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About
Howard Owens is a digital media pioneer. He started publishing local news online in 1995 when very few local news outlets had web sites. The header image on the site depicts the film camera he used early in his career and the press pass from his year on the staff of the Carlsbad Journal. For more on Howard's professional background, read his LinkedIn profile.
HowardOwens.com is the personal web site of Howard Owens and covers his range of interests -- political localism and libertarianism, music and personal interests, as well as his professional interests.
Howard is currently publisher of The Batavian and lives in Batavia, N.Y.
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Daily Archives: July 31, 2006
Staying current in turbulent times
To be an effective media executive today, you’ve got to read, read, read.
AdAge offers up a column on what several top media and marketing leaders do to stay atop the rapidly changing digital world.
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New product to add news search to sites
Here’s a promising idea — a news search engine publishers can integrate into their sites.
One one hand, I think something like this should be used to help users find related stories on competing local news sites. My concern is that the product isn’t focused enough on local news.
On the other hand, something like this could help add stickiness to a site for those users now in the habit of going elsewhere for national and world news.
Either way, it’s all in the implementation, and based on Craig Sterling’s comments in the story, I’m not sure the product is flexible enough to allow site managers to launch independent strategies.
I’d like to see a demo to understand better how this tool might be used on a local news site.
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Audience growth through more user video
CNN is creating a citizen video site. They are looking specifically for regional video.
This, of course, puts CNN in more direct competition for local news.
Local news sites need to be more aggressive about soliciting citizen contributions. Submission should be easy, integrated with the primary news site, and allow for unfiltered contributions (editors, of course, decide what gets promoted to more prominent display, and inappropriate submissions are deleted — but users shouldn’t need to wait on an editor to see their submission on the site. This only serves to discourage submissions.
Such a strategy, I think, will help with lagging audience growth.
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