"If you don't have a budget, get yourself a point-of-view."
Tina Brown shared this credo as a major learning from her early, publishing career. This was my "eureka moment" while listening to her keynote address.
Her insight applies to any highly, competitive arena whether it's online publishing, running a small business, or writing an amateur blog (like this one). Simply stated, your individual POV defines and differentiates your competitive advantage.
The Daily Beast Defines Its Point-of-View Around "Where News and Culture Collide"
According to Brown the online news available before The Daily Beast comprised two segments (1) "eat-your-peas" news aggregation or (2) the extremes of tabloid-related entertainment news.
The Daily Beast Team does aggregate news but further defined an organizational goal to create original, editorial content with "clarity, sophistication, and seduction." Brown wanted to create an online forum that:
* Showed "this is the place to be" and "we aren't a tacky organization"
* Produced differentiating content that was "clear, time-saving, but still provided glamor and seduction"
* Displayed the raw and visceral power of the World Wide Web
To Brown, the web is not just a sophisticated medium. It's a visceral medium that provides all members the opportunity to participate in being entertained, provoked, and seduced. These unique properties of online communication are what The Daily Beast looks to opportunistically exploit.
Emotion Further Differentiates a Point-of-View
Brown repeatedly emphasized the importance of finding and touching the human side of a story. You want to personally and emotionally reach people.
One of the best examples she cited was The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet article titled Hillary's Rough Patch. The article touched upon how Hillary Clinton still battles the long shadow cast by her former, president husband. Brown noted that the "I am not channeling my husband" statement from Mrs. Clinton represented how many influential, professional women want to distinguish themselves individually.
It was a major news moment where the conversations of culture and news converged. More importantly, it provided The Daily Beast a timely opportunity to provoke their audience in an engaging conversation. This Daily Cheat sheet article generated 24 reader comments. After reading them, I think that The Daily Beast successfully accomplished its mission in provocation and engagement.
Generating the News Drives Audience Engagement. Aggregating It -- Not So Much.
Brown made a strategic choice to employ a hybrid news strategy: News Aggregation Coupled with Original Editorial Content. In her opinion, authentic audience engagement cannot occur if "you're just picking up other people's news stories." That's why she genuinely believes in "generating the news."
It's hard to argue with this observation. After all, personal blogs and their reader-associated comments are the ultimate example of individual, POV and online conversation (or in my case, just hearing the sound of my own voice - I'm kidding). When you write a blog post, you participate in the overall conversation and express your view. Millions of us read blogs for the personal enjoyment of agreeing or disagreeing with another person's POV.
Isn't that the point of any enjoyable conversation whether or not that dialog takes place in-person or online ...
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