Chicago got it’s very own version of the Huffington Post blog-news-internet-phenom site today August 13th, 2008. I am not a journalism major or a professional writer, but I still wanted to review what this new entry into the news fray in Chicago had going for and against it in the beginning. I have no doubt that the Huffington Post Chicago site will be successful and draw some online readers away from the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times and maybe even the Chicago Reader. But there is only so much time in the day, so how do people choose to stick to the Huffington Post sites when they don’t stick to newspaper sites? How are they profitable when so many newspapers are not? All good questions, and here is what I have been finding out.
First off, the Huffington Post sites have never been in print so the layout of the site doesn’t have to try and mimic or emulate the print news experience at all. They are not constrained to traditional sections, structure or layout options so they have invented the site in a way that makes sense for their content. First off the home page uses a lot of pictures to promote current linked articles. This lends itself to how people surf the web, scanning and skimming information to see where to click next. The images draw people in and are very important to the story. Even more so when they are more prominent than the headline. The pictures have to tell a story or elude to one. This is a more modern format than a lot of sites use today.
The second major advantage for Huff-Po is that the writers are not paid. This isn’t something I agree with (I am at least paid something minimal for the time I spend on this site) but I see how they use it to compete and win on the profitability front. The PR you get from contributing an article can be a benefit of blogging there but it is no way to make a living. In fact most of the stories listed on the front page are not written or hosted by the Huff Po site at all. They link to sites all over the web, which does not seem to be the way I experienced the original Huffington site. Therefore, I assume the setup, management, editing and tech costs are much lower for the Huffington post site than a major news site. They have less to host and when they do publish content, they are much smaller and only go after hot topics online and not everything that a newspaper reports. And there is no article re-formatting process from print to web or vice versa. Overall, my guess is that the model is to sell ads that pay for the editing, tech development and daily site maintenance and ad sales staff and ad setup. Only in a blog filled world though could a site make money on free content.
The third reason the have a profitability advantage is really just a bunch of foggy reasons. I don’t work with or know anyone who works with Huffington Post, I have only read some articles about them and observed the site myself. I think the usability of the site is designed to convert and SEO is strong to pull in people from search engines. I also think there is a strong link between their content business model for ”news” and one for ”publicity” like in the celebrity world. They know what is trendy and what is hot and that is all they write about or link to. They don’t use AP feeds or generic news content ever, it’s all articles from a very personal analysis perspective. (even though some is linked from other sites, basically working as a news aggregator for now) I would also guess that they use Google analytics well and probably know exactly what is hot and go those directions with new content. Other new media news sites like The Examiner and The Reader bookend the Huffington Post site by being too bland and too weird/obscure. Huff-Po is just right. It is part activist, part gossip site and part social networking phenom. Basically a yuppie-magnet.
Huffington Post has few negatives working against it at this point. The main disadvantage is that if people haven’t been hip to the emerging media space in California they have no idea what Huffington Post is. (Maybe the celeb articles will help there.) They also have no way of getting the word out to build traffic quickly without advertising, which seems like something they don’t do. (the social linking strategy helps, but that isn’t fast growth) They have tried to reduce the “lack of credibility” factor (when no one has heard of you) by linking to all the official news sources in Chicago at the bottom of the home page, which is a nice gift of SEO but not sure if it indicates links those are partners or just other sites you can go read. Plus it is hard to know what is important and hot in Chicago when you have one employee here and everyone else is in California. Making an assumption that the same superficial stuff that usually works in CA works here would be fatal.
I am sure the Huffington Post site will bring an interesting perspective to the Chicago News Scene online in the coming months and I will be curiously watching. If you want to see Huffington Post Chicago for yourself you cat at this address: huffingtonpost.com/Chicago/