Butte of a joke? Only if you can't maximize your ad revenue
So BillingsGazette.com posted this AP story with the headline Butte blast blamed on leaking gas. I just hope for their sake the Gazette has the ability to target which ads appear on that page and is working off some kind of auction model so it can maximize its revenue when this page got "farqued."
Of course, I'm throwing a stone from my glass house as I don't currently have any ads on my site. But I still felt compelled to comment on this after having a conversation with a friend who's an editor at a small newspaper who is exploring what his company's web options are moving forward.
A former influence from my Media Center days, Rob Curley, likes to tell a story about the main character from the movie "Radio." After taking his daughter to see the movie and wanting to know more about the character, he naturally went to independentmail.com to learn more ... but couldn't find anything. The point is, Curley would say, is that you have to know what is of interest to the world in your own backyard, and take appropriate actions to bring that information to them.
(One followup ... since Curley told that story a few years ago, it appears you can find more information about James Robert Kennedy.)
As newspapers keep trying to compete with seemingly infinte social networks and social networking tools that are bringing more and more people together while crowding the landscape of information providers, they need to be cognizant of what advantages they have in the marketplace -- and use them.
