On the frontiers of Web-based journalism and contextual advertising

Jonathan Weber
Publisher & Editor in Chief
NewWest.net

Jonathan Weber is no stranger to the Western spirit. He’s a media pioneer who doesn’t have much patience for maintaining the status quo. 

“I’ve felt for a long time that newspaper journalism in this country has gotten trapped by its own formulas and conventions,” says Weber, founder and editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain-focused news and info site, NewWest.net. “The big stylistic contribution of blogs has been to cut through this and write in a direct, straightforward way and invite the readers into the conversation…”

In the early days of the dot-com revolution, Weber co-founded The Industry Standard (with John Battelle), a cutting-edge print and Web publication that documented the uncanny rise of the Web as a for-real business, competing directly with pubs such as Business 2.0, Upside and Fast Company.

Unfortunately, when the boom went bust, The Industry Standard went with it. Weber, a veteran newspaper man who has written and edited for The Los Angeles Times, among many other outlets, went “back west” to Missoula, Montana, in 2002. There, he took up teaching at the University of Montana’s journalism school, settled down, got hitched, and started NewWest.net.

MICHAEL MATTIS: Give us the five-cent tour of NewWest.net. What are you trying to accomplish?

JONATHAN WEBER: NewWest.net aims to bring some of the key innovations in online media to the “big story” of growth and change in the Rocky Mountain West. Our goal is to marry the best of what blogs have brought to the table–namely a direct, conversational and inclusive style–with traditional journalistic concern for original reporting, good writing and accuracy. NewWest.net is structured as a network of local sites and subject-specific sites that tie together into a regional general-interest publication. It’s focused on the dramatic cultural, political and economic changes sweeping the Rocky Mountain West.

MICHAEL MATTIS: How did you get started?

JONATHAN WEBER: I developed the concept for New West and, with some expert help, built a business plan, starting in the summer of 2004. I then went out to raise seed capital, which I was able to do largely on the strength of my track record at the Industry Standard. Once I knew we’d able to raise at least a few hundred K, we developed a spec for the site, found a developer and a platform, built it in about six weeks, and launched.

MICHAEL MATTIS: We’ve talked before about how your Web-based form of community journalism mixes traditional reporting with blogging techniques. How do you come up with this?

JONATHAN WEBER: I’ve felt for a long time that newspaper journalism in this country has gotten trapped by its own formulas and conventions. Instead of just telling the story, writers have to use all sorts of obfuscatory phrasings and contrived “he said, she said” Quotes and such to adhere to some unachievable standard of “objectivity.” The big stylistic contribution of blogs has been to cut through this and write in a direct, straightforward way and invite the readers into the conversation.

MICHAEL MATTIS: People have been trying to make journalistic content on the web pay for years. So what’s changed?

JONATHAN WEBER: Many more marketers are now seeing the power of online advertising, and they are shifting their dollars accordingly at an accelerating rate. They are following consumers, who are also moving to online media for their news, information, entertainment and social connections at an accelerating rate. Meanwhile, the cost of online publishing tools is plummeting. So it’s getting much cheaper to publish online even as readers and ad dollars flock to new media.

MICHAEL MATTIS: NewWest.net sports a pretty eclectic mix of ads and ad formats–text, ads, graphic ads and so forth. Can you tell us about your ad strategy? What is essential to you in terms of ads and advertisers appearing on your site?

JONATHAN WEBER: We’re not trying to do anything too fancy in regard to ad formats. We are aiming to appeal both to local advertisers in the individual markets where we have nodes, and also to regional and national advertisers who want to reach our educated, engaged readers–people who really care about the region and are very engaged with the outdoors, in particular. One of our sweet spots thus far has been local advertisers who are looking to expand their marketing area.

MICHAEL MATTIS: How would you say Yahoo! Publisher Network features into your overall strategy?

JONATHAN WEBER: As a contextual ad network, we hope Yahoo! Publisher Network can bring in advertisers that we might not otherwise have access to–including national accounts, but also including some keyword marketers who we would not otherwise be able to find and service effectively. More broadly, we see the Yahoo! Publisher Network and Yahoo! in general as a company with a powerful array of tools and capabilities that could be of interest to us. We are not in a position to build all of the platform capabilities that we might want, nor are we able to do everything we’d like to do in terms of marketing and expanding our reach. In my estimation, Yahoo understands the content business and the value that good editors and journalists can bring in a way that some of the competitors do not, and that is very important to me in a partner.

MICHAEL MATTIS: Where do you see NewWest.net in five to ten years?

JONATHAN WEBER: We will be a multi-product, local and regional media company with a major presence in most of the key markets around the Mountain West. We also expect to be active in some areas outside of what we currently define as our core geographical region.

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One of the interesting things about NewWest.net is that many, if not most, of its users actually access the site not from computers in the Rocky Mountain region, but from farther west, in California. This may seem odd at first blush, but the West and the Rockies are as much a frame of mind – an affinity, you might say – as they are physical places. This is especially true in the age of the Web, where nearly any place in the world can be brought into vivid animation through technology. And this, I think, has a lot to do with Jonathan’s success so far – he has been able to target users not merely by physical geography, but by a sort of mental geography, by their mutual affinity for a place and an idea.