Since one of my early jobs in journalism was as managing editor of Colorado Business magazine (now Colorado Biz), I’m intrigued by its online revamping as announced in the January 2006 issue. As explained by editor Robert Schwab in his monthly print-edition column, the magazine has hired a new online editor, Keith DuBay, who is spearheading a major website redesign, due out soon.
The important piece of this is that DuBay is being charged with taking
the monthly magazine into daily business coverage territory. Colorado Biz Today
is meant as “a daily online measure of statewide business news, with
Web-exclusive material changing every day, a stocks page featuring
Colorado stocks, and an opportunity for readers to create and update
their own portfolios on a daily basis,” Schwab wrote.
This isn’t a new concept of course, but it’s critical, I think, for
traditional print magazines to rethink their missions. There’s really
no reason that Colorado Biz can’t compete directly with the business sections of Denver’s two big daily newspapers — on a Monday-Friday basis.
My principal recommendation to my long-ago employer is to take
advantage of its user base as supplemental content providers — that
is, to employ the concept of “citizen journalism.” Let’s face it, a
small regional magazine is not going to have the resources to provide
daily business coverage on the level of the dailies’ business sections.
But Colorado Biz
and magazines like it could utilize their well-targeted audiences by
encouraging people to interact with the site and contribute their
knowledge — complementing the traditional reporting of a small team of website writers and editors.
A two-way, interactive model — where the participating audience is
sophisticated about the topic of coverage (business in the state of
Colorado) — could be a competitive force, especially when daily
newspaper business sections are still operating mostly in the old
lecture mode of business journalism.
Alternatively, there’s no reason a regional business magazine can’t
staff up in order to sustain a Monday-Friday reporting operation, or
partner with another media venture (local TV station, public radio,
etc.), in order to give the dailies’ business sections a run for their
money.
