Silver leaves Consortium to launch Knight lab
Mike Silver, a newspaper innovator for more than 20 years who once advised Tribune Co. to invest in a small start-up called Quantum Computer Services and most recently led the Newspaper Consortium, will head the new Knight News Innovation Laboratory at Northwestern University.
His appointment was announced today.
Silver held “lots of different vice-presidencies” at Tribune Co. and has an MBA from Stanford and an MS in journalism from Columbia University. He started his career as a reporter at the Miami Herald, and spent almost four years as a reporter at The Orlando Sentinel before moving into television at a Miami public television station. He was with Tribune from 1985 through 2007 and joined the Newspaper Consortium in August of 2008.
“The Knight Lab presents a unique opportunity to foster innovation through technologies with appeal to traditional news providers as well as the many new voices that are shaping the way we keep up with news today,” Silver said in the news release.
The lab, described as “the first of its kind” by Northwestern, will bring together journalists and computer scientists “to improve the news and information people use to understand their communities and run their lives.” Rich Gordon, who like Silver also worked at the Miami Herald, is a professor and director of digital innovation at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and has long been trying to get journalists and computer scientists to work together.
“Mike’s depth of experience in digital technologies, publishing, news and media is exactly what we need to move the Knight Lab forward,“ said Kristian J. Hammond, director of the Medill-McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. “With him at the helm we are set to transform a set of exciting possibilities into a brilliant reality.”
Oh, about that small start-up, Quantum? It later became AOL, and Tribune’s investment of $5 million for a 9 percent stake was worth more than $1.5 billion at one point.
Newspaper consortium? Doing well, execs say
Print plunge improving consortium’s fortunes?
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (at the BIA Kelsey Interactive Local Media conference): In a fairly candid but clearly promotional conversation, Mike Silver, the new executive director of the Newspaper Consortium (and its only employee), and Lem Lloyd, VP of Yahoo for the consortium, said the 800 daily and weekly papers participating in the group are making significant sales — and they’ve just scratched the surface of the opportunity.
(If you read our CIR overview two weeks ago, you’d know that already; if not, shame on you! Quit freeloading and become a client already!)
Silver started with the consortium just three months ago (after 22 years with Tribune and a well-deserved rest). For now, he said, the consortium is focusing on roll-outs of the Yahoo advertising platform, and growth in general. “My attitude is, Yahoo first. This is a big, whopping opportunity for newspapers,” he answered in response to a question from BIA Kelsey Group analyst Peter Krasilovsky. “There’s no lack of things for us to do right now with this relationship we have. While we’re focusing on Yahoo, we are looking for other opportunities. Yahoo can’t do everything. They don’t want to do everything. … Now that we have this new type of geotargeting or behavioral targeting, there are other things we can do.”
Plummeting print revenues are actually helping convince newspapers to sell Yahoo’s services, Silver said. “Because of some of the difficulties in print right now, I can’t think of a time when publishers were more receptive to making changes in what they do. Online is not just an add-on any more; in fact, it’s the future.”
Lloyd said a smallish newspaper in the United States had a one-week sales blitz on Yahoo products recently and generated $500,000 in revenue, mostly in contracts of $30,000 to $50,000. He said that while Yahoo can sell advertising nationally, newspapers can sell on a “tier two” and “tier three” level, giving as examples regional auto dealer networks (tier two) and individual auto dealers (tier three).
“There’s a great percentage of local intent” in the billions of searches and among the 150 million unique users globally a month on Yahoo, Lloyd said. “The trouble that Yahoo has had is that we don’t always monetize those pages, those views of local intent, in a meaningful way.” He said the consortium allowed Yahoo to capitalize on the 15,000 sales reps at its 800 participating newspapers to sell Yahoo and related inventory.
- Move, Inc. Announces Fourth Quarter 2011 Financial Results
- MOVE, INC. APPOINTS CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
- New Research Helps Consumers Identify Women-Friendly Dealerships
- MMA Makes It Easier to Buy and Sell Mobile Ads
- Apartments.com Offers Tips for Living Together this Valentine’s Day
- Telstra delivers revenue, profit and customer growth; guidance confirmed
- Groupon Announces Fourth Quarter 2011 Results
- Mobile Drives Christmas Sales
- McClatchy Reports Earnings Growth
- [Adicio] Jobs Where You Might Meet a Mate
