Howard Owens - Latest Comments

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

Anthony jhon — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:49:28 -0000

When a family member's birthday is originating, you usually anxiety. This happens because of the truth that you do not know what to present him or her. Many a times, you can just give satisfied birthday messages

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

Carmen Bojanowski — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:27:28 -0000

This list was eye-opening. The field is changing so much that writers have to do something to stand out. Simply reiterating facts isn't enough. I couldn't agree more with the bit on showing personality. People want to feel like they personally know whose information they're reading, and making yourself sound like a real person rather than a news outlet will give yourself a certain authenticity that readers are drawn to.

Re: Chris Tolles brings some stats to the anonymous vs. registration debate

beforethedance — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:19:45 -0000

I want to add one other thing. You can have a user name and still register for an account so anonmity (if you choose) would still remain. What it amounts to is Chris Tolles clearly doesn't have any confidence in the number of users Topix have. They fear if everyone was limited to an account, they banned users who were libeling other people, and everyone had to register they wouldn't have a very big auidence. If people care about something they will register and I would argue that with more civility, they would actually pick up a new base of advertisers which is where the real money is at.

Re: Chris Tolles brings some stats to the anonymous vs. registration debate

beforethedance — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:16:00 -0000

The comments by Chris Tolles are simply a way to justify the insane amount of bullying and lies told on the Topix forums. I read an article where he claimed registration didn't help cut down nasty remarks and cited You Tube as an example. First, You Tube doesn't claim to be a news site. Second, You Tube has many more hits. Third, if it weren't registration the number of attacks would be even higher. You can' t have 350,000 forums (I think that is right) and only five or six so called moderators and even remotely have a fairly clean site.

What it amounts to is many times is a lack of accountability. If someone truly cares about commenting, they would have no problem registering. All Topix would have to do is require a valid email address and some type of verification code and limit it to one account per IP address and you would cut down on a ton of bullying. I have seen forums were you couldn't even find an actual newsstory because it was all whose sleeping with who types of posts. That site is ridiculous.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Bob Whitby — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:30:37 -0000

Inspiring post. Who sells your ads?

Re: Why Patch will never be profitable

Perry Gaskill — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:07:54 -0000

No worries, Howard. Your original post was a good analysis. My comment on it was purely for the purpose of constructive feedback with some additional nuance. Sorry if it might have seemed overly critical. That wasn't the intent.

Re: Why Patch will never be profitable

Howard Owens — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:35:43 -0000

Perry, I was speaking in general/average terms, and on the assumption that AOL has picked economically viable locations. If they successfully executed on the four or five or more possible revenue streams, I think that's a realistic target in a small, viable market.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Howard Owens — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:33:08 -0000

It's not owned by a TV station?

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Howard Owens — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:30:54 -0000

This should all be self evident, but

"how to make it profitable?" Just look at the successful examples. Not hard to figure out.

"In a world where hyperlocals compete with Google, Facebook, Groupon" big assumption there that that is the competition.

"Google is starting to penalize sites that have "too many" banner ads on their homepage ..." Specific type of sites. We have 120 ads on our home page, our search results are just fine. But more importantly, Google is not the end all and be all of traffic. Only a minor percentage of my site traffic comes from random Google searches. The vast majority of our traffic is direct, loyal, local readers who don't depended on Google to find us. That is where the money is, not in Google search results.

"what about the long term profitability? ..." First, nothing says banners can't be long-term profitable. It's mere speculation to say either way. Second, we know what works -- retail advertising. The smart entrepreneur is going to go after the easy revenue first. To knock banner ads is shortsighted and hidebound.

" It's a volatile digital world and things change quickly, including customer demands and expectations." I absolutely agree, but the only business world we operate in is the one that is here and now. The smart entrepreneur works with what's available and builds a business and plans to change directions or grow in other areas as necessary.

None of what you present here is an argument against starting a local online news site.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Howard Owens — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:24:20 -0000

Doug, Pierre, Ken ... hate to be rude, nothing personal as they say, but did you guys even read the post? I specifically cite examples of successful local online-only news sites.

I don't know about you, but when speaking of successful businesses, to me, that means profitable.

I know of at least a dozen profitable local online news sites and I believe there are more.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Doug Williams — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:51:49 -0000

But where does your revenue come from?

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

gapierre — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:01:05 -0000

i would love to hear more success stories of this model, instead of the often quoted, Batavia. The author spends a great deal describing how to package and present the news, but precious little about how to make money out of it.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Ken Aaron — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:53:02 -0000

Interesting but you fail to mention the most important part about starting a hyperlocal news site, how to make it profitable. What you give are fairly typical structures for delivering news, nothing new. In a world where hyperlocals compete with Google, Facebook, Groupon to name a few; and Google is starting to penalize sites that have "too many" banner ads on their homepage, relying on banner ads is not a long term strategy. Pretty much all of the profitable hyperlocals that I'm familiar with all rely on lots of banners. So while the organization and delivery of news is relatively easy, what about the long term profitability? It's a volatile digital world and things change quickly, including customer demands and expectations.

Re: Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Craig Huckerby — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 08:47:17 -0000

another example of a small independent local news site www.local2.ca

Re: Why Patch will never be profitable

Perry Gaskill — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 09:24:58 -0000

Howard,

Interesting analysis. My own back-of-envelope has tended towards a $14,000 per month expense for each Patch site, with that number split out as $5,000 news side, $5,000 local ad side, and $4,000 corporate overhead. Getting an accurate estimate is difficult because of a middle tier of regional people.

For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that Patch is probably doomed, and one of the unfortunate things likely to happen is that nobody will ever really understand why and how that came about. Aol has never been particularly candid about the problems it's been having with Patch, and most anecdotal indications have pointed toward a combination of things rather than a single fatal flaw.

Too much corporate overhead is probably part of it; there are also more subtle gears that don't seem to mesh. One example is the Southern California market where Patch has some reasonable unique visitor counts, but has a low number of monthly visits and page views per unique visitor. Something that points to an engagement problem.

It's probably also fair to say that Patch's structure for ad rates doesn't make sense given such an engagement problem.

No offense, but I'm also not sure I agree with your statement that, "each of Patch’s 864 markets is capable of generating at a minimum of $500,000 in annual revenue." The statement isn't demonstrably false, but does seems to ignore the idea that meeting such a minimum is going to be dependent on certain threshold variables.

To use again the Southern California market as an example, the population counts for Patch site locales range from 4,000 (Ramona) up to 149,000 (Corona del Mar). Somehow it seems a stretch to assume that each site is capable of generating the same base amount of revenue. As you have pointed out in the past, at least part of the ability of a locale to support an online news effort is dependent not only on the population count, but also on the count of businesses serving that population. Yet another variable is to what extent those businesses have control over a discretionary ad spend.

Regards,
Perry

Re: Why Patch will never be profitable

Gerard DeMarco — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:01:31 -0000

Clear, concise, succinct, intelligent. Howard doesn't have to make the argument of why his model is so good. You see it every day: The Batavian is one of the best news sites in the entire country. We are extremely fortunate to have it around. And as long as Patch is around, we'll all have a model of how NOT to do it.

Re: Advocates of pay walls should consider the fate of the New York World

Darren Hillock — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:55:19 -0000

Excellent analogy.

Re: Advocates of pay walls should consider the fate of the New York World

BGrueskin — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:52:42 -0000

Well, Howard, the new New York World is free :), http://www.thenewyorkworld.com...

Re: Photo: A snowy night in my back yard

Gummy Ballz — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:21:29 -0000

love it uncle...... yet i will still stick to my so cal summerish winter nights... shorts and flops for me....

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

Howard Owens — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:57:45 -0000

Oh, I'll totally cop to using Top 10 lists as traffic drivers. It's something bloggers figured out as far back as 2002. It's not a new insight. And I think they'll always work. It's a readable format to present ideas, it makes the subject matter more arguable (and people love to argue online), it allows more dissection of the ideas presented. The technique is not necessarily one of driving page views -- I don't give a rip about page views on this blog -- but it does help distribute ideas .... while I present my ideas as some sort of holy grail (in all that arrogant glory), I'm smart enough to know I'm not always going to be right, but I'm happy to have my ideas get further distribution and debate. If it takes using a top 10 format to to it, I gladly will. It's a useful device.

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

rabbitrock — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:45:31 -0000

"POP-Lists", those top ten this and that's always get more traffic. Last year a top web guy (HuffPo / AOL) told me they get 3 to 1 the number of clicks (and ad revenue) than standard titles. That said, I think audiences are starting to see through the pop-list rouse (cept they're not yet). I don't think that was your intent in 2002 or 12', but clearly some big properties are gaming their audience with what has become a diluted pass at original content.

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism

Billy Budd — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:11:39 -0000

And by the way, I forgot to mention -- it's affect.

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism

Billy Budd — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:51:17 -0000

I agree with most of what you say, but why can't a process story involve real people? Plenty of stories that show how decisions are made in government get denigrated as process stories, yet they can have the greatest impact in opening government to average people. That's one big baby you're throwing out with the bathwater.

Re: Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

Gina Goodman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:22:37 -0000

Great tips! I"ll definitely be tweeting these out today. I like #9 and #10...it's a challenge to get that balance, but important to do so.

Re: Chris Tolles brings some stats to the anonymous vs. registration debate

ere star — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:33:52 -0000

That is total true , http://rateitstar.com/software...

Anonymous is the biggest majority.