Free Press, Profitable Press

The Complete Community Connection

Steve Buttry, Gazette CommunicationsPress Development Institute-Siberia

4 December 2009steve.buttry@gazcomm.com

@stevebuttry on TwitterSlideshare.net/stevebuttry

“The best guarantee of a free press is a profitable press.”

– Andrew B. Davis, presidentAmerican Press Institute

Graphic from The Digital Journalist, “Circling the Drain,” by Mark Loundy

Graphic from Reflections of a Newsosaur, Alan Mutter

stevebuttry.wordpress.com

C3’s digital marketplace• Move beyond advertising• Direct sales (tickets, reservations, gift

registries, sports paraphernalia)• Lead generation & targeted ads• Sponsorships, memberships & events• Mobile ads & applications• Handle multiple needs (yes, competing ads)

Harris is already moving here, too

Changing the relationship

• From expense line in budget to revenue line

• From inefficient to high-value• Ad revenues dropping to new revenue

sources

Community Content• Driving• Home• Conversation• Calendar• Local knowledge

Personal content• Births• Graduation• College life• Military service• Weddings• Parenthood• Retirement• Obituaries

Entertainment• Traditional entertainment in digital form• Entertainment news• User-generated entertainment, events• Games

Business services• Direct sales• Local search• Mobile applications• Communication & marketing services

Enriched news content• What’s happening now (Twitter,

liveblogging, real-time video, traffic, scanners, live-streaming)

• Community engagement in news, enterprise, sports coverage

• Storytelling (narrative, multimedia)• Aggregation, curation

C3 at Gazette Communications

• Reorganized to separate content, product• Developing new processes, tools to

develop content independently from products

• Hoping to launch C3 projects in 2010• Long way to go• Hoping to learn from your efforts

Our mobile future – and present Projected 2009 worldwide cell-phone sales: 1 billion 7.4 million iPhones sold last quarter (+7%) More than 90,000 iPhone apps available News orgs need mobile-first strategy

Sources: GB Guide blog, Apple

Do we want to be the monks or Gutenberg?