image, per use basis to enhance their works with professional, high-quality images. The Lulu StudioTM will be launched as a photobook application, with calendars and full typesetting functionality (images + text) coming in future releases, providing Lulu users with more content creation flexibility than ever before.

4. Any closing remarks?

Thanks for your interest in Lulu and if we can answer any additional questions, please let us know.

Metapriter thanks you for this interview. I personally would like to see where Lulu gets 80% of their revenue and to pump that up as much as possible. Abandon what is not working and move ahead. A monstrous company like Amazon can squash smaller endeavors without much effort. Time will tell, what do you think?

Metaprinter

Internet and Online Strategies

Category Archives: Interviews