Newsroom: What a fantasy!

Posted on 23. Oct, 2008 by Kye Shkymba in Uncategorized

The group is circling around the size of our startup. How big or how small is an efficient local newsroom? Some suggest that we need 130 content managers. Others counter that that’s way too big. How are we going to earn money?

Andrew Heyward underlines, that we don’t want to make a fantasy newsroom here. “I don’t wanna create something that’s so hypothetical that those people downstairs say: Well that’s fine, but meanwhile I’m just gonna go back hang myself.”

The group – with Chris O’Brien in front – makes a list of functions that a startup needs: designers, production people, etc. We assume that we begin with a 5 million dollar newsroom. (Neil Budde does some calculation on his iPhone):

Content creators 20

Community managers 3

Programmers/developers 2

Designers/Graphic artists 2

Editors / copy editors 3

Google’s man in the room thinks there’s too many developers and designers. My view is that the content users make the site, he says. No fancy templates. The content creator is generating her own stuff on her computer. Write your stuff and just push a button!