The Wall Street Journal has a piece on LoudounExtra.com, the hyperlocal piece Rob Curley and his team put together while at The Washington Post’s interactive subsidiary. WSJ calls the site a “flop” and talks at length about how Rob and his team failed to generate even the traffic they got in Lawrence, which has three times fewer residents than Loudoun County.
I have no idea why the site never generated the traffic numbers they were hoping for, but I definitely don’t believe this should be taken as an indication that hyperlocal is no longer a good strategy. But news organizations should also understand that hyperlocal is also not a magic bullet. There are many other factors at play when it comes to figuring out if one of the sites is going to succeed or not, and chances are no one — not even Rob F’ing Curley — has the midas touch to ensure every single project they work on is going to be a mega-hit.
One thing is for sure, though: sites can not continue to be successful simply by being LJWorld.com and Lawrence.com clones. Teams need to continue to innovate and come up with new and interesting ways to get the news in front of consumers. The biggest thing Lawrence.com did was something different. Lawrence.com has been basically exactly the same site since its inception in 2001. This was Rob’s vision, and it was executed very, very well. Since then, it has forged a plethora of clones across all sorts of markets — some successful, and some not. Seven years in Internet time is an eternity, and I don’t mind saying that because I know the guys working on Lawrence.com now understand it’s a project that drastically needs to redefine itself, and its place as one of the most innovative interactive news projects ever launched (I have it on good word that redefinition is coming in the relatively near future).
Bottom line? Being “hyperlocal” isn’t enough to get you anywhere, anymore. You need to be innovative and captivating. As much as I respect the team behind LoudounExtra.com, I’m not entirely sure it upped the ante any. Visit site »
Rob (who, by the way, says I called him a dick, when I never did any such thing — but now I think he’s sort of a dick for saying I called him a dick), and his team are leaving The Washington Post for The Las Vegas Sun, as many expected. Congrats and good luck, guys! Visit site »
“According to sources close the situation,” Rob may be planning to bolt from The Post and head to The Las Vegas Sun. Knowing a few people at the Sun, and knowing a bit about Rob (though I don’t really know him personally), I could see it happening — but who knows. Visit site »
The Post launches its first Ellington powered site (it has several Django-powered sites, but this is the first one to use the Django-based CMS we built here in Lawrence). Lookin’ good! Read all about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Visit site »
“The newspaper industry in Kansas is fascinating to me. Here is a state that is definitely in the lower-half of the nation when it comes to population (about 2.5 million, I think—or about half what the DC metro is), yet it has 40 daily newspapers. And there are more than a handful of newspapers in Kansas with less than 2,500 daily circulation. I love that!”
Interesting factoid, as I believe they’re called. Visit site »
There’s a whole host of journalism-related interviews as part of Frontline’s “News War” series. I haven’t read most of them (yet), but I did read this one, and thought it was mostly great. Rob Curley, who formerly lead the team that I am now a part of in Lawrence, certainly “gets is” more than most in the industry, with regard to the Internet.
One thing that Rob and I definitely agree on is that there’s no such thing as overkill. No amount of information is too much information. But, as a designer, I consider it my job to present that information in such a fashion that makes it all very easy to parse and deal with. My impression of most of the sites done under Rob’s direction is that they’ve just sort of spewed gobs and gobs of info all over the screen, without presenting it in a way that serves both the casual and the hardcore viewer.
For example: I will be redesigning KUSports.com in the coming months. It’s a hardcore site for diehard Jayhawk fans. It’s the bible, and everything you could possibly want to know about KU sports — past, present, or future — is there. I don’t want to take away information — in fact, I want to add information. But, I want it to feel like there’s less. I want to use whitespace and good typography to open up the page, without providing less content. The thinking that everything needs to be on the homepage (which is par for the course in journalism) is all wrong. Everything needs to be easily accessed from the homepage. Everything does not need to be on the homepage.
There’s no such thing as overkill, but there is such thing as information overload. The place where ridiculous overkill reigns and information overload is unheard of? That place is called design. Visit site »
I’m a little late on this one, but I finally took a few minutes to really check out the first project Rob Curley’s team has done at The Post, and I found myself very into the stories. A very cool concept, some unique Flash UI work, and genuinely interesting and real people. I dig it. As with most Post projects, it’s Django-powered. Also see the related blog post from Curley. Visit site »
Former World Online director Rob Curley is interviewed for Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. Although Rob is saying a lot of the same things he’s been saying for the past five years, the fact is that most of it still rings true. Really good stuff, overall. If the news industry keeps moving so slowly, Rob may never have to get another great idea to keep himself in the limelight. :) Visit site »
“Skillset is important. But mindset is most important.” Right on, Rob. Visit site »
Howards thinks BoomerGirl.com is “well thought out, (hits a) great target demo, attractive and well executed.” And then he wonders if this is proof “that Lawrence can thrive in the post-Rob-Curley era,” which is really more funny than anything else. Adrian’s response is spot-on, excepting the fact that it’s more than four web developers (and positions are still open!). :) Visit site »
A nice list, with some good interview responses from the selected. Includes former World Online director Rob Curley. Visit site »
A great profile of Rob Curley, the online journalism “visionary” that used to be the director of World Online (my current workplace, although I never worked for him) and is not at The Washington Post. To be frank, I think Rob gets a bit more than his fair share of credit for all that’s been done in Lawrence and Naples — there are a lot of amazing people on those teams that deserve a lot of the credit, as well. But, there’s no doubt he knows how to find a great team and create an environment where they can thrive. He’s had some great ideas along the way — but the thing he really does better than anyone else is sell those ideas. He’s infectious in a Steve Jobs kind of way, and that’s quite a skill. I’m not hating on Rob at all — just sayin’ there are plenty of Jonathan Ives to his Steve Jobs. If you’re interested in online journalism, definitely check out this profile, and see if you can’t dig up a podcast of some of Rob’s presentations. Really good stuff. Visit site »
Although World Online isn’t quite the same place it was when Rob was here in Lawrence, these core strategies still shape most of what we do here at my kick-ass day job. Visit site »
For those who don’t know, Rob is the former director of World Online’s operation here in Lawrence (I never worked under him — he left before I got here). He’s seen as a visionary in the online news world by many folks, and it will be interesting to see what he can do at The Post. Rob says, “Whenever folks from huge newspapers have seen what we’ve done in Lawrence, Naples or Topeka, someone in the group always tells me that this sort of approach won’t work in a big market. Well, we’re about to find out.” Visit site »