The Batavian experiment
Last week we linked to The Batavian, a new web-only enterprise from Gatehouse Media. Rotten has a fairly extensive discussion of what this means:
The Batavian has a number of differences from traditional newspaper Internet properties. First, it has no printed counterpart. Batavia has a daily newspaper, the Daily News, which has no real website. The Batavian leaves the more lucrative print market to the Daily News, but it also avoids the expensive investment of a printing plant.
More importantly, The Batavian lets any registered reader contribute posts, and it treats all registered readers as equals. One full-time reporter, and a couple of other Gatehouse employees who contribute occasionally, make sure The Batavian has new posts every day. The rest of The Batavian’s content comes from residents.
Even the pros at The Batavian approach their stories differently from traditional print journalists. For example, one of the most commented stories concerned Jack Davis’ fake Jon Powers website. The story was reported by Philip Anselmo, The Batavian’s lone full-time reporter. Philip’s story links liberally to local blogs that first broke the story…
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The Batavian makes little effort to cover news from outside the area. It includes a number of feeds from area news sources, which means its staff doesn’t have to duplicate the effort of others. Traditional newspapers, which have to fill a certain number of pages every day, run the same wire stories as every other newspaper in the state. The Batavian’s list of links avoids that cost entirely.
It’s an accepted fact that the newspaper industry is headed for major changes over the next few years. It will be interesting to see if something like The Batavian represents the future the industry’s future.
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