Kevin Sablan of the Orange County Register and Bill Adee of the Chicago Tribune and myself (representing Philadelphia Media Network) are trying to get our panel “Survivalist News: How Far WIll You Go for Readers” accepted for SXSW 2012.

Organized by Sheigh Crabtree of Perfect Market, this is one of a bunch of panels attempting to focus on the news industry, but in my unbiased estimation, the very best. Here’s a description of what we’ll attempt to do:

The Survivalist Newsroom: How Far Will You Go to Get Readers? In today’s frenetic media world, it’s never been more difficult for media companies to attract readers. They’ve used sophisticated search technologies, content seeding, social media, promotions, and splashy homepages to try to lure the most eyeballs possible to their sites. But how far would you go to get readers? In this session, hear from one newspaper that decided to sell Android tablets with its content pre-loaded at a massive discount, juts to get readers in the door. Hear how they also used games, giveaways, and sophisticated data-mining content management techniques to successfully increase readership.

Not bad, right?

Well here is where you come in. This year, with nearly 4,000 sessions submitted for the week (March 9-18), your votes and comments will account for about 30% of the decision-making process. The balance of the decision comes from the SXSW Advisory Board, which is a group of industry professionals from across the US and around the world and finally, the input of the SXSW staff. So please, vote. You can learn more about how to vote here. You can see the full description of our panel here.

So do Kevin, Bill and me a favor and show your support and vote and, while you’re at it, feel free to express your enthusiasm about the session on the comments portion of the page

For those of you not familiar with DCM East, it is “a multi-stream summit incorporating only the most senior strategists and decision-makers in Film, Sports, TV, Publishing, Games and Music” … “DCM East helps you to sort out the best short and medium terms strategies for delivering revenue through digital content.”

While I don’t yet have all the details (such as the when and where), I can tell you that it’s not a panel, but my own session. More details to follow, but if you’re thinking of attending, here is a link to register. And let me know if you’re going to be there!

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Yoni Greenbaum to Vice President, Product Development.  This move is reflective of Philly.com’s commitment to build and maintain a strong and dynamic management team.

Yoni is an outstanding team member, totally dedicated to the growth and success of our company.  Since the inception of the product team last year, Yoni has demonstrated an ability to scan the outside market for ideas, bring new concepts to Philly.com and quickly implement change while building consensus.

This move makes official the unofficial mentorship Yoni was already carrying out in the product team.  Under Yoni’s leadership we successfully launched several new products including the new sports product.  Yoni will continue to report to me.   The Product Managers will report to Yoni.

In his new role, Yoni will focus on managing development of new products and services that will benefit both our users and clients.  He will continue to seek out and manage strategic relationships with partners that can augment and accelerate our revenue and audience growth objectives, as well as work closely with our other properties to ensure that Philadelphia Media Holding’s broader strategies are supported with digital components.

Yoni joined Philly.com on March 17, 2008, as Executive Producer overseeing the day-to-day operations of our site.  Most recently he served as the Executive Director of Product Development where he did an outstanding job of supporting our content and advertising initiatives.  Prior to joining Philly.com, Yoni had an extensive editorial, print and online background with major newspaper companies such as Gannett, Dow Jones, and North Jersey Media Group. Yoni was also President/Executive Editor of JNJ Media Group.

Yoni and his new bride, Tracy, live in Melrose Park, PA.

Please join me in congratulating Yoni on his promotion and we look forward to his continued leadership in this new role.

Ryan Davis
President
Philly.com

Now, for those of you who have previously read my blog, you know that I’m a proponent of transparency and when it comes to an issue like monetization, I think companies need to increase transparency to lessen the impact of employees who believe that making money isn’t their problem.

Years ago, I worked for a company that had a gainsharing program.  The idea was that when the company was successful and earned revenue above a certain target, the results were share with employees. When business didn’t go well, those results were also shared with employees who wound up referred to the program as “painsharing.” More then anything, the program made it clear to all employees that everything had a cost and that if there was an expense, there needed to be revenue.

Now that didn’t make reporters report any less, nor did it make editors assign fewer stories or photographers shoot fewer photos, but it did make nearly everyone pause and think.  For example, editors asked if there was someone else already on duty instead of a reporter working overtime to cover a meeting and designers took a closer look at how much space they needed for a special section. But don’t get me wrong, the program did not suddenly erase waste nor make everyone more frugal.

With the economy being what it is, one would be hard pressed to find a company still running a gainsharing program. But I think the broader lessons are just as relevant in these difficult times.

I’m not proposing that everyone should follow the Dallas model (and yes I know that they say advertising is not really setting strategy), but I do think a better job needs to occur with making building revenue everyone’s problem and where that is already successfully happening in print, it needs to be extended to online.

So if I’m not calling for a Dallas approach, then what do I mean?

Simply put, I think there needs to be an approach that provides a seat at the table for all relevant parties not just advertising and/or content. I would suggest that from the start you involve people from your tech, business development, advertising and content and design teams. Make it clear not only what the goals are, but also what are the expenses. And make sure not to overlook any expenses, for example even the use of open source software can have associated expenses.

How often does advertising come up with an idea for a special section that content readily can’t fill? Or how often does content decide to create a special package that ignore advertising or sponsorship opportunities? Occurrences like those and many others happen in many different types media companies.

While an approach that treats everything as a product and is inclusive in its creation doesn’t guarantee a revenue positive effort, the alternative just doesn’t seem to be working.

What’s the approach at your company? Drop a comment and let me know.

Too many of the sites I visited looked as if they’re frozen in time or, at the very least, not working with any sense of urgency. When I tweeted my observation:

“Where’s the innovation? Where’s the experimentation? Don’t see most newspaper sites doing anything different or new. What happened?”

Steve Yelvington came back with this on-point response:

“Biggest risk of organizational (i.e., newsroom) convergence is a loss of imagination and innovative spirit.”

While I agree with his comment, I just don’t feel like any of these sites can afford to rest on their laurels or to be stuck in neutral. With marketing budgets at many newspapers shrinking or disappearing altogether, for the most part, it’s up to the individual web staffs to increase metrics such as page views, time or site and return visitors (for example).

What concerns me even more is that I’m not sure the people at any of these sites realize that they have a problem. On too many occasions I’ve heard the cliché “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”.

I once worked for a VP who said something along the lines of “if you’ve been doing it for the past 20 years, then it’s time to change what you’ve been doing.” With that in mind, I’ve got a suggestion for all the online staffers out there – consider this a low tech intervention. Take a piece of paper, or create a document and number the lines 1 through 10. Then, on each line, list something that you have done in the past three to six months at your site that you consider innovative or experimental.

For example:

1. Experimented with commenting
2. Incorporated user generated galleries
3. Staffed the site overnight, etc.

Now if you don’t want to do this brief exercise or if your list contains only one or two items, then I would suggest that you have a problem. I would even go so far as to predict that your site (barring the occasional Druge or Fark) is seeing traffic hold steady. While that might seem like a good thing, it really, really isn’t.

With print products struggling just to maintain their depleted numbers, online growth must occur and innovation and experimentation, I believe, is key to that growth.

Now before you run off and put floating eyeballs on your site, I would suggest first of all setting, at the very least, a monthly traffic goal. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of what you attempt and justify those changes or alterations to those you work with.

Once you have that done, try something. It doesn’t have to cost money even, as there is plenty of free tech that you can leverage. Want chats? Try CoveritLive. Want widgets that you can centrally update? Try SproutBuilder. The list goes on and on.

And as you go, share your successes and your stumbles. Just like we’re seeing more cooperation on the content side between news outlets, we need to see more cooperation on the tech side (more on this another time).

Now lets get down to innovating and experimenting and be sure to let me know how it goes.