Consumers do not want to be limited to browsing content provided by legacy top-down, control oriented news organizations. As well, banners and buttons, the online version of double trucks, ROP's and classifieds, do not translate into a value proposition that support feet on the ground reporters.

If one reflects on the origins of the Internet - its reason for being - it is not surprising that applying print practices to the web dooms one to extinction. The Internet's beginnings trace back to 1969 when the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a branch of the military that developed top-secret systems and weapons during the Cold War, set out to create the ARPAnet. While some say ARPAnet was created to address a military need, Charles Herzfeld, the former director of ARPA, contends "it came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators who should have access to them were geographically separated from them. One can make the analogy that the goal was to find a way for individuals to talk with each other without going through a well-defined, controlled channel of communication. Just as the Internet empowered scientists to seamlessly share ideas and seek answers from one another, so to is it empowering citizens. News organizations who refuse to relinquish control and who do not empower there reporters to join the sharing and seeking process will become extinct.

Legacy news organizations can no longer rely on high barriers to entry to save them from extinction. The ability to disrupt single-paper markets results from new efficiencies achieved through web browsers rather than web presses, access to an increasingly sophisticated array of open source tools and seamless access to like-minded entrepreneurs regardless of geography. New players distinguish themselves by serving instantaneous news without regard for print circulations and allowing professionals to interact in the same space as amateurs. The reality of millions of markets of dozens online rather than dozens of markets of millions in print severely limits the advantage of legacy large-advertiser relationships. And finally, technology rather than staff reductions reduces costs while raising quality.

Radical change must be undertaken or extinction will result.

I will try in this blog to share a view which will hopefully encourage others to engage the idea of Community Hosts and to share their thoughts and experiences as well.

The idea of a new business model for community newspapers formed in 1997 in the coastal Maine community of Camden. The idea was stimulated by the 1997 book Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities: written by two McKinsey & Company consultants.

Net Gain suggested a business could be grown by organizing affinity groups. While they cited one of the least likely common interests around which to organize was a geographic place, it was cited. VillageSoup took this approach. It set out to use daily news from professional journalists where there was otherwise only weekly news to be the magnet that attracts traffic, citizen and business news to concentrate traffic and comments and discussions to lock in traffic. And local businesses would be still be the engine to monetize the business, but the fuel would be new. Display advertising, the staple fuel of newspapers would not be sufficient. New fuel would be required.

While this view was crystal clear and has remained unchanged for ten years, the words of futurist Paul Saffow ring loud and clear. Saffow says Never mistake a clear view for a short distance

Our ten year road has taken us through places called VillageGreen, Ligature.com, Click2BeHere (k2Bh) and finally VillageSoup. We have traveled roads that were toll free, pay to view and pay to post. And we have traveled in vehicles that were pure play online, online and broadsheet and now online and tab.

In my next post I will begin to examine some of the differences between a Community News business and a Community Host business.