It beginning to look like AnnArbor.com is trying to slowly leak out what it will be. So far it sounds like it's going to be a link list.
The example the new content czar has provided, a popular, closed restaurant, wouldn't give me a reason to be excited about this new venture. And as he points out, there are already many sources of the information they will be providing. (By the way, if it was a 'popular' restaurant, why did it close? That would be a story for a good reporter).
If what they are going to provide for me is a Google shortstop, I don't need it, maybe some people do, but I don't.
When he says, "we'll have reporters," I guess what most people want to know is how many and what will they cover. Will they spend the money to fly reporters to away sporting events? Will they spend the money to fly reporters out-of-state on a hot angle to a local story? Will they have an experienced court reporter spend days in a courtroom giving us the gory details of a interesting court case?
A closed restaurant is one thing, a commitment to heavy duty daily reporting, is quite another.
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(Don't know if he/she meant to, but this blog post showed up on the Red Wings post below. I have copied it and moved it here).
Booth On The Precipice said...
As I've noted here and elsewhere, the whole key to annarbor.com surviving and turning any sort of profit will be linking in and linking out like crazy, just like what mlive.com does. The success will hinge on Dearing's ability or inability to rope in as many of the area's bloggers as possible.
That is why Dearing is repeating that mantra at community forums. If that aspect fails and some bloggers refuse to participate, annarbor.com fails. He absolutely has to get mgoblog.com and Mary Morgan's Chronicle site to participate, among the other biggies in the area. Bottom line. To share percentages of ad revenue and attract as much traffic to annarbor.com as possible. This is the only reason Dearing wants to bring in outside bloggers. Not because of the reason he's publicly stating: "We're community journalism for the people by the people. We want as many of the community's bloggers participating as possible." There might be a shade of truth to this, but the main motive is financially based.
If he fails with this concept, the site fails twice as quickly as it would without the linking in/linking out-sharing strategy.
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