Jeff Jarvis, CUNY. Hyper Local News and Revenue. Looking Back.

jeff jarvis CUNY hyper local news
Jeff Jarvis CUNY

Back in 2009, J-school professor; Jeff Jarvis, and Mark Potts of BackFence fame, asked me to contribute some online sales expertise to their ongoing research in hyper-local business models for news.

These meetings, held at CUNY (City University of New York) were chock full of academics, journalists, investment and editorial execs. As the lone Internet revenue guy in the room, I had a front row seat watching this non-sales savvy group tackle the challenge of online business models for news.

At this point, Patch was barely a blip on the radar, and entrepreneurial journalism still only a buzz-phrase.

AOL Patch Hyper Local News
My Visit to AOL PATCH in 2010

Interesting to look at some of the pics I took during those meetings. The white boards were full of notes and to-do lists.

Reviewing these images, I can’t help but wonder why some of these ideas were either dropped, fumbled, or lost in the chaos of building sustainable, online business models for news.

For sure, some concepts were adopted by the media companies that engaged me, or Jarvis and Potts; Patch, TBD, New York Times and Journal Register Company, to name a few.

Great ideas are a dime a dozen though. Without proper execution, they’re worthless.