Editor & Publisher :: Knight Ridder's Web Focus: Local, Local, Local
By Carl Sullivan
Interview with Hilary A. Schneider, president and CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based Knight Ridder Digital (KRD)
...As we move into 2004, what are the biggest challenges facing KRD?
HS: The challenge is to keep growing, both share and revenue in existing businesses -- and expand into new businesses -- in ways that are smart for Knight Ridder. We have aggressive plans for next year. On the classified front, we want to grow volume of recruiter listings and leverage our increased job seeker traffic from MSN and AOL. We also plan to continue to grow automotive listings share. And while we focused a lot of attention on our largest sites in 2003, next year we will bring that expertise to all of our sites to drive audience and revenue in our community markets. We successfully rolled out several site redesigns this year, and will continue those efforts in 2004.
In addition, we're exploring how social networking can power listings -- especially private party -- through our investment in Tribe.net. We think there's a tremendous opportunity here to build a business around the intersection of communities of interest, self-publishing, and person-to-person listings.
What news sources do you consult regularly -- online and offline? And what do you think of blogs -- hype or industry-changing?
HS: Living in the Bay Area, I read the San Jose Mercury News, and regularly jump onto the site to check out breaking news throughout the day. I also read The Wall Street Journal.
As for blogging. I think it's a fascinating development. We have two blogs on SiliconValley.com: Dan Gillmor's eJournal and Good Morning Silicon Valley. As newspaper companies, we have to ask ourselves: what does it mean to allow a reporter to publish under the media brand directly to the Web -- without any editing? This is different than traditional editorial workflow, which has multiple levels of editorial checks and balances. To provide transparency to users, blogs should be clearly labeled: what is edited by us, what is written by us but published in real-time, and what is self-published by other users. The business model to sustain this kind of publishing is still to be determined, but to reference Tribe.net, we think user-generated content, powered by social networking, has potential to drive traffic, revenue, and listings in our local markets...