Journalists love to talk. And over the last few days, they’ve been talking a lot about TBD.com, a new local news site from Allbritton that launched today in Washington DC.
On many levels, TBD is worth talking about. It’s the first aggressive effort in local TV circles to compete in a new world of online/mobile news. Allbritton added about 50 people for the site, roughly as many staffers already working on the TV side. And it combined its online brands: WJLA.com and Newschannel 8′s website now redirect to TBD.com. Allbritton is so serious about TBD, it’s rebranding its cable news channel, “Newschannel 8″ with “TBD TV.”
It also is taking a fresh approach to local news: a “platform-neutral” approach to sales, agnostic aggregation (link the competition!) and a citizen blog network with a revenue sharing arrangement, to name a few. And, of course, a more iterative approach to journalism, as its name implies.
Most of all, perhaps, TBD.com won’t have to play second fiddle to TV. “The web is not going to have to beg TV for that story,” said Steve Buttry, director of community for the site. “Because if we want to cover a story, we’ve got staff to cover the story.” For web producers in local TV today, that’s a dream come true.
These are all old ideas, quite frankly. Journalists have talked about them for years now. Others have pitched them to their bosses until they’re blue in the face. And still others have launched elements of these ideas as niche products, subsets or prototypes. But this is the first time that a local media group — especially in the TV space — has wrapped these ideas together and aggressively launched them with an investment to back it up.
What’s novel about TBD is not the ideas, but the action. It’s not about talking. It’s about doing. And not just as an experiment, but as an aggressive investment, with the resources to make it win. Who knows if TBD will succeed. But it’s future certainly looks bright.
