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From...
Newspapers fight back in city guide battle
July 3, 1998
Web posted at: 11:30 AM EDT
by Alex Lash
(IDG) -- Late last year, the Columbia Review of Journalism put fear into ink-stained hearts with its cover question: "Will Gates Crush Newspapers?" Six months later, one could ask, "Will newspapers rip up Gates' Sidewalk?"
Microsoft launched its first Sidewalk site in Seattle just over a year ago, but the specter of a Microsoft Web juggernaut Ð Sidewalk plus other consumer services such as CarPoint and Expedia Ð hasn't materialized. And newspapers, led by The New York Times, which unveiled its New York Today site two weeks ago, are fighting back.
In most big cities, a wide variety of online services now offer a combination of headlines, shopping and entertainment listings, neighborhood information and community services. Along with Sidewalk, start-up CitySearch, America Online, Yahoo, Excite, local TV stations and newspapers have all gotten into the game. And while analysts are bullish on local online advertising, none of this has yet made a meaningful dent in the $17 billion classified advertising franchise long controlled by major daily newspapers.
Even though many papers moved early to defend themselves, the first phase of print publishers' online efforts resulted in shovelware sites that failed to exploit interactivity, personalization and fast searching. The second phase, just now getting under way, features sites that augment papers' cultural authority with superior technology. New York Today, for example, lets users transfer events and listings to their desktop calendars and PalmPilots.
The technology is in part the product of a partnership with Zip2, which along with CitySearch, has tried to position itself as the newspapers' best friend.
While the newspapers get their online act
together, Microsoft has had some serious
fits and starts in creating strong local
voices for its nine Sidewalk sites, which
have rolled out over the course of 15
months. The company has trimmed the
length of Sidewalk's reviews and articles,
and focused more on quick hits and
services, such as purchasing tickets. "We
learned pretty quickly that long stuff
doesn't make it on the Web," says Janice
Brand, former restaurant editor of Boston
Sidewalk. "We had to rethink content
entirely."
The much-publicized wave of layoffs across Sidewalk's sites in January wasn't related to the editorial overhaul, according to Cella Irvine, general manager of New York Sidewalk; she said that an average of three to five employees were let go from ad sales and technology. (Boston Sidewalk laid off seven, including Brand and other edit staffers.) With the new short format, Sidewalk relies on story tone and packaging to impart local flavor to its sites.
Straddling the fence between Sidewalk and the newspaper guides is Yahoo. The megaportal has a string of metro guides, but doesn't do original content. "What do we know about the restaurants in New York?" Yahoo director of production John Briggs asks rhetorically. Much like its main site, Yahoo's metro sites drive users several layers deep to get to links or cobranded content.
Alternative papers like the Village Voice are also providing their own listings. However, alternatives depend exclusively on classified, personal and display ads for their revenue, so they face a dilemma over online publishing. They can't invest the same resources as the major dailies in online infrastructure, but they do need to extend their bread-and-butter advertising to the Web. One answer is to put print classified ads online and boost rates, as the dailies have done. Another answer is to license listings, as the Voice has done with YahooNY and New York Sidewalk.
The whole local-content scramble is based on the assumption that local advertisers can't wait to get on the Web. NY Sidewalk's Irvine says her site sold out before it launched and recently attracted as much advertising in one month as it did all of last year. (The Sidewalk chain has 5,000 advertisers overall, but Irvine declined to say how many of those are local.)
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It's true that the Web attracts educated professionals with the money to spend on food and entertainment. However, selling interactive media locally requires a lot of legwork, and means going door-to-door to explain the concept of impressions, click-throughs and microsites, says Sharon Katz, media director of interactive ad agency ModemMedia.PoppeTyson. But just as national advertisers are starting to get it, most people agree that it's only a matter of time before local advertisers will, too. Katz and others, including Microsoft's competitors, praise Redmond for raising awareness of the value of local online advertising.
The fear inspired by Microsoft's entry into the market for local content is that the company will somehow be able to tie its services into the Windows operating system. The company denies any such plans, but its services Ð including your personalized choice of a Sidewalk city - will be featured defaults on its upcoming Start portal. In turn, Start will be the default page when a user opens up Windows, unless people change the setting.
But much of the hand-wringing over Microsoft's city strategy may be special pleading from competitors Ð such as Bob Ingle, president of Knight-Ridder New Media - who are exploiting a grassroots anti-Microsoft sentiment among Net users. Ingle's group has just launched the Just Go local entertainment guide sites, affiliated with local newspapers in 11 areas including northeast Ohio, the San Francisco Bay Area and Charlotte, N.C.
For its part, Microsoft is hoping that the traditional brand strength of a paper like The New York Times won't be that useful online. When asked if the Times and Knight-Ridder sites threaten her site because of their proven brands, Sidewalk's Irvine says: "Brands don't translate from one medium to another. The problem here isn't 'Help me learn about culture,' it's, 'Help me figure out what to do today.'"
While the giants of technology and media struggle for supremacy, entrepreneurs like Mike Richards, co-founder of SF Station, are ready should well-funded players become too bland and mainstream. Run mostly as a labor of love with a lot of volunteers, the 18-month-old San Francisco guide gets 50,000 hits a day and has a following among the city's club and art scene. For Richards, SF Station may be in a unique position to attract a hip online audience. "San Francisco is kind of anticorporate, and having an alternative twist is an advantage," Richards says.
And for Richards, it remains to be seen whether the feeding frenzy around city guides will actually lead to a viable market - no matter how much money Microsoft spends to prime the pump. "Sidewalk has helped stimulate interest in city guides," he says. "But just because they're here doesn't mean anyone else can survive."
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