The Emperor Has No Clothes
Rob Curley was the emperor of all things related to newspapers doing cool stuff on the web.
He started at the Lawrence, Kansas newspaper (about the size of the Daily News) and did some very cool stuff. He had one standing order from the publisher (who at that time didn’t even do email.) Don’t loose money.
So he hired a bunch of people and off they went to reinvent newpaper’s online presence. They didn’t loose money.He built a helluva reputation. He was in high demand as a speaker at newspaper conferences. He talked to a lot of people. He didn’t wear a suit - or tie - he usually had on a tee shirt. He said “sucked” and “fuck” during presentations - a practice that was (and is) unheard of coming from the podium at a newspaper gathering.
Curley was a for real guru. Fast Company magazine adored him. The photograph showed him smirking in front of a huge pile of burning newspaper bundles.
Scripps decided he was just what they needed in Naples Florida - and away he went, taking most of his online staff. There he launched a local, daily, web news program that was touted as the model for newspapers everywhere. I suspect the “don’t lose money” guidances was not in effect with Scripps.
Curley soon left for the WashingtonPost.com with a high-flying title. His promise was to make the WaPo online editions “hyperlocal” the hottest buzz word he could think of .
Recently it was announced that he left the WaPo.com for Las Vegas. The WSJ.com is reporting today the emperor has no clothes. Others who fell all over themselves annointing him, have now abandoned his teachings and are pointing out his flawed plan
For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and fastest-growing counties.
loudounextra.washingtonpost.com Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.
![[Loudoun]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-AP938_WASHPO_20080603165638.jpg)
So Rob Curley is off to cash in again with a new employer. He took most of his staff (do you see a pattern here?) Apparently Las Vegas had a pretty good online staff already, and he is taking nine folks to join them.He should cash in whenever he has the chance. Some guys get rich not by what they know, but by what others think they know.
It’s supply and demand. But newspaper publishers need to use the same skepticism with Rob Curley as they do with any other single evangelist. What is his track record? So far, I’ve seen a lot of cool things that don’t make the newspaper money.
If that’s a good criterion for being a guru, drop me a note.I’ve got a ton of great ideas that qualify.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Mark,
I just wanted to make a few thoughts/clarifications on your post:
– The Fast Company article came after Rob had already been in Naples for months, not before Naples/Scripps hired him. Also, I’m 99.9 percent sure the photo idea was from their people, not Rob himself.
– Rob did not take “most of his online staff” when he left Lawrence for Naples. In fact, I was the only full-time Journal-World employee to go to Naples. Two interns also went, but the very large majority of full-timers stayed in Lawrence.
– I can’t speak exactly to Naples revenue numbers, but I’m again 99.9 percent sure that the sites/projects we built were financially strong. I will readily admit that revenue there had every bit as much to do with having a publisher (John Fish) who was a master salesman and a hard-working ad staff as anything Rob or the rest of us did, if not more (which I’m sure Rob would readily admit also).
– “Hyperlocal” was not a buzz word Rob created (or thought of) for the Post job. It’s a term that’s been around since at least the time we were in Lawrence (based on this article). I can’t remember the first time it was used to describe the work we were doing, but I know it was before we came to Washington.
– To say that the Bivings Report blog post was “abandon(ing) his teachings and pointing out his flawed plan” is a large amount of hyperbole. Mr. Zeigler points to three takeaways, only one of which (the first) can be placed squarely and solely on the shoulders of Rob/our team (and which Rob takes the blame for at the end of the WSJ article). The other two are organizational issues that share blame all around.
– Similarly, your “reporting today the emperor has no clothes” link goes to a blog post that is, a day later, responded to by the original writer, who admits he “inaccurately noted that LoudounExtra.com hadn’t yet rolled out high school sports”. His original post also mentions the lack of community-publishing tools, which the WSJ article explains. I don’t see where Mr. Krasilovsky points out anything along the lines of Rob being a fraud or any such thing. I might be to close to all of this to see the forest for the trees, though.
– I’ve said this in response to other blog posts, but saying that Rob “took most of his staff” is pretty darn offensive (accidentally so, I have no doubt) to those of us who have chosen to go to Las Vegas as well. We have all given a lot of thought to our options, which included staying at WPNI or looking for a job somewhere else entirely. We are leaving on our own terms, not just blindly following or being brought to Vegas on leashes.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
[…] reason people are using the performance of LoudounExtra.com (it’s still going by the way) to cast judgment on Curley, his ideas and hyperlocal journalism in […]
June 10th, 2008 at 9:10 am
[…] the past week, Rob Curley has faced a lot of criticism about the project he has been working on the past few years, and even some that seems to attack and […]