In April Dashboard was tasked with putting together YACMS (Yet Another Content Management System), which we are very skilled at and have collectively done more times than I care to count, but this one was special. It was for Eye Weekly, a publication I had personally enjoyed for the last twenty years. Eye Weekly was going through a rebrand and alongside a killer team I had the pleasure of working on the launch of their new site, theGridTO.com.
As part of the initial planning team I had the privilege of being able to throw ideas into the mix of what the new site might be. The research I did confirmed my suspicions and also reiterated what some articles I had read over the years were saying. With the immediacy of news being published and available for free on the Internet newspapers have struggled with finding a business model that will allow them to flourish in this ecosystem. Also known as The Krugman Paradox, newspapers have yet to discover an online revenue model as profitable as their print publications. With circulation and ad revenue on the decline for the last fifteen years, more and more young people moving online to find their news, and a massive flood of niche sites, newspaper publications will have to find their place before print becomes irrelevant.
To survive, newspapers have to focus on customer centricity and deliver content that is both relevant to the readers special interests and location. Both these attributes are certainly needed, but to attract consumers and advertisers, and truly succeed, newspapers have to do what they do best. Generate superior quality content! As William Henry “Bill” Gates III said in an essay of the same title back in 1996, Content is King*, and this is what the main focus should be. So far, I believe The Grid TO delivers on all these points, but this is only the beginning…
* there is still an ongoing debate around this topic but let’s exclude the e-comm stuff with the big shiny product shots and honking “BUY NOW” buttons because it is not relevant to The Grid.
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