The new media model

I’ve long maintained (I think I’ve been saying this since 2004) that newspaper’s major failing online – outside of not linking out, starting out with pay walls and such – was that it didn’t realize there were people within the community that would gladly write for them for nothing or almost nothing, just the giddy feeling of contributing to a blog on the newspaper’s website or some other form of social currency. I felt that if they had reached out to people in the community who were starting their own blogs and said “Hey, let’s integrate your stuff into the paper’s website – you get exposure (and maybe a cut of the ad revenue) and we get some niche-focused content under our brand umbrella” we’d be looking at a very different media picture than we are right now.

That’s why I’m such a fan of ChicagoNow, because it basically does just that. The site is not so much a single publication so much as it is a collection of blogs, ranging from newly launched ones to existing properties like CTA Tattler and others that existed before but now have been brought in-house. You can read about happenings in the legal community, follow a Naperville woman’s travels in Iran, find out how to maintain a garden in the city and explore a bunch of other very niche content.

And that’s the genius of it. It’s a broad site with 74 bits of niche appeal. And that’s exactly what a media property should be. Don’t try to be all things to all people and reach everyone with all the content you produce. That’s not going to happen. Instead be all things by offering a single point of content that will appeal to *that* person. Reach me. Get my interest.

This isn’t “aggregation” in the way that the term has come to be understood thanks to HuffPo where an original story is rewritten with a cursory link that no one follows thrown in at the end. This is “aggregation” in the “Hey, that’s a cool blog that fills a gap in our current offerings. Wanna write for us?” sense and that’s much more sustainable and a much better way to embrace and be recognized by the community. ChicagoNow could conceivably bring in all sorts of stuff and all of it would fit.

The site is now out of beta which is why this is on my mind. Good luck to everyone involved here.

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