As solo sports journalist Rick Waghorn relaunches his Norwich City news website in the first step towards franchising the service, I spoke to him about going solo, the importance of advertising, and the likely first places for the franchise to expand.
Originally, Waghorn says, the plan was to offer a franchise “in much the same way as you would set up a bathroom shop and people would buy the kit off the shelf from you.” But the plan has changed.
“I’m not sure that’s realistic in that perhaps that works for someone with a redundancy package to self-start a franchise from us, but I think the way it may work is: I’ve got some funding that we use to actually pay salaried journalists to open a Sheffield bureau or a Manchester bureau rather than someone actually buying a franchise off me.”
The new-look site is an impressive effort from a team of three people - putting most local newspaper sites to shame with clear layout and even up-to-the-minute features such as the ‘most read’ section, podcasts, blogs and a text service. Most impressive is a set of RSS feeds from what, in old media, would have been called ‘the competition’ - Waghorn clearly recognises that making your site a destination is more important than pretending the competition doesn’t exist. “If people only have ten minutes at lunch to go online, they’ll want a site that has all the details.”
In the 14 months since launching RickWaghorn.co.uk with money from a redundancy package, the site has exceeded Rick’s “wildest expectations”.
“It is very much hard work. In year one we roughly took about £35-40,000 which was done on a commission split with my ad man. It has been a huge voyage of discovery.”
Now Waghorn is planning “another voyage of discovery.”
“The theory is that what we’ve done with Norwich should be equally applicable to most other provincial football clubs,” says Waghorn, “so we’re starting to have discussions with different regional journalists. Now the question is how you service that in an advertising sense, but one of the interesting things is if you can start offering, if you like, regionality, then I can start offering, say, advertising in Suffolk to companies in Norfolk.
“Or, let’s say we looked at the three Championship sides in South Yorkshire. If we had those we could serve them all with one advertising rep, but offer someone advertising on all three, and do a bundle sale.”
Teaming up with senior advertising executive Kevin O’Gorman has been crucial, with O’Gorman working “the local beat, bringing little local firms onto the internet who have built their own websites and need to market them.
“We give them a friendly face - someone they’ve been dealing with on a local basis in the last few years, and he holds their hand and helps them online. I do the editorial and he services the advertisers in a very old-fashioned newspaper sense - and then you find a mate with a background in web design and get the lucky breaks, but I’ve found a ‘Team Rick’ which has worked well so far.”
Another key to the site’s success has been its flexibility, and speed.
“It’s very peculiar for football because few regional papers have a Sunday edition, and at Norwich Evening News I was the last match report anyone ever read - at 5 o’clock Monday night when the paperboy put the paper through the door it was 48 hours after the event. In the age of rolling news that doesn’t make sense. Now, arguably after the official club site, I’m the first match report they read because my match report goes up on the website five minutes after the match finishes. All of a sudden I become a Sunday newspaper because I put out my match report, my interviews on Sunday. Now that presents a challenge to local newspapers because what are they going to put in their Monday night newspapers?
“Also, when you’re not part of a local newspaper group you’re nimble. I can hold my hand up to dozens of mistakes we’ve made but because you’re only two or three people we can say ‘Oh, that didn’t work, let’s try that,’ and I think that nimbleness is another of the key factors in dealing with the internet.”
Rick’s advice to journalists wanting to go it alone is to recognise the importance of advertising. “Start talking to your advertising department, because just as much as the editorial department is suffering from redundancies, so is the advertising department. Most journalists will tell you that the only time you bump into anyone from the advertising department is at the Christmas party when you’re trying to get off with one. But these people have skills and contacts, and you bolt the two of us together and that’s where it’s worked, so I’d start taking your friend from the advertising department out for a drink.”
July 6th, 2007
I’ve been at it again. Last night I presented a speech to editors and ad directors at Trinity Mirror Midlands (Birmingham Mail and Post, Coventry Telegraph, Sunday Mercury and various weeklies throughout the region). Given that they’d been exploring digital ideas all day I tried to keep it light to begin with - so the linked Powerpoint below begins with a mock awards, with the more hard hitting stuff coming after.
The hard-hitting stuff consists of lots of pithy phrases - the headlines were:
- It’s no longer about content, it’s about services
- It’s no longer about publishing, it’s about communication
I talked about how the news industry is having to shift from a 19th century production-based system to a 21st century service-based industry, and how online advertising alone is not going to plug the gap left by dropping print revenues (a number of new business models are covered that may provide other sources of revenue).
And I tackled this common phrase that the newspaper is now ‘one of many channels’. I think that’s still a ‘broadcaster’ mindset, and that instead we should think of print as ‘one way of helping people communicate’.
And I revisited some of the elements from my Vienna speech about the strengths that journalism needs to play to: investigative journalism, database-driven journalism, interactive journalism, and multimedia journalism; and reader-driven forms such as wikis and crowdsourcing.
Here’s the PowerPoint. Comments welcome.
Speech to Trinity Mirror Midlands
June 6th, 2007
The Guardian is to recruit online video and audio staff, reports the paper:
“Guardian Unlimited, the title’s online operation, is looking to hire five staff for its internet video unit to work on footage of breaking news, as well as “developing mini documentaries and video elements within larger, cross media projects”.”As well as the five online video staff, GU is looking to recruit a head of audio and two audio producers as it expands its year-old podcast operation.”
And in the same edition, Emap is reported to be “ramping up its digital strategy by launching new media “incubator” projects for Motorcycle News, Today’s Golfer and Empire magazines and appointing three new digital directors”:
“Mr Mistry said he has interviewed nearly 50 digital media specialists, including people from search firms and entrepreneurs with up to 10 years’ experience in launching digital brands.”
But here’s a stat to bore your print journalism friends with:
“rock magazine Kerrang!, for example, now makes less than 25% of its revenue through the original print product. Kerrang! has music TV, digital radio, mobile and live event offerings.”
March 27th, 2007
Advertisers aren’t interested in 200,000 users, reports MarketWatch:
“So, how does Rocketboom keep the lights on? Baron says the video blog has become kind of a loss leader and a promotional device for the real money. Like a blog, he says he has established the Rocketboom team as experts in using video on the Web. “We get consulting opportunities, conferences give honorariums. For us, there are many off-shoots.”"
March 26th, 2007
Jemima Kiss reports on the Association of Online Publishers web video forum, with a focus on advertising:
“ROO Group executive director Robin Smyth had some pretty solid basic tips on incorporating video: add mini players within the site, embedded video in the site (that means not having a pop-up media player, like the iPlayer…), having a simple content management system, good marketing, a user content element and focusing on live events.”
March 15th, 2007
Journalism.co.uk reports on The Guardian’s plans to invest £15m in its online operations and ‘big plans’ for video - “to take advantage of its advertising potential” (that old chestnut). Apparently Guardian Films, its television production company, has grown “rapidly over recent months to a point where it now broke even”. It seems broadcast-trained journalists can now look to the print sector for employment too:
“Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told conference that £1 million would be invested in video production and hiring experienced production staff.
“Currently self-taught reporters and camera people put projects together.
“We don’t think we can go forward without proper resources and reporters,” he said.
Meanwhile, the move to use the web to target overseas markets continures, with the Guardian intending “to launch an American version of its Comment is free portal as part of its bid to be the world’s leading voice of liberalism.”
March 9th, 2007
MediaWeek has lots of blah about the Times revamp meaning ‘upgrading’ audio and video (whatever that means) and “more analysis” (you need to ‘revamp’ a website to do that?). But what’s this hidden in par 2?
“Zach Leonard, digital media publisher of Times Online, said the site would also offer more contextual and behavioural targeting for advertisers and sponsors.”
Sounds like that’s the real headline story here.
UPDATE (Feb 6): There’s an ‘ask the designers’ feature at Times Online where they explain the process of the redesign, including the reason for that strange lime green. Georgia works well but it is very ‘now’ and may start to date in a few years…
UPDATE (Feb 9): There’s even more at Press Gazette on the systems that are being used to integrate print and online, to handle comments, and the future plans around video and archive content.
February 5th, 2007
