CoPress » funding

Thoughts after Revenue Two Point Zero: You Need a Revenue Office, Not an Ad Department

Greg Linch — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:35:56 +0000

The background

College news organizations need to move beyond advertising. Now.

Hold that thought.

Some background: The topic of generating revenue to sustain news organizations has begun to consume my thoughts about journalism. There are a number of reasons why, but this mostly came after a little meetup last Saturday in DC called RevenueTwoPointZero (Rev2oh on Twitter).

This isn’t the first time our humble CoPress crew is talking about the business side of journalism. Namely, check out Joey Baker‘s post from December, “But we make all our money from newsprint!”.

But why? Aren’t we just about technology and college news sites?

No. That’s a main theme, but we would be remiss if we left revenue off the table. It’s hard to run a news site without money, unless you’re an exception.

Actually, one of our three main goals directly relates to making money: We want student news organizations to generate more online revenue by having full control over their sites.

Getting back to my opening thought…

The reality

College news sites have mostly been playing catchup to the pros. OK. “College students still read campus newspapers,” according to a 2008 Alloy Marketing study. No real harm done by being late to the video game, for example.

Student media are also looking to the Web as a way to generate revenue, mostly through different forms of advertising. This could mean banner ads, contextual ads, floating ads, video pre-roll (cringe), pop-ups (double cringe) or something else. Nothing innovative, from what I’ve seen. Nothing that’s resulting in a possible paradigm shift, such as the buzz from Russ Stanton’s LA Times onlne revenue revelation.

“But we’re getting along OK online, right?” you might ask. Probably. But the point is that we cannot wait until we need solutions to devise and implement them. Unlike some metro papers, college publications can’t afford to lose a million a week (scroll down halfway).

We need to be proactive. We need to be at least two steps ahead.

The proposal

And those first two steps are really not hard. It’s could be as easy as changing the mindset of the business office and bringing in new people. OK, the first one can be really hard.

In the context of college media, where print revenue appears to be holding up better than the big metro papers (with exceptions: “College papers cut staffs, Friday editions due to lagging ad sales”), there’s still plenty of room to grow online advertising. With this in mind, “an estimated 1-2 percent of total revenue for many college media outlets — if that,” says CICM’s Bryan Murley.

Beyond that, there’s an immense opportunity for generating revenue in other ways, which is the second step. That could be anything from offering consulting on how clients can more effectively reach the 18-24 demographic to selling baked goods in the student union.

So who’s responsible? Everyone on your staff, from editorial to business. That doesn’t mean news reporters will be selling ads, just that everyone should be part of the solution. Contributions could be as simple as brainstorming or as hands-on as consulting in ways that don’t conflict with one’s news role.

“But I’m not a business major!” Rev2oh comprised only non-business people. Participants had a variety of backgrounds, but it was primarily a design-oriented group. At least one person asked why there weren’t any business/advertising people. Alan Jacobson, who organized the event with SND president Matt Mansfield, basically said: They’ve had their chance, they haven’t done enough or haven’t been successful and now it’s up to us.

That doesn’t mean you should “go it alone,” but you don’t need that crowd to get stuff done. In many cases, I’m sure they would provide excellent insights.

Just like we need to take lessons from outside of news in order to improve news, we need to take lessons from outside the normal news organization business office to keep the money flowing.

The idea

We need revenue, not just advertising.

I like many of the ideas Steve Outing has discussed (check out his business model-related posts). Instead of rehashing them here, I’ll just say that all of the following thoughts developed after listening to him on the Journalism Now podcasts and after hearing a number of similar ideas from the small business group at Rev2oh, namely Scripps Interactive’s Jay Small.

Your college news organization’s newly renamed “Revenue Office” no longer focuses solely on advertising, nor does it serve a single customer — your news organization. It should offer specialized services for off-campus clients.
This could include everything from helping them establish a Web site and online brand to helping them promote their product or service on campus.
Regarding setting up a site, there is certainly demand. I couldn’t find reliable statistics, but it’s safe to say that many small businesses in college towns could benefit by having (A) a Web site, (B) a freshly redesigned site, (C) a more interactive site, (D) presence on appropriate social media and (E) better presence on social media, for example.
Another idea would be to have the revenue office offer research and data that would help the client, from student surveys to conducting focus groups. Basically, as Outing and Small separately referenced, this staff would be like an advertising/marketing department for the client.
An important note: they would NOT be public relations.

There are so many possibilities, but we don’t need to reinvent the wheel as a starting point. Yes, we need to look for new models and think outside the box, but we can start by adapting existing models in different fields.

I’m going to be speaking with The Miami Hurricane‘s business manager about these and other ideas soon. The adviser for the yearbook asked me to meet with those leaders to discuss ideas. I implore you to do the same, even if it’s just to get the conversation started.

Final thoughts:

Open your mind.
Listen to any and all ideas.
Don’t be afraid to fail.
Read Alan Jacobson’s initial posts on Rev2oh. Contact him. Find others like him. Their out-of-the-box thinking will open your mind. I certainly didn’t agree with Alan on every subject, but within half a day I saw the business side of news — and the possibilities — in a whole new light. He and Matt didn’t simply put us in a different pair of shoes. We were in a whole different outfit.
Live long and prosper.

UPDATE: Check this out, Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.

Link-tastic

Here are some links to help provide more context and background on Rev2oh:

The results on Rev2oh site:

More details about the results on SND Update:

@knc08 application, Release Candidate 1, is too long

Daniel Bachhuber — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:45:53 +0000

After a few weeks of drafting, CoPress now has a pretty stellar application together that really synthesizes where were at. Unfortunately, as I’ve just learned, there are character limits on each question we have to answer. I thought I might publish what we have already for the reader’s delight, and then get on to cutting large chunks out of it. Once we can actually fit it into an application, we would love your feedback in the form of comments and (preferably) 5 star ratings.

Description (1800 characters) – Verdict: We’re golden, answer is within limit.

CoPress is a holistic, non-profit, open-source, and community-driven initiative to provide student news organizations with the technical ecosystem they need to thrive during the evolution to digital information gathering and distribution.

We want to reinforce the tremendous value which comes from passionate learners working together on common problems. At the moment, CoPress includes three parts: the software, the community, and the knowledge. CoPress will support popular CMS options with continuing code development, plugins, tuning to create workflows that fit our sector, and fee-for-service hosting/management (similar to the WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org experience). Through this process, CoPress will connect student newspaper online editors, webmasters, and developers with their peers through a variety of means, including a social network that plugs into the backend of CMS options, regular regional work sessions, and an actively updated directory of contact information and current projects. Finally, CoPress is an open model where all knowledge is recorded, indexed, and available. Our hub will provide members with the intellectual resources (tutorials, documentation, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc.) they need to improve their digital distribution platform. Members will be able to edit, contribute and improve the resource for their peers.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? (750 characters) – Verdict: only the first paragraph fits. Whoops.

With the near ubiquity of the web comes a tremendous potential for student news organizations to be far more engaged with their audience, and vice versa. CoPress is the network where online editors, webmasters and developers can come together with ideas and collaborate to make those ideas reality. At the moment, there is no such network for student news organizations. Those who have done innovative things with their online presence to date largely do so because of a unique level of talent at their organization. We believe it’s important for every student news organization to be creating a more engaged campus. A campus powered by increased digital access to information through functionality which shouldn’t be hindered the platform.

Thanks to the creativity of those involved with CoPress, we’ve got more than plenty of ideas to build levels of engagement, including:

Geo-specific mobile delivery
Voting functionality which lets the community decide which stories make the front page, much like Digg or Reddit
Ability to track comment discussion by RSS, email, or Facebook and other means
A newswire in the dashboard which automatically pulls links from other student news organizations based on your position. For instance, the links for a sports editor/reporter would be weighted differently then those for a news editor/reporter

Fortunately, the way that we’re approaching the CMS constraints, and overall digital distribution issues, allow us to divide and conquer on the ideas we’d like implemented. We’re structured with sustainable future growth in mind. CoPress is about building the open, inclusive community needed for student media to thrive in this crazy new age of technology.

Currently, CoPress is already connecting student news organizations at schools including the University of Oregon, the University of Miami, UCLA, Syracuse University, Swarthmore, Wake Forest, East Conneticut State, Temple University, University of Florida, University of Pennsylvania, and others. Not only that, but the network is growing rapidly thanks to the viral strength of Twitter and other social communication tools. CoPress is about structuring the network so that it is efficient and effective in achieving these common goals.

How is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.) (750 characters) – Verdict: A paragraph and a half fits.

At the moment, there is no talented, diverse, and distributed body of student developers and technologists working together around improving a community platform for their specific needs. The people are there, but they need to be connected and coordinated because we face similar problems and can be far more powerful when we work together.

CoPress is not a content management system (CMS). We have no intention to invent yet another CMS. Our goal is to reinvent the options already out there, and tune them so that students can be more informed closer collaboration on platform development amongst student news organizations. Last year, the Knight Foundation funded the Populous Project at UCLA. The team behind Populous hopes to build a kick-ass CMS that provides real neat functionality. CoPress has been talking with Populous over the past few months and can’t wait for the time when we get to help them add to and improve the product.

We think student news organizations need to be involved in a collaborative process. For instance, say Daniel wants to implement shortlinks for his URLs, so that the links can be included in the print edition and students can tear out the URLs for the articles they want to comment on. Joey has already done this with his website, so Daniel gets help from Joey in setting this up. That’s the 1.0 collaboration model. 2.0 happens when Daniel and Joey work in connection over the internet, screen-capturing the process so that Betsy, Billy, and John can follow along too and implement the same feature at their news organization. Even more powerful is the 3.0 model, where the system automatically suggests features you should install based on what you’ve installed before and what your peers are installing. If we’re working on a common platform, and are connected in a network, then we can collaborate and innovate together, allowing us to build off the successes of everyone’s collective efforts.

CoPress aspires to be the synthesis for all of these connections.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? (1800 characters) – Verdict: Our response almost makes it, but not quite.

We’re bringing together the best and the brightest to ensure long-term success of the network. We gather experience from everywhere we can, and our open, distributed, model allows us to assign tasks based on skill set, workload and need. We’ve gathering experienced folks in the right positions from across the country to support our vision, and will continue to do so as we scale. Honestly, it’s surprising just how many like-minded individuals think CoPress is a network worth building.

The CoPress team is a conglomeration of development, design, editing, and management talent from all across the nation, including Daniel Bachhuber from the Oregon Daily Emerald, Greg Linch from the Miami Hurricane, Kevin Koehler from the Old Gold & Black, Adam Hemphill, Joey Baker from The Daily Orange, Albert Sun from the Daily Pennsylvanian, Miles Skorpen of the Swarthmore Daily, Jared Silfies from the Temple News, Rick Martinez of FIU Student Media, and Ken Schwencke from the Independent Florida Alligator, among others. These are innovators who are actively leading the charge at their student news organizations, innovating on their own with platforms such as WordPress, Expression Engine, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, and Django.

Additionally, we’ve received feedback on CoPress’ evolution from Knight Challenge grantees including Anthony and Dharmishta of the Populous Project, Ryan Sholin of ReportingOn, Pat Thornton of BeatBlogging.net, JD Lasica, and David Cohn of SpotUs. CoPress is also supported by Bryan Murley of the Center for Innovation in College Media, Drew Geraets of the CUNY J School, Major Highfield, and Patrick Beeson.

Most importantly, everyone we’ve spoken to is enthusiastic about the potentials of collaborating through these means. We are quite confident that, if student news organization are going to survive the change from print to digital, working with CoPress is one of the few ways they can do so successfully.

Questions from the updated KNC08 application

Daniel Bachhuber — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:54:07 +0000

Yesterday I took an hour or so to synthesis one thing I’ve been working on, the Organizational Development Roadmap [Google Doc], in to responses that better fit the questions on our Knight News Challenge application. Right off the bat, Ryan Sholin responded with questions I thought it would be easier to clarify in a blog post. First, he says:

1. OK, you need two years and more money.
The first year, you can roll out a prototype school or three in the fall, a few more in the spring, and by the time the next summer rolls around, you have a service you’ve taken a school year to develop and improve before you bring it out on a larger scale.

To this, I partially agree. Currently, we’re asking for $70,000 from the Knight News Challenge and have a time scale of one year. I am opposed, at the moment, to asking for more money than I think is necessary. We have little understanding of what our costs will be (plus I’m sure they will scale over time) and the other applications in the garage that have asked for hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, seem outlandish. I don’t want CoPress to be taken as an outlandish project.

For me, the one year qualifies the amount of time it will take to build part of something cool. CoPress, by no means, would be “finished” at the end of the first year. A year, though, sounds good for project scope and two years sounds too long.

Second, Ryan asks:

2. Other than it feeling warm and fuzzy, being based on open-source software and thus extensible, what’s the advantage to a student news org to use this instead of College Publisher? It’s free, and hosted, and if you ever get enough traffic, there’s a rev share on the national ads, right? How is this different. (I’d emphasize that it will be built on a platform that students can learn and adapt to their own needs, right?)

Boy, do I ever agree with you. As I’ve written before and before, “hackability” is critical. Student news organizations need to be working on an open source platform (or, bowing to Kevin, Ken, and Expression Engine, at least one with a plugin architecture) so that they have the ability to innovate as fast as they can. If anyone tries to argue with me that student news organizations don’t need digital distribution platforms they can innovate with, I won’t listen to you. The software College Publisher uses is, from all of my experiences, clunky, janky, and proprietary. We’ll win people over when we show them we have an easy-t-deploy, maintainable, and open and innovate platform to use. Hell, we’re friendly too.

At the moment, we’re not working on a national ad network, although ability to deploy ads will be functionality we provide in some capacity. I’ve heard rumors that there is another group working on the ad coop, however.

3. If you’re going to offer hosting, that’s going to cost money to maintain after a News Challenge grant would run out. What’s the business plan moving forward? And if you’re not going to offer hosting, what super-easy-to-install platform are you going to build the service on?
(WordPress or Drupal? Maybe… An Ellington-like Django-based CMS would actually be difficult, unless the student news orgs in question all have access to and control of their servers.)

The business plan is being worked out. Currently, we’re looking at a few different potential revenue streams:

Fee for service: core CoPress developers offer technical support (database porting, site theming, temporary support if you don’t have an online editor for a term, etc.) for affordable rates.
Flat rate fee for basic hosting, management, and support
Grants and donation drives; foundation support
Using The Point for raising money for plugins/add’l functionality; money raised will fund development by a web developer from the CoPress community

And it’s funny you ask about what platform we’re going to use. We’re in the process of researching the best one for our needs through our surveys and CMS audit. We’ve developed a list of what we think is critical functionality [Google Doc], and are in the process of researching how well Drupal, WordPress, Django, and/or Ruby on Rails could be hacked to fit these needs.

The million dollar question:

4. One of the winners last year is building a CMS/community network tool (plus some front-end print scheduling?) for student media. How is this different (hosting? other services?) and why is it (also) necessary?

Ryan, I think what you’re referring to is the Populous Project. We actually were talking with them about a month and a half ago, but haven’t heard anything since. What we’re doing is similar in the CMS sense (although we preferably won’t be building an entire CMS from scratch) but different in approach: we’re focusing on the technical ecosystem first. The medium to long term survival of CoPress requires a vibrant ecosystem of student Online Editors, etc. because they’re going to be the ones hacking away, educating and supporting each other, and advancing innovation in student news.

We’re working together in an open, transparent, and collaborative fashion, and that’s how we’re different.

Update: Oddly enough, the CoPress Google Group received an email from one of the Populous Project grantees a couple of hours ago in regards to why we shouldn’t consider Ruby on Rails. Hopefully we’ll hear more about their development soon.