A User-First Framework for Sustaining Local News - Harvard ...

Chicago Tribune for 18 years. Dubai was much in the news after its debt problems
tumbled stock markets around the world. Among the Passport members with a clear
business interest on the call was David Riedel, who advises mutual funds on their
investments in 15 emerging countries around the world.
Riedel engaged Hundley in a conversation about whether Abu Dhabi might
supplant Dubai as the economic center of the Emirates—just the sort of insider‐ish info
that he could later pass along to his clients.
“I’m surprised so few people participate,” Riedel told me in a follow‐up phone chat
about the correspondent conversations. “Any little tidbit that helps me have that
conversation with fund managers can be valuable. GlobalPost is an undiscovered jewel
in terms of the insights that can help me help my clients.”
Riedel’s experience with Passport illustrates how a freely accessed consumer site can
carve out a paid, premium service for users who have clear, work‐related needs. For
customers like Riedel, even the original Passport fee of $199 a year seems like a bargain.
Less so, even at $50, for more casual members like me.
Perhaps part of the answer is creating two levels of membership—professional and
personal. But how to create a premium personal service compelling enough to sustain
fees of $50 or even $25 a year? The key may lie in people’s attachment to place, a concept
with as much to offer local news sites as operations like GlobalPost. What killer app, for
example, might GlobalPost’s man in Dubai develop to make the service essential for
expat families living in the United Arab Emirates? What might PG+ create for displaced
Pittsburghers that would render a modest monthly fee a no‐brainer? Could GlobalPost
and the Post‐Gazette monetize social networking tools—as the Chicago News
Cooperative hopes to—and create interactive communities of interest around
geography, schools and topics?
Donations: Why Not Just Ask—and Receive?
Few organizations seek donations as effectively as NPR. But even there, a
breakdown of its revenues shows that user gifts is just one revenue source among
many: 72
31% from listeners via pledges, memberships and other donations
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