Miami.com, the website for the Miami Herald has gone from something that looked an awful lot like the Spec.com, to a $14 million revenue powerhouse that the Herald is depending on for ALL of the growth in its bottom line this coming year.
They did it with a staff of six.
Thanks to Roger Gillespie, who met the site's manager at a recent API workshop, the learning newsroom's Tech Gang spent an hour talking with that manager, Rick Hirsch, and came away buzzing with ideas.
One of the key things we learned from Hirsch is that — surprise! — the web audience for their news is largely different from their print audience.
And the second is that, unlike most Canadian news websites, Miami.com seems to do it all without a dedicated staff producing content; the majority of their content comes from the paper and from stories filed throughout the day by staff in all sections of the print edition.
"Web content is just another edition of your paper, one geared to a different reader."
Read much, much more about what we learned from Rick over at the Tech Gang's own website. Since the Miami example is going to serve as something of a model for recommendations for the Spec.com that will be coming from the Tech Gang, dropping in now will spare you surprises later.
Bill D.
Comments