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WCM-10

By: Caroline Pacl

“Online Case Study”

Online News Innovation Thrives, Community Building “A good web site is never a finished web site.”  

This is the axiom that Howard Owens, publisher of The Batavian has espoused since he became the

sole-proprietor of the online-only news site.The project took off when Owens worked as the Director of Digital Publishing for the multi-state

company, GateHouse Media and launched the web site officially in May, 2008.

Owens collaborated with Philip Anselmo, reporter/editor; Ryan Sholin, web-developer/co-editor; andBrian Hillabush, reporter to attempt a venture that had not been commonly done in the rapidly

changing media world.

Their goal? To start an online news web site that would have no ties to a print paper. With a spike in

citizen journalists and online discourse in the bloggesphere in recent years, Owens saw an opportunity

to create a hyper-local news platform and test an online business model. Main Street, Batavia, NY Photo by Flikr_Batavia. March 3, 2008

They slipped into the western New York town of Batavia, where the incumbent paper, The Daily News,

had no claim to an online news medium yet. Owens and his staff soon after set up shop on Main Street

and began their endeavor.The Batavian hatched out of a GateHouse experiment The internet had changed the Newspaper industry, with most daily newspapers trying to translate their 

 papers onto the web.ue

Owens and one of his colleagues Ryan Sholin set their main objective as how to accomplish a news business model online.

“It was really intended to be, just a total effort to take everything we knew about online up to that point

and create a pure online product,” Owens explains in an interview with Dan Kennedy on Northeastern

University.“When a fire engine blows through the middle of town people start coming to the Batavian to find 

out what's going on. Even if it's a false alarm, I put that up,

that's something that a typical 

newspaper wouldn't do.” 

-- Howard Owens 

“We wanted to go into a market where we didn't have a print paper, just in case it proved to really bedisruptive to the newspaper,” Owens added. He explains that online news sites often can hurt their print

 publications and wanted to distinguish that the two mediums should be in separate markets.

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In his time at GateHouse, Owens helped implement a corporate policy, to get employees on board with

using the development platform Drupal to deploy websites easier by centralizing code and design.

Making Communities Vital Again 

One of Owens’ many philosophies is that people are looking for personal connections online—andsharing a news platform that covers hyper local community issues has been successful at bonding

 people together.

“We're not objective in the traditional newspaper sense,” Owen says. “This also makes our writing andreporting more personal, which I believe works better on the web, than just the dry recitation of facts

that you usually get in a newspaper article.”

The Batavian promotes user registration so that they can get information about local events, sales or 

coupons in their inbox daily, make comments, take polls, and even create their own blog through theweb site.

The Batavian also embraces the concept of crowd sourcing, invite an audience to a digital platform and

allow them to self-publish, then single out the best stories, check the facts and publish.Using crowd-sourcing is rewarding to The Batavian, which recognizes its limited ability report on

everything newsworthy and its users can publish stories or pictures from events they witness and send

tips on and off the record too.

A “Send us news” button is located at the right corner top of every page followed by a brief form for user submissions that must be approved by a site administrator.

A Bumpy Road Heading for Success 

Within the first four months, The Batavian was averaging 5,500 unique visits per month and more than500 subscribers.

Less than a year after The Batavian was launched by GateHouse, the parent company sought to

consolidate its online operations in Chicago, consequently eliminating Owens’ position, as well as thesite’s two main reporters, Anselmo and Hillabush.

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GateHouse, he says, “recognized that I was the one with the real passion for the Batavian, and without

me in the company it was not likely to continue as an experiment.”

In February of 2009, He became the new owner and publisher, and without his staff, enlisted the help

of the community and later wife, Billie, who would become an editor.Currently, The Batavian has two correspondents, Tasia Boland and Daniel Crofts, both are contracted

as freelance writers. The news venture enlisted the help of two high school students: Ethan Thompson

and Gretel Kauffman who are interested in future studies of journalism and write for their internships.Owens says his intentions to make The Batavian online-only was not to put the print paper out of 

 business, but rather to capitalize on uncharted territory and to separate the two industries from being

linked together.

The Batavian business model consists of maintaining high volume of localized advertisements through

an interactive platform for the local community.

“Fourty percent of Americans get their news on the web today,” Owens says and he adds, “expecting people to pay for general news is, simply put: A bad idea.”

 Blogger and Brains behind Batavian: HowardOwens.com

Owens has blogged about various points of interest since 2002, and most recently his thoughts on the

 New Media Order dominate the site.The following screen shot shows his 12 steps program for journalists and his tips on how they can save

the industry by becoming online savvy.

“Users aren't interested in our deadlines and desire to make sure we have the full story before

 publishing what we know,” Owens writes to his followers.“They want to know what we know when we know it. They want their news now.”

The newsroom at The Batavian is short staffed, but the Owens and their contributors and interns get the job done each day. Most recent articles are done by Howard Owens, who averages anywhere from

seven to ten stories depending on the day.

In addition to reporting, blogging, and overseeing the site’s administrative duties, Owens has taken on

the position as lead advertiser.“It would be grand to become rich,” Owens says. “But really if, um, the only paid staff was me and my

wife, and we made a comfortable living doing that, I'd be satisfied with that point”

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The Batavian won the “Innovative Enterprise of the Year” by the Genesee County Chamber of 

Commerce New York in January, 2010.