Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine interviews Mark Whitaker of Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive
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Jeff Jarvis: I’m Jeff Jarvis, blogger at BuzzMachine.com, here for Beat TV and I’m with Mark Whitaker who’s the new head of Ventures Digital Future, the Fate of Journalism at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive. So how are you enjoying the new gig?
Mark Whitaker: It’s great. It’s been a lot of fun.
Jeff Jarvis: Are you in your new role mainly going to start or buy innovation?
Mark Whitaker: We’re looking at both. We think we can generate some things internally with our existing talent by partnering on the content side with other people. But, you know, a lot of people coming to us with acquisition possibilities and we’re looking at all of it.
Jeff Jarvis: We have a problem in this industry, in the newspaper and news industry of a lack of innovation, I’d say. That’s why Martin Nisenholtz started a lab at the New York Times Company. I think it’s a woeful picture. Can we innovate in the news business? Is it possible? If you’re gonna score our innovation as an industry, at 100 percent would be a proper amount, where are we now as an industry?
Mark Whitaker: Well, I think – I think you have to make a couple of bets and I think one of the interesting things about what the Post is doing in asking me to do this job is, in a way, it’s a kind of counter-hedge against the old media strategy of just investing in your existing properties, looking at new properties, new opportunities, new ways of doing things. As you know, the Washington Post bought Slate a couple of years ago. We’ve learned a lot from them and their experience as being an all online publication. We just hired Rob Curley who is probably, you know, the most interesting web developer in the world of local –
Jeff Jarvis: And Adrian Holovaty too.
Mark Whitaker: And Adrian Holovaty who is probably, you know, the master right now at interactive relational databases and so forth. So we have – we’re bringing a lot of people in-house who, I think, have some interesting ideas. And then, of course, the cross-pollination and synergy between us batting around ideas is also very exciting.
Jeff Jarvis:
Mark Whitaker: Well, one of the things, which I know that you
talk about very publicly, is I think there’s a real opportunity in what we call
hyper-local content. And we’re obviously
focused on being the best at that in the
Jeff Jarvis: A lot of folks have tried local and have failed at various – I’ve made experiments that didn’t work when I was at Advance, back fence – over your back fences is going through some changes right now. There have been some others. What do you think the secret sauce is, if you’re willing to say, to what’s gonna make hyper-local start to click?
Mark Whitaker: Well, I think Curley, you know, has been very successfully at it and he’s teaching us a lot of lessons. I think a big part of it is consumer generated content and allowing that in and allowing that in an interesting way, that that doesn’t get totally out of control, but makes, you know, the users and the community feel like they have a stake. I think mobile actually is a big part of it. And increasingly will be so as people get, you know, their information and their alerts and so forth, you know, through their cell phones and text messaging and so forth. You know, I think they’re are passion points locally around sports, around entertainment, around local politics. I think, you know, those are the things you need to focus on.
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