Content is King
A 3-tiered proposal for developing unique content to boost print and online readership.
American Media Institute. First and fearless investigative reporting for mainstream media.
Challenge Original and exclusive content is the only sustainable way to win readers and woo advertisers for newspapers. Readers demand content that either entertains or informs them, stories that are unique or help them see their world in a new way. In a word, scoops. Yet current staff is overwhelmed by multiple assignments per day; they are so consumed meeting urgent daily deadlines that they do not have time to cultivate long-term sources for breakout stories. They lack the technology, the time, and the training to unearth big scoops. Still, you need a steady stream of these compelling stories to create the kind of reader enthusiasm and loyalty that translates into higher subscription renewal rates, new readers, bigger newsstand sales, and more online visits, longer stays, and more clicks. In short: How do you close the gap between business necessity and business reality? How do you secure the scoops you need to grow without the internal capacity to produce longterm investigations?
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Solution
You need an outsourced news service that has the technology, the time, and decades of mainstream journalistic experience to deliver big scoops. A news service, undistracted by daily journalism, which dredges the depths to deliver original and unique stories that make readers buy, click and comment. The American Media Institute (“AMI”) provides precisely these original and exclusive stories for newspapers, the kind of content that boosts print circulation and online traffic over time. Our stories are designed to “go viral” and draw in readers, to provide powerful fact-based revelations that inspire readers to buy the paper or click on the story. AMI is a proven scoop machine.
How we can work together
You asked us to develop a three-tiered proposal (“x, 2x and half-x”). After a lot of research and thinking, we would like to suggest three possible ways of working together. While it is not, in the strict mathematical sense, “x, 2x and half x,” it tailored to our capabilities and our understanding of your needs. Option one can be standalone or be combined with either option two or three. Three is an expansion of option two and fully inclusive of it. 1. Classic investigative journalism: AMI would supply five of our trademark “deep-dive” investigations over the next 12 months. These breaking news stories would yield front-page news-breaking scoops at a total cost of $620,000. For details and examples, please turn to section one. 2. Data journalism: AMI will assemble a technology team that will design and develop a unique software capability to aggregate large amounts of federal and state data, write unique algorithms to coax scoops from that data, and couple that with traditional reporting from our news room to create compelling and complete news stories that we will deliver to you. All you’ll have to do is “drag and drop” them into your papers, although, of course, you may edit them. We anticipate a 6-month leadtime (writing new software absorbs oceans of time) before delivering an average of one story per week--for a total of 52 stories. To build out this capability, AMI would require a donation of $1.45 million. We think that this represents the future of American journalism and believe that your larger competitors will move in this direction in the coming months. For details and examples, please turn to section two. 3. Data journalism Plus: Building on option two, we would deliver a total of 104 stories plus original infographics to drive reader engagement. The cost of $2.2 million reflects higher staffing, software, hardware, and data storage costs than option two. For more information, please turn to section three.
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What makes AMI different?
• Unique depth of research: We are an investigative news service that develops sources in federal and state governments (from senators to bureaucrats, ambassadors to patrolmen), files numerous Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests, combs through miles of government budget documents and court filings and sometimes hires private investigators and forensic accountants. Each story is the result of a tremendous investment of time, money and effort--research that would be impossible for rivals to replicate in real time to match the scoops delivered to you.
We employ, on a contract basis, veteran investigative reporters. They possess decades of experience that is hard to reproduce in a journeyman journalist. Their experience and network of sources is peerless and their prosecution of a story is fearless. • Unique editing and fact-checking: Our editors have decades of experience at The Wall Street Journal and the Reader’s Digest; they know how to craft a compelling story for a mass audience. This, too, is a skill that can only be honed over many miles of copy. They command the respect of top writers and set the highest standards. 3
Every story is independently fact-checked by our researchers and reviewed by a specialist attorney to weed out the possibility of libel, slander or other language that might invite legal action. This process produces a very high-quality product. • Unique exclusives: The stories that we develop for your papers are exclusive to you and unique in the world. No other publication will have this content and that means readers can only get it from you. We do not have an Associated Press-model that spams content to the planet; we supply unique content. • Unique promotion: AMI promotes the stories to television, radio and the web to drive more traffic to your papers and your web sites. No other news service uses p.r. firms to boost readership. And we promote our stories exceptionally well. Each AMI story to date, has on average, reached some 35 million people via radio, TV and web coverage. We believe that, over time, our stories and promotion efforts will lead to measurable and sizeable increases in newspaper sales, subscriptions, renewals and online traffic.
Unique Benefits of working with AMI
• Your property: At the moment our stories are delivered to you, the copyright will be transferred to you. They become your stories to exploit fully on all platforms for eternity. (We expect that these stories will have a substantial, if declining, life for more than just the day of publication). We came to you because we saw, through your pay walls and legal defenses of your intellectual property, that you believe in owning original content. This is what we are offering you. • Credit: The bylines of our reporter or reporters should appear in the paper (print and online) and the American Media Institute should also be credited in the byline. The credit can be identical to the way you credit wire stories. We will also link your story on our website in order to showcase our work to other potential donors. This has the added benefit of driving a trickle of traffic to your websites. • Verification: We will supply all research materials that your editors may require to verify facts and quotes. • Long-term solution: We offer a repeatable and sustainable solution for providing unique content that can be extended indefinitely.
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Option 1: Classic investigative journalism
We offer the kind of classic investigative journalism that readers long for and rarely receive—deep investigations into the workings of city, state and federal governments that have long escaped scrutiny from a compliant and lazy media. We ferret out abuses of the public trust and expose them in movie-like narratives.
Here are the stories that we would like to offer you exclusively. We have many others in the pipeline. 1. How Rep. Clyburn made $100 million disappear Suggested lede: Rep. Clyburn steered some $100 million to his alma mater, but veered off course when he demanded that the college make his wife a general contractor on a six-building complex named after himself, South Carolina investigators say. His wife, who has no previous building experience, placed other Clyburn relatives on the payroll and charged the historically black college millions in fees. Construction was never completed. 5
Summary: Rep. Clyburn is the House minority whip, the third highest-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. More than $100 million of federal and state tax dollars has gone missing, while Palmetto State investigators have demanded criminal charges. The U.S. Department of Education has pulled the college’s legal authority to receive federal dollars and the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched a wide-ranging investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to act on an official referral of criminal charges from the state government. Source: One key source is the vice chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Audit Commission, which uncovered the abuse but he says couldn’t get the press interested in covering a scandal involving the highest-ranking African-American in Congress.
2. Chavez’s Stolen Millions are Hidden in Florida Suggested lede: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was known for fiery anti-American rhetoric, but he hid hundreds of millions of dollars in Florida before he died. Summary: Using an array of front companies and a Miami law firm, Chavez covertly purchased dozens of strip malls and other commercial property across Florida. While U.S. law enforcement has yet to learn of these properties, millions of American shareholders and retirees—who collectively lost some $30 billion when Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds and ExxonMobil assets were nationalized by Chavez without compensation—may want to sue in Florida courts for compensation. This story will come as a shock to U.S. law enforcement and to suffering shareholders. Sources: A private investigator who once worked for a Chavez crony that fled to Florida. He has a cache of documents including property records, shell-company filings and related materials.
3. Crony Capitalists v. Your Pension Suggested lede: While South Carolina government pensions earn among the lowest returns in the nation, the public employee in charge of them drives a lime-green Lamborghini. Summary: All state and local government workers’ pensions in South Carolina are administered by a six-member commission. Under its watch, investment fees are among the nation’s highest while its returns are among the lowest. Meanwhile, the government staff enjoys salaries higher than the president of the United States. This is no accident, says the state treasurer, who is one of the six members of the commission. “They have become captive to a handful of Wall Street insiders who wine and dine them, fly their children to Paris on their Gulfstream jets, and arrange for hundreds of thousands of dollars of offthe-books payments,” he said. “It is all legal, but it stinks.” Sources: A key source is the South Carolina Treasurer who oversees the pension board and is outraged by the mismanagement. He has supplied many documents never before seen by the public.
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4. Texas rocket-maker scares regulators, Saudis and greens Suggested lede: Morton Thiokol’s rockets once helped put men on the moon, but the firm’s latest rocket engine will put thousands of men to work in moon-like expanses of West Texas, North Dakota and across the nation. The new rocket motor enables “fracking” without using water—and that terrifies environmentalists who fear a new carbon-energy boom, regulators who may lose their scope to regulate, and Saudi Arabian officials who say that energy independence will lead America to disengage from its alliances in the Arab world. Summary: For years, environmentalists and regulators have fought to stop hydraulic fracking by citing water contamination. Fracking uses thousands of gallons of water per minute to break energy out of rock layers hundreds of feet underground. Now a new technology, invented by former rocket engine maker Morton Thiokol, promises to extract the energy without using water—potentially touching off an even larger fracking boom than ever before. If this technology meets its promise and is widely adopted, regulators may not be able to stop fracking on private lands. Currently state regulators in New York, Pennsylvania and other states cite possible contamination of water supplies used by the public as the legal justification for banning fracking operations. The stakes are immense. Thanks to fracking, America is already on the verge of becoming energy independent and the process has created almost 100,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, across the United States. If the technology succeeds, “fracking will shatter all previous records,” says an energy analyst at Cap Alpha and the economy could add another 100,000 jobs over the next five years. “It would be the biggest setback for environmentalists ever.” Sources: Morton Thiokol executives, American Petroleum Institute, Saudi officials, Sierra Club, New York environmental officials
5. Sororities forced to go co-ed as national war on Greek system grows Suggested lede: The room was quiet as the Delta Delta Delta sorority president presented her sisters with a momentous decision: either vote to make half of sorority members male or go rogue and operate without the college’s official recognition. “The college president is making us do this,” she said. Either step--admitting men or losing the college’s recognition--will lead to a revocation of the sorority’s national charter. One way or the other, the sororities will have to shut down. Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut is ground zero for a new war on fraternities and sororities, collectively known as the Greek system, and it’s a war in which college administrators may finally have found their Hiroshima bomb. Summary: Trinity College board members suspect a darker motivation: kickbacks from developers, union officials and financiers involved in the construction of new on-campus housing. That housing
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needs students to fill it, and that’s where effectively shutting down sororities and fraternities comes in, says a member of Trinity’s governing board. He has offered documents to buttress his view. If this move succeeds at Trinity, it will soon become a national trend that threatens to banish fraternities and sororities from American life. College and University administrations have long been hostile to the Greek system, which they see as antiquated, elitist and even racist. Defenders of the sororities and fraternities say that their voluntary institutions have been a part of campus life for more than a century and offer a unique experience. “Sharing my thoughts with boys,” said one Tri-Delt member, “has no place in a sorority.” Others point out that the Greek system offers a haven from the college’s political correctness and say that is real reason the administration wants them eliminated. This administration is a bunch of “petty tyrants that doesn’t want any group that opposes its philosophy,” says a former fraternity member who is now a London-based investment banker. He has been active in the fight to save the “Greeks.” Sources: A member of Trinity’s governing board, fraternity and sorority chapter presidents, other Trinity board members.
Why is investigative journalism so costly? An investigative journalist may spend months meticulously preparing a report to give the public a comprehensive understanding of a topic based on new, provably true facts. An investigative article takes hundreds of man-hours in research, travel, interviews and document review. While the reward for investigative journalism is high, the costs are not small. Here’s why: • Research costs: Investigative journalism is a multi-stage research operation. Once a key source has been identified, it involves examining fee-based commercial databases such as LexisNexis, Factiva, Westlaw and other specialized databases. Additional sources must then be tracked down. Often sources must be offered meals and equally often reporters must travel (meaning hotel, airfare, rental cars and meals) to see sources and locations. Sometimes private investigators or forensic accountants must be hired. Of course, reporters must be paid for their services. The costs are numerous. • Editing costs. Every AMI story is extensively edited by a veteran editor, who must be paid, copyedited by a skilled copyeditor, who must be paid, fact-checked by an independent and experienced researcher, who must be paid, and reviewed by an attorney for potential legal liability, who also must be paid. • Overhead costs. AMI must cover a share of its office equipment, office supplies, employee healthcare, accounting, insurance and related costs. • Promotion costs. AMI contracts with outside firms who specialize in promoting news stories to television, radio, bloggers, social media and other print media. These efforts ensure credit for your newspapers and drive traffic to your web sites—while amplifying the story we created. 8
Option 2: Data journalism
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Data-driven journalism is the future. Journalists need to be data-savvy. It used to be that you would get stories by chatting to people in bars, and it still might be that you’ll do it that way sometimes. But now it’s also going to be about poring over data and equipping yourself with the tools to analyze it and pick out what’s interesting. And keeping it in perspective, helping people out by really seeing where it all fits together, and what’s going on in the country. — Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web
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What is data journalism? Data journalism is a process that uses computers to sift vast datasets (sometimes with billions of data points) to identify unexpected patterns or expose corruption. Data journalism can uncover wasteful government spending, crony contracts and insider deals that hurt taxpayers.
Data journalism represents a historic shift in newsgathering from relying on officials or government reports to tapping vast reservoirs of government and other data. It essentially hands the keys to government information warehouses to you, instead of requiring you to beg the night watchman for a peek inside. That’s why it is a game-changer. Data journalism is not hacking. It does not break into secure servers and steal information. Instead, it takes advantage of new legislation—signed by President Obama and many state governors— that opens up the federal and state governments’ enormous mines of data to any member of the public with the proper tools. Data journalism is the future. It is what happens when “big data” comes to journalism. Big data moves beyond sampling representative datasets to analyzing all available data. This is what the tech heads call “n equals all.” By interrogating vast pools of data, researchers are able to unearth previously unknown relationships. Big data is already revolutionizing medicine, marketing and other fields. It is how Target can analyze millions of purchasing patterns and offer a woman diaper coupons before she has told her family she is pregnant. It is how Amazon can make book suggestions to its customers and be fairly certain that the recommendations will be smartly targeted enough to increase book sales. 9
Data journalism is already revolutionizing newsgathering in Germany, Britain and Australia. It is simply a matter of time before it transforms newspapers in America. Why not seize the “first-mover advantage”? Data journalism means measurably better stories than standard industrial-era journalism. As PBS.org puts it: “They are not the formulaic newswire stories where the reporting amounts to three sources rounded up from the usual suspects…They’re windows into reality created by scraping real information, not versions of the truth created by ideology.”
Unique advantages of data journalism
• Unlimited access. We no longer have to rely on government officials for access to news-making information. It is an open ticket to a treasure trove. • Objective evidence. The government’s databases provide information that virtually all readers will accept as credible and real. • Unlimited stories. With unlimited data access, comes an unlimited supply of stories—providing you know how to process the data and couple it with traditional reporting to create compelling narratives. Mere sets of numbers don’t produce powerful stories. But computer data coupled with shoe-leather reporting does.
Data journalism: Lessons from Abroad In examining the international experience with data journalism, we have discovered that there are essentially two models: The German model and the British model.
• German model: Germany’s most influential newspaper, Die Zeit (“The Times”), pioneered the field when Germany passed a data transparency law in 2007. Once it had legal access to the German government’s databases, it began an ambitious “data visualization” effort that displayed raw data in eye-catching ways to amplify existing traditional news stories. One story used animation to show how spy agencies can track users with their cell phones on trains, planes and offices. The result is powerful pictures, but few new readers. • British model: Taking data journalism to the next level, Britain’s left-wing daily, The Guardian, combines data research with powerful storytelling. Its story on the misuse of parliamentary expense accounts made global news. One member of Parliament used his expense account to repair the moat around his country house, while another used it to feed her daily Toblerone habit. Public outrage led to rapid reforms. By using its access to the British government’s archives to uncover waste, fraud and abuse, and using traditional reporting to bring the raw data to life, the Guardian has found a winning strategy.
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Why have U.S. forays into Data Journalism failed?
So far, few American newspapers have learned from their foreign competitors—even as American online readers have increasingly migrated to English-language news sites in Britain, Australia and beyond. Why? • Editors and managers have failed to realize that the Internet has created a single, global market for news. On any given day, half of the online readers of British newspapers are based in America. Yet American editors refuse to acknowledge their competition and therefore do not study it. • Data journalism is capital-intensive and many newspapers (which suffer from legacy pension and union costs) are capital-starved. So they have not made a sufficient investment to reap its rewards. • The few early adopters of data journalism have followed the “German model,” rather than the more successful “British model.” The New York Times and Reuters are among the few news outlets to make an investment in this area. Both have tended to follow the German model of “data visualization,” perhaps because the push for these investments comes from their technical departments, not their journalists. That means they create a lot of colorful graphics and nifty online tools—things tech people do well. But readers are not impressed. • Ignoring the “British model”—combining data with traditional reporting to craft colorful and memorable stories—means that the few American outfits in the field are failing to realize its potential to generate topline growth. Still, this moment of mismanagement and malinvestment won’t last forever. Soon your larger rivals will see their strategic mistake.
The window of opportunity
It is only a matter of time before Reuters or the New York Times realizes the opportunity it has squandered on the German model. Data journalism presents a path to profitability in the unprecedented amount of data now made available by governments – a trend that will transform journalism and shift the competitive terrain. Both the brass ring and the abyss are in sight. Learning to filter and clarify these dust storms of data (in a way that helps readers understand their world and make informed decisions) confers a real competitive advantage. Those who fail to invest in data journalism may find themselves at the mercy of those who did. Once the computer capability is built and the right cross-functional team put together, the New York Times could swoop in with scoops about Little Rock budget scandals, without ever getting on a plane. Readers migrate easily online and the most desirable readers often exit first. With the readers, go the advertisers. 11
Change is always at the margin, but marginal change can be destructive. Data journalism allows larger papers to become your crosstown rivals, without moving into town. The window of opportunity to build a data journalism capability will close over the next 18-24 months. After that point the advantages of data journalism are defensive, holding ground rather than gaining it. Why not steal a march on them while they doze?
What we propose
AMI will use the “British model” and scour large amounts of data for original stories and then use our skilled reporters to tell compelling, colorful stories. After a six-month development period to optimize the software and hardware and to recruit the technical talent that we have already identified, we can deliver an average of one story per week for a total of 52 stories.
Why do you need us?
• Training. AMI has developed a team with specialized skills in assembling, sorting and cleaning vast databases to develop reliable stories. This requires a command of a number of specialty programming languages, including R, Python, and Ruby. • Capacity. Newspaper staffs are already strained producing traditional daily journalism. AMI has all of three of the needed skill-sets for data journalism: journalists trained to work with large data sets, computer coders to draw and clean for honest comparisions, and data visualization experts to vividly display the data for your readers. • Expertise. Large data sets alone do not make news. Magnetic stories require decades of story-telling skills that must be combined with data to fully realize the benefits of this approach. AMI has that in spades. • AMI provides the fastest serious entry into data journalism. Our proven track record of producing front-page scoops, winning earned media (including repeat Drudge links), and getting tens of millions of impressions for our stories shows we can operate at the highest levels. With our team of experienced mainstream journalists and coders, we can find local stories to greatly enhance the appeal and circulation of your papers.
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What kinds of stories could data journalism produce?
Once the state and federal government databases are selected, collected and processed, the number of stories is virtually limitless. Here are a few examples that we think will drive readers to buy papers or pay online: • Compare the costs of office supplies paid by state and federal agencies with the prices charged by WalMart for those same items in the same jurisdictions. • Examining databases of state and federal prisoners with databases of those receiving welfare and food stamps, to discover which prisoners are illegally receiving checks. Prisoners have recently been barred by law from receiving benefits while incarcerated—but prison officials and benefits agencies rarely check. • Study databases of people receiving Social Security disability payments (given to those who cannot work a day) with databases of marathon and triathlon runners. Follow up reporting and fact-checking will ensure that we are not identifying two people with the same name at the same address ( John sr. on disability and John jr. the marathon runner). We believe this will expose disability fraud—the fastest growing federal welfare program. • Compare the cost-per-mile travelled in state and federal jets with prices for the same routes charged by Southwest or other bargain airlines. • Timed to the next local PBS televised “beg-a-thon,” compare the cost of broadcast equipment and salaries at public television stations with their local private competitors. This story could be re-written to focus on costs of public television in each and every one of your major circulation areas. • Using police blotter databases, identify the highest-crime streets in your circulation areas, listing the crimes per block. Reporting will uncover dramatic stories of these crimes, while readers will anxiously search to see how their streets compare with the worst and the best. • Identify which professions generate the highest bail amounts (ministers, teachers, builders, postal workers) per circulation area and explain why, through interviews, with bail bondsmen. • Study government computer usage to determine how much time during the workday government workers waste pointing their browsers to Facebook, Twitter, ESPN or porn sites. • Compare government workers’ expense account meals with the Zagat restaurant guide to determine which chains or high-end eateries get the most tax dollars. • Examine the dates and locations and costs of government conferences to identify which agencies spend the most money on “fun in the sun” conferences in the winter months. • Compare the salaries and hours worked of state and federal employees with comparable positions in the private sector. Government lawyers, for example, work fewer hours and receive higher pay and benefits. 13
• Compare the cost of complying with federal Endangered Species Act legislation with the cost paid by zoos for the same animals and by greenhouses of the same plants. • Compile a list of university presidents from salary databases and compare against football wins, graduation rates and school tuition hikes. Sidebar: a list of university presidents paid more than the president of the United States or the state governor. • Compare the fuel-economy of state and federal environmental officials’ limos with the average fueleconomy mandated for ordinary Americans by those same agencies. • Compare the salaries of university coaches with the wins per season in their sports. Are losing coaches paid more? Do losers in football make more than winners in baseball or soccer, on a per-ticket purchased basis? • Find crony contracts by matching lists of donors of specific politicians to government contracts that they supervise. We could then compare the costs of fixing a road using a crony contractor with similar work done in neighboring jurisdictions. • Identify public school teachers with criminal records. The kindergarten teacher with a record of sex offenses will lead this story—and is sure to generate a strong response from readers. • Rank state and federal lawmakers by how the amount of federal spending brought to their districts compared with the total of amount of taxes paid by that same district. Identify the 10 biggest “pork barrelers.” Also rank spending by state and by political party per state. • A short 3-part series on wait times for citizens receiving government “services,” comparing: 1.) Post offices with commercial package delivery stores; 2.) Fishing and hunting license wait times at various locations; and 3.) Voting and driver’s license renewals versus wait times at McDonald’s drive-thru window times. • Crime rates on streets and boulevards named after historic figures and presidents (George Washington, Martin Luther King jr. et cetera).
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No software barrier
Technology is not the bottleneck in data journalism. The software tools exist and must only be used intelligently. The tricky technical dimensions are (1) Cleaning and filtering large quantities of often unstructured data, and (2) asking questions of the data that yield explosive stories. Data journalism, as Aron Pilhofer, editor of Interactive News at The New York Times puts it, is “not a technology problem; it’s a people problem.” It requires a team of specialists. Data journalism is team effort, not just a technical one: Technologists and journalists must be fused into a cross-functional team. Performance drops off if journalists and technologists even work on different floors, as The Guardian discovered. While coders can work on their own to write screen-scrapers for raw data, convert PDFs into spreadsheets, and design visualizations, it is only through daily contact with reporters that they can hear about new stories and suggest actions while a story is in-progress. Likewise, journalists must oversee their efforts to head off costly dead ends and blind alleys. To be commercially successful, a data journalism effort must be directed by journalists, not led from behind by technologists. The technology team must work closely with reporters and editors. No matter how advanced our technical capability becomes, experienced journalists will tell the technology team members where to dig and what to look for in millions of lines of unstructured data. Data processing makes the story possible, but data journalism is nothing without the story. As The Guardian puts it, “Data journalism is 80% perspiration, 10% great idea, 10% output.”
Benefits to you
Real-world approach: AMI is the intelligence service for ordinary people. Our goal is to produce journalism that matters to the average reader: Stories about their kids’ education, public spending, abuses of power (by unions, bureaucrats, school boards, etc.) and public safety. Readers don’t care about data by itself. They care about stories that engage them. Original, exclusive scoops. AMI will provide “high-impact scoops” to your newspapers. This grabs readers by the collar. Halo Effect. When AMI scoops start appearing in your papers, they will create a halo effect--the perception that your papers are a valuable part of their lives. Consumer Delight, not just satisfaction. Exceeding the competition will lead to an “expectation shift.” As scoops become a regular feature, readers become less forgiving of the prosaic stories that your rivals produce. Once readers decide that a Stephens paper means scoops, they become addicted, enthusiastic consumers of your product.
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Option 3: Data journalism Plus
This option fully includes everything in option two, but adds two additional benefits: • Doubles the number high-quality stories to 104 per year (an average of two per week) from 52 stories in option two. We believe that these stories will further boost circulation, subscription renewals, new subscriptions as well as multiplying online traffic and increasing total page views. • Graphics. Offers interactive computer graphics to enhance the reader’s experience and turn them into missionaries for your branded sites. Reader excitement increases “word-of-mouth,” the most effective form of marketing. New regular weekly features We would like to offer some new features that could appear every week that would win sustained reader interest that could also be combined with targeted advertising. • “Rate the weatherman.” Compare forecasts of local television and radio meteorologists with what actually happened, according to the U.S. Weather Service. This would be delivered in an info-graphic box with pictures of the weatherman (or woman), network logo, forecast, actual results and an accuracy score per week and year-to-date. Online, viewers could comment and vote their own ratings of their local weather people. 17 00
• “Crime heat map.” Every week we would deliver a color-coded “heat map” of your circulation area, ranking zip codes from red (highest crime) to white (lowest crime) for the previous week. Suddenly readers would see what only police commanders now see and know how their neighborhood stacks up against other locales. This heat map, available both in print and online, would keep drawing readers back. • “Speed trap map”—A weekly feature showing the locations of all speed cameras and known police speed traps, with a box listing the revenue raised at each location that past week. Would be combined with a sidebar, profiling an ordinary and safe driver who was outraged to get zapped by the police camera or speed trap—and who earns a bit of reader sympathy. Think: pregnant women racing to the hospital or a fireman rushing to work.
Benefits to you
Increased story volume means higher newsstand sales and higher web site “stickiness.” More stories means more money-making readers and more web traffic. Users will linger longer on your news web sites, see more advertisements and click more stories. Richer, more interactive info-graphics. These graphics will feature moving animation to spur reader interest, prolonged website visits, and boost advertising revenue. Even faster time to market. With more resources, AMI can move more quickly through the set-up phase and begin delivering stories sooner.
Conclusion
We are excited about the possibility of working together. We believe that both classic investigative journalism and data journalism can transform your newspapers and increase readership and advertising revenue across all platforms. We also believe that our capabilities will provide a sustainable competitive advantage against both local and national competitors. Together we can “re-invent” journalism.
American Media Institute P.O. Box 2847, Potomac Station, Alexandria, VA 22301-9998 © 2013 American Media InstituteTM All Rights Reserved.
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Bios of key AMI staff Richard Miniter - Chief Executive Officer Richard Miniter is an award-winning investigative journalist and best-selling author. He writes the “national security” column on Forbes.com. He was editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe and was a member of the famed investigative team of the Sunday Times of London. As vice president of The Washington Times, Miniter turned around an ailing division and managed a team of 17 journalists. He is the author of three New York Times bestselling books: Losing bin Laden, Shadow War, Mastermind and Leading From Behind. Miniter has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Forbes, New Republic, National Review and others. He appears regularly on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and hundreds of radio programs every year. William Schulz - Managing Editor For almost 40 years, Schulz served as a critical editor for Reader’s Digest, the world’s largest circulation magazine. As Washington bureau chief and later executive editor, he assigned and edited thousands of carefully crafted narratives, more than any other editor in Reader’s Digest history. He has an extensive Rolodex of leading writers and a broad network of contacts among print, radio, and television editors. The key to the Reader’s Digest extraordinary growth was hard-hitting, fact-checked investigative stories. He brings back oldfashioned journalistic values to an industry that now lacks them. Nathaniel Moffat - Chief Operating Officer Nathaniel Moffat has extensive business and nonprofit experience of more than two decades. He worked for Prudential Securities, negotiated private equity deals, and was managing director of a seed- and early-stage venture fund. Mr. Moffat is currently board member (and chairman emeritus) of Christian Freedom International (a human rights nonprofit that aids persecuted Christians in the developing world), and serves on the board of DonorsTrust, which connects philanthropists with charities. John M. Shoreman – General Counsel John M. Shoreman has practiced law in Washington, D.C., for more than twenty-five years. His media clients have included broadcasters, wireless carriers, publishers, agents, newspaper distributors and writers. In addition to contract disputes, much of Mr. Shoreman’s trial practice involves First Amendment issues. He is also experienced in the formation and legal structure of business organizations having represented several telecommunication firms from the start-up phase. Mr. Shoreman graduated from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1985. He was associated with the firm of Steptoe and Johnson in Washington, D.C. before establishing McFadden & Shoreman in 1995. He is admitted in New York, the District of Columbia and federal courts across the country.
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