Gannett out to ‘re-engineer’ its TV stations
Cory Bergman February 27th, 2008
There are some interesting nuggets in this interview with Dave Lougee, the president of Gannett Broadcasting. First off, Lougee said the group’s TV sites are close to launching new designs with a new video player. (Let us know when you see one launch.) Plus, Gannett is getting ready to roll out Metromix entertainment sites in its markets as part of a joint venture with Tribune. And Lougee said they just rolled out ArizonaMoms.com, a site dedicated to new mothers. “We’re in the early stages of that,” he said. (Gannett already has IndyMoms.com and MichiganMoms.com.)
Lougee also talks about re-engineering its stations to focus on original content and sales. Some reporters are training to shoot video. “It’s not that everyone becomes a one-man band,” Lougee says. “Newsrooms have reacted to that. They feel it means a reduction in quality. But what’s the definition of quality? If a newsroom is only sending out eight reporters on a given day, what happens if they re-engineer the workflow and can send out 24 a day?”
15 Comments Add your own
1. tdc | February 27th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
haven’t bought a local paper in a years, but thought the ‘arizonamoms’ thing sounded familiar… michiganmoms is also a gannett property.
cute little frog on the screen right now.
2. Safran | February 27th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“If a newsroom is only sending out eight reporters on a given day, what happens if they re-engineer the workflow and can send out 24 a day?””
This.
3. Rob | February 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Cory - Is this the same Dave Lougee that used to work at your Denny Way office?
Anyway … I remember you guys did a piece on IndyMoms a while back and I guess the success of that property is leading to their syndicating that platform into multiple markets. Pretty cool concept. At least a lot more relevant to local niche communities than that new social networking site being fronted by Mandy Moore.
4. Amanda E. | February 27th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Facinating site and concept.
The web developer in me must know - is it a Drupal site or home built?
5. Amanda E. | February 27th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Hm, did some googling, its a Drupal site with some rails modules
6. Cory | February 27th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Yes, full disclosure, Dave Lougee is the former GM of KING and SVP of Belo.
7. Jason | February 27th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Love the website… not against the idea of tossing more news gatherers into the field.
However, in my experience, the problem isn’t that you don’t have enough bodies to cover the news. It’s that you don’t have enough bodies to dig up news. So having 24 people to go in the field is only effective if you let 8 of those people go out and hang in the courthouses and coffeehouses and city halls. If that’s the idea: awesome.
I worry that we’ll end up throwing more people out to cover more things, and shove the stuff that doesn’t make air online. So you end up with more coverage of less significant items. I don’t see how that helps us bring eyeballs back to local news.
8. Hussman | February 28th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Our Parent corp is thankfully re-doing our stations site. It is in desperate need of such things.
I feel pretty lucky that our corp is very forward-looking when it comes to the internet.
9. Everett W. | February 28th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Gannett also has DVMMoms.com associated with Washington, D.C. station WUSA/9.
10. JoeMo | February 28th, 2008 at 7:50 am
If I remember correctly they are going to be using Maven for their video (yawn!) and The Platform to run everything behind the scenes. They sure are throwing some money at it; hopefully it will pay off in the long run.
11. Weaver | February 28th, 2008 at 8:11 am
The Greensboro Gannett station (WFMY) has transitioned away from the typical TV website model. Their website is now digtriad dot com.
12. tdc | February 28th, 2008 at 8:37 am
this is a perfect example of (and a good lead-in for) the renewed focus on direct navigation or type-in traffic URL’s.
seo folks (google) certainly don’t like the idea of a method that can bypass them, but i just read where iac has inked a deal to work with the owners of 150,000 (no typo) direct navigation destinations.
13. Dave | February 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I can just here my friends now:
“Let’s log on to Metromix! It’s so hip and cool! I want to know what’s trendy and connect with my local friends! Wow… I can even add events to their events calendar and post comments about bars. Hey look! There’s a bunch of pictures of my fellow generation on the scene. I’m totally abandoning Facebook for this.”
14. tdc | February 28th, 2008 at 8:51 am
your friends are still saying “LOG ON TO…”?????????????????????????????????
dinosaurs said that.
15. Anonymous | March 2nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Lougee’s still hawking?
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