portlandville.com

So …  local news journalists will soon (if they have not already) find more readership through aggregators and search than they do through their own sites, papers and stations. [See related earlier posts.] Change is good, and as always, change requires new business models.  As the transformation of media accelerates, interesting issues arise, some of which are we’ve seen before, related to music distribution on the internet. Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail, is writing his next book on “free” business models.  The conversation is crucial to the future of … more than just media. If you haven’t seen the discussion on Anderson’s blog, check it out. Here’s a recent post with lots of interesting comments. Here’s another.

Whoa, wait a minute: I’m not sure the same results will show now, but when I sampled a few news sites at 5PM on Thursday the 7th, I found these top stories:

Google (new local news feature): Embattled Sheriff Giusto says he will retire at the end of this year (link from KATU)

KGW: Embattled Mult. Co. Sheriff to retire

LocalNewsDaily: Giusto announces retirement

And then…OregonLive:   Portland man admits to drunken brawl in Tualatin

If this is any indication, the O has plenty of catch-up to do with or without Google in the game.

Feed aggregators like Netvibes make it easy for anyone to build and use a customized online news service, tailored to your own interests. Now Google is fine tuning a local news search tool. According to the Google News Blog:

While we’re not the first news site to aggregate local news, we’re doing it a bit differently — we’re able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources. We’re not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

Here’s a sample search result for Portland

Compare that to local news sites OregonLive, LocalNewsDaily and KGW

What do you think? Is there added value to the search of “thousands of sources”? How will local media be affected?

PR as we know it is dead. You can’t launch a product before you have customers.

– Connie Conners, CEO of Conners Communications as quoted in a post by Enid Burns on ClickZ.

In the post, Burns explores the trend among PR firms to drop traditional PR functions while embracing SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing.) The new services involve working directly with authoritative bloggers and developing content for clients. Here is an open letter posted on Connors’ site.
Via PR Newser

Now you can enjoy your favorite magazines, including The Economist and The New Yorker, without actually having to waste valuable time reading them. The good people at Brijit do that for you. (From the Washington Post via MediaBistro)

According to its site, Dunder Mifflin Infinity (DMI) is the new online division of Dunder Mifflin, Inc. Paper Company. DMI was designed to reinvent the business of selling paper. But actually, it’s a rare good example of a “social network” run by a major media company (NBC). As Gavin O’Malley (and Andrew Frank) put it in Online Media Daily:

Not long ago, it seemed that every media and brand marketer was commissioning a social network to solve their reach and engagement issues. What they didn’t realize…was that successful social networks grow out of an affinity for a property or brand, and not the other way around.

Web two point D’oh!

Meanwhile, in a separate update, OMD points to Honeyshed from Publicis, a site that takes the old build it and they shall come approach. Check back in a few months to see if Honeyshed visitors stick around and bond passionately with the planned “brand-specific shows.” For now, the 18-30s can kick back and enjoy the self-described “QVC meets MTV.” Or not.

Firebrand, a site developed by NBCU and Microsoft, skirts the whole pesky issue. Here, the ads are the content and viewers choose to watch them. This could work…

This morning, The Local Onliner blog points to one genre of local media that we can’t seem to get enough of. An author of a successful Pasadena guide is planning to publish a definitive Hometown Guide to Portland. You have to assume that this one will be different from all the other printed guides including Finder, half a dozen visitor guides, a menu guide, and the latest glossy guide to be thrown up on our porch, The Portland Urban Pages. A Google search turns up a gaggle of online Portland guides. And we’re willing to bet more guides are in the pipeline, including versions optimized for mobile devices and GPS. Presumably, each new guide will be more definitive than the last, or at least definitive in it’s own unique way. The new guide from Pasadena will be in book format, sold at Powell’s alongside the recently published Insiders Guide To Portland, 5TH Edition. Oh, and luckily, there may be a web version, too. If nothing else, we’re looking at a future safe from serendipity.

Scanning our Techmeme feed this morning, we saw that Jason Calcanis, once EIR at Sequoia Capital and now CEO of search site mahalo.com wrote the official definition of Web 3.0, setting off a flurry of comment around the blogosphere. The discussion and its offshoots are interesting reads.

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

In building his case, Calcanis cites comedy site funnyordie.com as an example. That site is one of Sequoia’s portfolio companies, as is mahalo.com, another Sequoia investment. As pointed out in the comments to Calcanis’ post, Mahalo’s human-filtered search approach fits his official definition quite nicely. A great salesman, apparently. Setting aside the acuity of this particular “official definition,” just imagine a future defined by version numbers. No, don’t.

I mentioned in an earlier post that an Ignite Portland event was in the planning stages. Some of the details were just announced: The event is scheduled for Thursday, October 25, 2007, at Wieden & Kennedy (224 NW 13th Ave, Portland, OR) evening start time to come. For more details tune into the Ignite Portland site .

From the Recovering Journalist blog:

At an online media conference a couple years ago, I heard [ a well-known observer] wonder aloud, “Does everything have to have a business model?” Well, yes, it does—otherwise, it’s just a hobby. Creating good journalism requires a sophisticated business model, with revenue from multiple sources…

Well, maybe not in regional media, we hope, based on the pure advertising models all around us.

Your thoughts…