A Weekly Report On the Newspaper New-Media Biz ? July 24, 2001

By: Staff Reports Top Story: West Virginia sites enjoy good health
Trends & Bytes: Gannett generates $35 million in Internet revenue
e-people: Cox Interactive Media names director of communications
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TOP STORY
West Virginia sites enjoy good health
Tucked away in West Virginia are three newspaper Web sites that have been making money.

Charleston Newspapers, which operates wvgazette.com, dailymail.com, and sundaygazettemail.com, claims online profitability for the past 18 months. On Friday, they launched a special online section, WVHealthBeat.com, which they expect to turn a profit in three months.

John Tolarchyk, Internet coordinator at the Charleston Newspapers, humbly attributes his site's profitability to West Virginia being two years behind the national curve, meaning the economic downturn hasn't hit yet. Whatever the reason may be, profitability of any kind online is worth taking a look at.

WVHealthBeat.com is a health and medical Web site based on a partnership with InteliHealth, the Aetna USHealthcare subsidiary based in Blue Bell, Pa. The site includes searches for drugs, diseases, and medical terms; health and medical stories from wire services; InteliHealth content; and editorial from the two dailies and one Sunday paper.

Tolarchyk said the decision to first launch a health and medical section before golf and law was based on research showing that more than 50% of surfers regularly visit health sites for advice and information.

To get repeat visitors, Tolarchyk is talking to a group of medical specialists to provide key timely articles when a specific event happens. For example, an explanation of how Dick Cheney's new pacemaker works might have run after the Vice President's recent medical problems.

Other content will come from InteliHealth, all of which has been reviewed by Harvard Medical School prior to publishing. InteliHealth has been around for a while and has a couple of hundred newspaper clients, but WVHealthBeat.com is their first one driven by an XML database, enabling more frequent content updates. Charleston Newspapers decided to co-brand with InteliHealth, driving traffic back to the vendor's site, instead of paying for licensed content.

WVHealthBeat.com got Saint Francis Hospital to sponsor the site for the upcoming year. Five doctors are also lined up to advertise on the site. Plans for other revenue sources include an advertorial section where advertisers can submit informational articles with their name, affiliation, and author's e-mail address. These advertisers won't be selling their products directly through the site however.

To get WVHealthBeat.com running, it took two weeks cumulative spread out over three to four months, according to Tolarchyk. He said the main problem was getting InteliHealth's XML database to work with the newspaper's local database. Now that the site has been built, it should require little labor -- mainly the uploading of local editorial to the site.

Luckily, Tolarchyk has been able to expand his Web staff since his division became profitable. "In the last two years, we have grown from a one-person shop -- part of the marketing department -- to a five-person department," he said. "That doesn't sound like much, but we're talking about a relatively small, 100,000 Sunday circulation newspaper in a very small state."

The traffic numbers are pretty good too. The three sites combined had 4.3 million page views in June from more than 800,000 unique visitors, Tolarchyk said.

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TRENDS & BYTES
Gannett generates $35 million in Internet revenue
Gannett Co. Inc., the nation's largest newspaper publisher based in Arlington, Va., reported recently that it generated $35 million in revenues from Internet activities during the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, Media General of Richmond, Va., reported second quarter revenues of $2.3 million in its interactive media division. That division posted an operating loss of $4.1 million for the quarter, including a $2.3 million write-off of the company's investment in KOZ.com, which declared bankruptcy. Media General also said it lost in the second quarter $565,000 from an investment in iPipe and $300,000 from AdOne.

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ONA wants your views on credibility
The Online News Association (ONA) is asking journalists to help with its Digital Journalism Credibility Study. Journalists of all stripes -- print, broadcast, new-media, etc. -- are asked to complete a survey on perceptions about new media and journalism.

The ONA says the confidential online survey takes about 10 minutes. Working journalists are invited to participate by visiting http://206.31.10.114/surveys/login/46379.

Results of the survey will be discussed at ONA's annual conference Oct. 26-27 in Berkeley, Calif. For more information on the ONA, visit http://www.journalists.org. The project is funded by the Robert S. and John L. Knight Foundation.

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MSBNC promotes newspaper affiliates
MSNBC.com is promoting its affiliate network that includes local TV stations and 40 newspapers. The joint venture between NBC and Microsoft issued a press release this week touting the expansion of this network. The company says it now provides local news content for 88% of U.S. households. And its affiliate network receives 3.4 million unique users monthly, according to internal measurements.

For more on the five-year history of MSNBC.com and the Web site's relationship with newspapers, please see http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071901n6.htm.

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Online ad tactics move to print
Here's a story we find disturbing. It seems that some questionable online advertising strategies are migrating into print. Editor & Publisher magazine reports this week that a number of newspapers recently published ads featuring that ubiquitous "Jurassic Park III" dinosaur and logo -- not within the usual ad box but superimposed over editorial copy (usually weather info, stock charts, or movie listings). The papers included the Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, and others searching for new ad revenue. The ad is the print version of the "wallpaper" ads that have appeared on some Web sites. An example, would be the Budweiser ads that ran on MarketWatch.com, with the beer maker's logo shadowed in the background of some sections of the site.

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IdealHire releases new version
IdealHire Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., released IdealHire 2.0, which offers simplified services. Employment advertisers can start with simple online classifieds or add sophisticated job matching and ranking capabilities, the company said. The software also now allows newspapers to scrape job descriptions from employers' corporate Web sites.

IdealHire reports that the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press recently upgraded to the latest version. Scott Rosenburgh, classified advertising manager at the newspaper, said the matching and ranking technology gives IdealHire an advantage over other online recruiting solutions.

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iNEXTV shuts down
A few weeks ago, we reported that the New York Post had signed a deal with iNEXTV that would have provided streaming video entertainment content from The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard to the Post's Web site. But New York-based iNEXTV Corp. shut down Friday, laying off all 65 employees.

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Revenue ideas from Connections
We weren't able to attend the Newspaper Association of America's Connections conference this year, but we did hear about some revenue-generating ideas that were talked about at the meeting in Washington. For example, SFGate.com started selling "top jobs" placements for selected recruitment classifieds that run adjacent to editorial copy. The site expects to make $1 million through the program next year. At orlandosentinel.com, the online sales reps formed a mentorship program for print sales reps. The site reports increased sales as a result.

These examples and more came from a presentation by Peter M. Zollman. To download a Word file of the presentation, visit http://www.group-aim.com/reports/greatideas.html. Some registration information is required.

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e-PEOPLE

Cox Interactive Media, Atlanta, promotes Marleen Burford to director of communications. She joined the group in 1996 as manager of marketing services.

Also at Cox Interactive, Elizabeth Hill-Lloyd is promoted to director of product planning and analysis. She joined the group in 1998 as marketing manager for ActiveDayton.com in Ohio.

Phillip Crawley, publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail of Toronto, joins the board of Megawheels Inc., a provider of technology for online auto sections based in Calgary, Alberta.

Marc Teren, who left his job as president and CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive in January 2000 to take the same titles at trade publisher Cahners Publishing has left that company. The New York Post reported last week that Cahners' parent company Reed Elsevier decided Teren's extensive interactive moves weren't working.

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Hot stories from E&P Online this week:
NEWSPAPER READERS SUGGEST WATERFRONT USES (07/24/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072401n2.htm

NEW TECHNOLOGY LETS USERS CHOOSE ADVERTISING (07/24/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072401n4.htm

WASHINGTONPOST.com EXEC SEES SUNSHINE (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n1.htm

NAA LAUNCHES WIRELESS GATEWAY (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n2.htm

FREE-LANCERS PROTEST AT 'NY TIMES' (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n3.htm

NAA HONORS SITES WITH 'EDGIE' AWARDS (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n4.htm

'USA TODAY' OFFERED ON HOTEL TELEVISIONS (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n5.htm

NAA NEW MEDIA FELLOWS NAMED (07/20/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/072001n7.htm

MSNBC.com WEATHERS BAD ECONOMY (07/19/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071901n6.htm

REPORTS: INTERNET BUILDS BRANDING (07/19/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071901n5.htm

NEW AD UNITS LIFT BRAND AWARENESS (07/19/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071901n2.htm

POP-UPS, POP-UNDERS GET BIG WEB TRAFFIC (07/19/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071901n3.htm

ABC APPROVES ELECTRONIC SALES OF NEWSPAPERS (07/17/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071701n3.htm

BREATHING LIFE INTO NEWSPAPER MORGUES (07/17/01)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/071701n2.htm

Our online columnists:
STEVE OUTING'S STOP THE PRESSES:

A Whack On the Head For Online Media (07/11/01) http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stop/st071101.htm

B.G. YOVOVICH'S WEB TREND WATCH:

Streaming Ads Set To Explode (06/28/01) http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/webnews/webtrend.htm

CHARLES BOWEN'S DIGITAL HOW-TO:

Searching the Search Engines (07/24/01) http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/webnews/digital.htm

DAVE ASTOR'S SYNDICATE WORLD:

Uclick Relinks With AMU (07/23/01) http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ephome/news/newshtm/webnews/syndicate.htm



Written and edited by Carl Sullivan and Karim Mostafa
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