Here’s another success through our partnership with BGV Media, focussed on helping educational and not-for-profit institutions:

In early 2009, we learned that the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media was looking for help in devising a digital media strategy. The Institute is, in its own words, “the preeminent source of training for reporters and editors on the education beat.” It’s no secret, though, that the number of journalists covering education has shrunk as news organizations have cut back on staff. At the same time, the hunger for journalism about education coverage remains, especially with new initiatives from the Obama administration and budget cuts throughout the country.

Hechinger’s leaders knew that one of the best ways to continue to fulfill its mission “to inform the public about education through quality journalism” was to produce and distribute journalism through other outlets and on their own through digital platforms.

That’s where we came in. Hechinger put out a call, asking for experts who knew digital media from both the business and editorial sides, and could help them devise a strategy. They turned to us for guidance. And over the course of the year, we helped Hechinger craft editorial, business and technology models for digital media based on production of high-quality journalism, funded first by grants, then largely offset by additional revenue streams.

We produced a narrative, as well as financial spreadsheets and presentational materials. We also joined a face-to-face meeting with foundation funders to help Hechinger make its case. In addition, we helped develop an operational plan, workflows and technology choices for an interim site covering a smaller education niche.

Ultimately, Hechinger landed $1 million in grants from the Lumina and Gates foundations. We were thrilled to see Hechinger get the funding, and to be part of the process. We are looking forward to seeing an ambitious new website launch next Spring. The Hechinger Report, as it is being called, will provide in-depth coverage of national education issues on its own and in collaboration with major news organizations.

We know it will all solidify Hechinger’s position as the leader in its field, raise the Institute’s profile and serve as an example for others wishing to emulate the model for producing quality journalism in a time of severe media business disruption.

Through our partnership with BGV Media, focussed on helping educational and not-for-profit institutions, we are proud to provide this example of a success:

When folks at the oldest journalism school in the country needed to know more about the world of Web publishing, they called us.

In October, 2008, the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute brought us to Columbia, Mo., for an intensive day-long seminar on the topic of content management systems, or CMS. They had learned of our expertise through our white paper on the topic (available in the right sidebar on our homepage).

Principals Dorian Benkoil and Adam Glenn, along with Amy Webb, our CMS expert and lead author of our CMS white paper, briefed some 30 journalism faculty, staff, fellows and students, as well as representatives from the Missouri Press Association and National Newspaper Association.

Among the topics we guided the group on were the current state of the CMS industry, media trends affecting CMS choices, and how individual organizations can find a direction and make initial decisions on their choice of CMS. We also helped them delve into workflows and business issues in a digital media environment.

Meeting organizer Jane Stevens described how we jumped in to help with this informative overview of the gathering. “If you’re trying to figure out what CMS to choose for your news organization, and you’re confused by the plethora of choices, [their paper] is worth every penny,” she writes. “Even better than reading the white paper is to talk with them in person.”

RJI and Stevens later brought Adam and Dorian on board to help with a related project called the RJI Collaboratory, a social network of entrepreneurial journalists looking to find support and advice for starting up niche news projects. Adam helped launch the Collaboratory in early 2009 and continues to jointly manage it, while Dorian shared his insights on the business of news in a series of detailed blog posts and other resources in the summer of 2009.

On Naked Media: Dorian’s Shallow Thoughts on Nick Denton’s “evil genius” in launching the “Dark Facebook” and moderating the opening panel at the Economist’s Media Convergence conference with guests Craig Newmark of Craiglis; Mark Hollinger, Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications; Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment and Robin Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, FT Search Inc. Newssift.com (a new semantic search engine for business from the Financial Times company).

The next Naked Media will be a great one, covering a biiiiig topic to kick off the Economist’s Media Convergence Conference. Dorian will moderate a panel featuring the founder of Craigslist, and top executives of Sony Music, Discovery Communications, and a new Financial Times search engine called Newssift.

The topic? “The Future of Media.” The hour will be packed with as much information as we can get, and Dorian will guide the discussion to make it useful and lively. You can help, by submitting questions. Log onto the Naked Media page now to ask and to get an alert before the show goes live. If you’d like to attend the conference in person, log onto the Website, and when ordering tickets use the special Naked Media code NKMD for $500 off the regular rate (does not apply to the student rate of $495).

In addition to Craig Newmark, the guests are Mark Hollinger, Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications; Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment and Robin Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, FT Search Inc. Newssift.com (a new semantic search engine for business from the Financial Times company).

Dorian was invited to be on a panel for the architecture group AIA last night, and found that not only is the Haworth Showroom a very nice venue, but also that architects, like many, are grappling with how to use social media, what one can do to raise one’s image, get new clients, follow the “rules” and otherwise figure out how to works.

Some of the main points raised by Dorian were that it’s important to experiment, cultivate and get better over time (”iterate” is one way of putting it). One audience member asked how to use social media like Twitter, which is quick and short bursts persistently, in the course of managing long-term architectural projects. “In the course of managing the project, don’t you find yourself considering a lot of things, checking in often as you make decisions?” Dorian replied, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could, for example, Tweet that you were considering a certain wood for a certain type of situation, say a damp environment, and get feedback from others in the community about woods they’d used that were particularly effective for your situation? Or cement. Or doorknobs.” He made the point that you will not only gain interested followers who want to learn about your projects, and potentially pick up new clients that way, but also get “inbound marketing” intelligence that may be useful to your business.

You can see more coverage by looking on Twitter at the hashtag #aianysocialmedia.

We’ll be around Ad Week in New York this week, helping our partners Scribe Media with a new channel similar to this one on YouTube by Google and the London School of Economics, helping a client involved in outdoor advertising, working on Naked Media, looking for information useful for Dorian’s digital marketing course for MBA students at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, and generally poking around, scaring up contacts — the usual.

Come say “hi.”

Was watching the FOCAS seminar on media at the Aspen Institute when consultant and colleague Steve Outing presented some models for how to pay for news, and he quoted Dorian as saying: “There’s not a silver bullet — the industry is in severe disruption and folks need to change their models, almost building a new business from scratch, throwing out old assumptions.” Further bullet points we gave him, that he presented, of what content people will pay for:

* People will pay if it’s valuable and they can’t get it another way:
* Really intensive stats about their beloved sports team(s)
* A directory or information organized in a way that’s much better than free
* Really top-notch business analysis
* Training or information that will make them money, long- or short-term

Avner Ronen, CEO of fast-growing media aggregation and social networking startup Boxee, doesn’t shy from speaking his mind — even when it gets him in trouble with major TV networks. Betsy Morgan knows TV networks from the inside — she led CBS News digital — and how to bring a startup to the next level, as the CEO of Huffington Post.

We’ll ask Avner and Betsy your questions as well as things on our minds, such as: Can Boxee negotiate the TV network demands and ongoing disputes with Hulu? What’s up with their recently-announced redesign and new features? Can Comcast’s attempts to challenge Hulu possibly succeed? Why did Betsy leave (was she really booted?) the HuffPost and what’s next for her? Whither HuffPost now that a venture capital executive is in charge? And money money money: who’s making it, how to make it, and much much more.

Plus as, always, the innovative ideas and “aha” moments you can use, fun with Dorian’s “Shallow Thoughts,” and other recent coverage.

Register now to ask questions and get in on the discussion right away. You will also receive a reminder email to tune in for the live show the day before.

We spend a lot of time thinking about business models, the best way to get audience, revenue, build the right system that will increase advertising, revenue shares, transaction fees, registrations and on and on.

We (sad to say) don’t ask enough “what’s right for the user,” the audience, the reader the media consumer. Today, after Naked Media, Complex Media CEO Rich Antoniello expressed his belief that open, open-source, HTML, cross-platform, sharing, was the way it would go, that media had to go. I (Dorian) agreed and immediately thought that was best for the consumer — and that by orienting ourselves that way we might be oriented in the right strategic direction, as well.

Here are the start. Tell us your thoughts, too. The Media Consumer’s Bill of Rights.

Here’s the script for today’s Shallow Thoughts, airing on Naked Media at noon ET, then later on demand.
Our guests are designer Roger Black and Complex Media CEO Rich Antoniello. More details are here, where you can sign in to watch and ask questions.

And here, from Peter Kafka is a more serious take on what Comcast is doing and the possible implications for TV networks and consumers.

The script:

OK, SO NEXT MONTH COMCAST IS GOING TO START A NEW SERVICE TO LET THEIR PAYING CUSTOMERS GET CABLE TV PROGRAMMING ONLINE.
It’S PART OF WHAT THEY’RE CALLING “COMCAST ON DEMAND ONLNE” OR, SOMETIMES, “TV EVERYWHERE”
OTHERS ARE CALLING IT THE “ANTI-HULU.”

BUT WAIT, DIDN’T COMCAST LAUNCH A SITE CALLED “FANCAST” THAT HAD A LOT OF FREE PROGRAMMING FROM HULU, ALREADY?
AND CAN’T I ALREADY GET A LOT OF CABLE PROGRAMMING ON HULU FOR FREE?

AND DON’T THE TV NETWORKS THAT PROVIDE HULU’S PROGRAMMING ALSO PROVIDE A LOT OF PROGRAMMING ON COMCAST?
AND DIDN’T THEY SAY THAT TIME WARNER IS IN AN ALLIANCE WITH COMCAST TO TEST THIS NEW SERVICE?

AND DIDN’T COMCAST SAY THEY’RE GOING TO USE FANCAST TO LAUNCH THE NEW SERVICE FOR 5,000 OF THEIR PAYING CUSTOMERS?

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: COMCAST AND TIME WARNER ARE GOING TO LAUNCH A SERVICE TO COMPETE WITH HULU USING THE PLATFORM COMCAST USES TO PLAY PROGRAMMING FOR FREE THEY GET FROM HULU.

GOT THAT?