As of August 9, 2010, the Washington Post has a new local news challenger for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The news Web site, TBD.com, which is the product of Allbritton Communications, contains links to the sites of competing news organizations, including the Post’s.
This move into local news coverage is seen as an effort to counter the Post by the same company that produces Politico, a high profile competitor to the newspaper’s political reporting. TBD.com owner Robert Allbritton, aside from Politico, has two other properties that figure into the new venture--the local Washington ABC affiliate WJLA TV and a cable news station, NewsChannel 8, which was rebranded as TBD TV following the launch.
Allbritton terms the effort a multimedia news platform that also involves local reporters, editors, online Washington area bloggers, and various community sites.
Search for Creation of Successful Online Local News Venture
“Broadcasters have been attempting to build local online portals for more than a decade, following a variety of models - including nationally-branded networks, outsourced websites, and lavishly funded local staffs,” Robert Niles wrote in “Lessons from launch: How TBD.com is trying to engage the community to build its business” in the August 11, 2010 Online Journalism Review. “By aggressively soliciting local bloggers to participate in this network, TBD.com is building upon the experience of a team of online news veterans, who've won praise and honor for their efforts at other ‘old media’-affiliated news websites, including general manager Jim Brady, late of washingtonpost.com.”
The newspaper front in Washington is a murky one. The Washington Post is shifting more material online as it struggles with declining print subscribers and publishes a free tabloid, the Express, with condensed content from the main paper. The Express has its own free competitor, the right of center leaning Washington Examiner, which started in 2005, and the city’s main conservative rival, the sharply curtailed Washington Times, is searching for a buyer.
Even at an early stage and with a smaller staff, some, including those with Washington Post or Post staff connections, have commended the immediacy of the TBD’s content or praised its potential local news and information impact.
The Post itself has covered the start-up as well. “Do media-saturated Washington and its environs need yet another source of information about Washington and its environs?” Paul Farhi asked in “TBD.com making its move into the crowded market of local news” August 7, 2010. “Local-news sites, of course, aren’t exactly an exotic species, and TBD is wading into a crowded pool. With the continued humbling of the newspaper industry, lots of former ink-stained wretches have started Web sites to cover their home towns. Dozens have sprung up in recent years, with names such as VoiceofSanDiego.org, MinnPost.com in Minnesota and Baristanet.com in New Jersey.”
Joining of TV Stations and Web Site
TBD has cited a differentiated approach to local news through its affiliation with broadcast and cable TV stations and the expanded use of technology, including geocoding to target content to readers by specific location and zip code.
“‘We are really now a multimedia operation that is fueled by Web and TV,’ said Steve Chaggaris, Albritton’s vice president for cable news. Television viewers will see a wider variety of local stories, and the stations will rely on multimedia content from Web staff,” Steve Myers wrote August 9, 2010 in “Four Key Questions that TBD Could Answer about Online News” on PoynterOnline.
Sree Sreenivasan said in DNAinfo’s “A Day 1 Appraisal of TBD.com, Washington’s New Hyperlocal News Site” on August 9, 2010, “Some partnerships between newspapers and TV stations have run into trouble in other markets, so a collaboration between a news sites and two stations is surely to be even more complicated. At the same time, access to the resources of the three newsrooms gives TBD unparalleled newsgathering and distribution.”
Questioning of TBD’s News Sharing, Linking Strategy
But the sharing of information and linking to competitor sites has not received universal praise. Dave Hughes who produces dcrtv.com, a site covering Washington area media, has questioned what he terms “Allbritton’s new philosophy of actively promoting the competition.” With the linking to news stories on other TV stations, Hughes wrote on his site August 12, 2010: “If I was a news biggie at [Washington rival stations] WRC or WTTG, I’d be putting together some sort of promotional hype that ‘7 turns to us for news’.”
He also has faulted TBD officials for too much advance self-promotion and other sources for hyping the operation without the site having demonstrated its own news mettle yet.
For its part TBD is counting on the value of offering local perspectives on events, neighborhoods, restaurants, and activities. It is turning to outside information sources such as selected bloggers even to fill in gaps in TBD’s reporting if such situations arise.
Bloggers may have the opportunity to break stories on TBD and blogs will be able to take part in the sharing of advertising revenue with the sales staff already in place helping to sell ads. The site is emphasizing social media and is on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare.
Aside from the kind of news it says it’s committed to providing, the site is preparing to give readers access to an iPhone application for TBD and to an Android mobile app.
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
