INDIANA PARLEY

Something else that's gratifying - at least to me! - is the way a number of our newsrooms are reaching out to the Web to try new and interesting ways of delivering news and information digitally. In Kansas City, it's the use of video to break news online, pioneered by veteran Kansas City television reporter Mark Hellig, recently hired to teach our staff how to shoot and edit video for the Web site. Other examples? In San Jose, it's Jon Fortt's A+E Interactive (edgy combo of Web page and weekly arts-and-entertainment print section, designed for young audiences).

Targeted publications have become a buzzword in the industry because readers are voting with their eyeballs: They want all kinds of content. We're giving them what they want. Our Circulation, Content and Readership Task Force (CCRTF), led by Fort Wayne News-Sentinel Publisher Mary Jacobus and Kansas City Star Executive Editor Mark Zieman, and involving approximately 80 people, is well launched.

It has resulted in about a dozen projects including: segmentation and data mining, "totally relevant" content focus, new approaches to newspaper marketing shared content with focus on a shopping section (under discussion), a compact - a.k.a. tab - conversion and several others. Just listing them, however, hardly does justice to the work that has gone into the CCRTF. Each project begs careful analysis with regard to resources required and proper market fit. Dozens of people have spent hundreds of hours making those assessments. If there is a better way to manage circulation, the CCRTF will find it.

# posted by Mitch : 9:16 PM