By veselosky on January 8, 2010
Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle
Time was, newspapers owned the local classified ads business, and it was their cash cow. Many people bought the paper just for the classifieds, and it was by far the most valuable real estate of the paper. In recent years, free Internet-based alternatives like Craig’s List decimated their business and contributed greatly to the decline of newspapers.
In this November 2009 interview, Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle, an online classifieds startup, explains that “If You’re The Challenger, You Have To Play A Different Game”. He tells Andrew Warner how he was able to build a successful online classifieds business despite free competition, and become the classifieds provider for many local newspapers.
Donato shows that his company achieved success through innovation based on customer needs, whereas newspapers remained complacent and failed to compete. Clearly, there is room for both free and paid providers in this industry, but the key is innovation in providing customer value. Newspapers, so long enjoying monopoly privileges in their markets, didn’t have the innovation experience they needed to compete in the newly opened market.
Watch Mixergy’s interview with Craig Donato.
Posted in Business Models
By veselosky on January 5, 2010
If you are interested in new media as a tool for journalism, you need to read Tweeting a Trial by London Free Press reporter Kate Dubinski. She talks about how her organization used Twitter when covering a murder trial. Not only did they break trial developments via Twitter, but they also used the social tool to connect with sources who later provided supporting interviews.
Read the original Tweeting a Trial on J-Source.ca, or the re-edited version Lessons Learned from Tweeting a Biker Gang Trial from MediaShift.
Posted in Journalism, Social
By veselosky on January 1, 2010
Recently Steve Buttry called out his most notable articles of 2009. Among them is a gem called Elevate your journalism career. In it, Buttry recapitulates advice he gave to journalism students at the University of Kentucky, and by itself the post is practically a college course in online journalism. If you are a blogger who considers herself to be a journalist as well, you owe it to yourself (and your readers) to study Buttry’s advice carefully.
Read Buttry’s advice to journalists.
Posted in Journalism
By veselosky on December 24, 2009
One of the points of debate in new media is whether bloggers count as journalists in the traditional sense of the word. Bloggers tend to think so, while those defending the traditional media tend to disagree.
David Eaves tells us about a legal case in Canada that may help clear up the issue: The Supreme Court of Canada: There are no journalists, only citizens. Bloggers, it seems, have a right to use the “defense of responsible communication”, meaning that if you behave like a journalist (you are reporting on an issue of public interest, and you make a reasonable effort to ascertain the truth of your facts before reporting them), then you should get the same protections as a journalist.
I am not a lawyer, so if you try it and get sued, don’t come crying to me. Still, I think this is good news for entrepreneurs who are practicing journalism in new ways and delivering it through new media. The courts are beginning to catch up with the technology.
Update: Dean Jobb has written an excellent detailed explanation of this ruling on J-Source.ca: The responsible communication defence: What’s in it for journalists?
Posted in Journalism