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Rob Curley, Vice President for Product Development, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
"News sites need
to pay attention to the way the Internet works instead
of the
way we might want it to work."
"Back
in 1996, daily papers in the top 80 markets were the number one ranked Web
sites for their towns. But not
anymore. Now the top ranked sites are TV sites.
How did this happen? Newspapers
have 10 to 20 times the reporting
force of a local TV station. But
TV Web sites are very good at breaking news and very good at posting video that
people like to watch: video of high school running backs getting a touchdown
or
a community church burning down. They have touched what's correct," Curley
said.
"How
can we turn this around? What would a local newspaper
have to do? Really own local
news. If there's a fire in your town and everyone can see the
smoke and they log onto your site and you think it can wait until tomorrow – you
have to fix this immediately."
Curley advised emphasizing hyperlocal content, going
overboard with multimedia, using database-drive coverage, filling sites with
evergreen content and embracing platform-independent delivery.
"We have to be designing our sites for the cell phone. Our
content is uniquely positioned to work well in the mobile environment." Plus, Curley warned news sites against
charging users for access. "The only thing people will pay for on the internet
is nudity. Right now they aren't going to pay for our content. The paradigm
changed with TV and people pay for cable, but the paradigm hasn't shifted yet
for the internet."
Curley
showed examples of the pioneering hyperlocal,
hyper-interactive sites he helped create at local papers. "It starts with
content that matters to people. In Kansas,
that would be college basketball." When University of Kansas decided to create
a new point system for allotting season tickets, Curley and his team developed
a site with an interactive calculator that helped people figure out what seats
they would be entitled to, complete with a photo view of the court from their
new seats.
Along
with Adrian Holovaty, he launched an online section
called "Game" which covered everything from Little League to high school
football. The site had fully downloadable schedules, cancellation alerts,
360-degree photos of every field, and SMS service so that working parents could
opt to receive cell phone calls every time the score changes.
Unlike newspaper voter guides that come out on the eve of an
election, in Florida, Curley created an interactive guide months earlier along
with a series of issue questions for readers to answer and a report on which
candidates answered most like you.
When
he moved to The Washington Post, Publisher Don Graham
told Curley, "We know how to do the Big-J journalism, but we forgot how to
cover the prom." So, the first
thing Curley helped create was onBeing, a site
featuring edited videos of ordinary people talking about their identities and
personal challenges. The popular series won a Knight-Batten Award and brings
a
ton of traffic to the Post's Web site and boosts the presence of local voices
at a news institution that's best known for national coverage.
The Washington Post was the first newspaper to build
an application on Facebook.
It's a compass
that tells where you and your friends are on the political spectrum and you can
sort by region or category, such as all GWU students or all English majors,
etc.
The
big new project in Curley's portfolio
is LoudounExtra.com, a
Washington Post-created hyperlocal, hyper-interactive site for Loudoun County,
Va, one of the fastest-growing and wealthiest counties in the U.S. The site is constantly updated with
breaking news, calendar listings, and commentary from local bloggers. Live Webcams show what's happening on
local roads, a top priority for commuters. The site includes a wealth of interactive evergreen content
including databases of local restaurants and pages for every school and local
sports team. Users can easily find
out when their favorite sushi bar stops serving food or access the score for
the high school football team at half-time. The site boasts a complete guide to
places of worship including basic information and history, 360-degree photos
and in some cases, digital audio of Sunday services. Beams Curley, "We'll soon be Godcasting."
Curley cautions newspapers not to move under-performing
staffers into the Web operations.
The online product has to have the most talented, creative people in the
building, the best writers and hardest workers.
Predictions? "I
think we're going to see an uber-local news publication that doesn't have a
print legacy product. That's going to happen in 18 months."
J-Lab
is a center of the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College
of Journalism. It is a spin-off of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism
(www.pewcenter.org). © 2004
University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism
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In
a speech that could have been titled, "Innovation and a
Red Bull," WashingtonPostNewsweek Interactive's Rob Curley
At Naples Daily News, his team brought ultimate
interactivity to the