As a follow-up to my previous post about the Monroe Evening News, I reached out to Dan Shaw, the former managing editor and director of new audiences for the Monroe Evening News, who now teaches journalism at Monroe County Community College and serves as a consultant for the media outlet.
“About two years ago, we knew that social networking movement across the country was important,” said Shaw. ”And we needed to get into it.” Using Newspaper Next guidelines, Shaw and his staff created the MonroeTalks forums, which have blossomed into one of the more vibrant online communities on the Web. Check out his video on Youtube for some more info:
Although they clearly had some hurdles along the way with traffic, Shaw said the biggest obstacle to overcome is a lack of time and resources for projects like this at newspapers. Nonetheless, he said this should not be a major deterrant. “This is something that every news organization nationwide should be doing and they aren’t,” said Shaw.
But why should they be doing this? What’s the point? Money, of course, right? Think again. According to Shaw, despite averaging about 2.3 million page views per month, MonroeTalks does not make much money. “We make a little bit of money on it, but not much,” said Shaw. ”We don’t spend too many resources on it because it’s more of a community social networking experiment than a moneymaking enterprise.”
But why is that? According to Shaw, local businesses have been reluctant to advertise on MonroeTalks.com because of some of the controversial discussion in the forums. Which brings me to this article, courtesy of the Gazette’s Steve Buttry. In a small community (apprx. 60,000 households), it would seem that local business would benefit immensely from the 6-7000 unique visitors the site receives a day.
And despite the success of MonroeTalks.com, Shaw believes the niche Web products the Evening News is coming out with will be more popular with his audience, and MonroeTalks will fade into the background as the conversation niche for the Monroe County community.
As journalists, it is our responsibility to inform our public and foster discussion. That’s why we have undertaken this project. But the business side of the industry dictates that we need to make money doing it as well. The synergy of these two ideas is what ultimately makes online communities successful.
By giving our audience the opportunity to interact with the Web site and stay informed, more page views will be generated - giving advertisers more opportunities to reach our readers.
I guess that’s the point?
no comment untill now