State of Local

The mall shootings in Omaha and the availability of security photos and 911 tapes forced a lot of consideration in newsrooms about how graphic to be and what kind of warnings to issue to viewers and online readers. At almost the same time as the shootings, a thousand miles away, a smaller but also horrific incident took place and forced a similar weighing of high interest against community standards.

KPHO in Phoenix was providing live coverage of police chasing a bank robber at up to 100 mph when the robber crossed the center line of a four-lane road and crashed head-on into another vehicle. Both drivers were killed in what anyone seeing it would describe as a spectacular and jaw-dropping collision. Some would say that’s what the helicopter chase business is all about.

But cameras immediately pulled away and the station did not show the crash again on TV. Viewers instead saw tape of the chase leading up to a split second before the crash, including smoking brakes on the innocent car. Meanwhile, the KPHO website posted the full tape and kept it up for a couple of hours before news director Tom Bell pulled it down, going instead with the chase leading up to the impact but not showing the collision.

Bell’s initial call is tough to argue with. TV is different from the web, he pointed out in an email exchange with me. It’s on in the living room with grandma, kids and everyone else watching with little expectation of extremely shocking content coming over the air.  Read More… »

The Financial Times has a great profile of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur in today’s edition (free registration required to read it).

Le Meur has a lot of experience with successful startups, and his current project is Seesmic, a site which he is promoting via a series of daily, often odd YouTube clips.

In the FT piece, he offers up 10 rules for anyone wanting to be successful in business, and I include them here because I think many of them apply to local online news and advertising.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible.
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.