Fran Wills, Local Media Consortium — What Was the Most Eye-Opening Shift From Print to Digital?

TL;DR
There are so many players that the focus has transitioned from finding new audiences to ensuring the mass of audiences have credible sources to rely on.

TS;WM
“Well, if you look at the beginning of the digital business in the late 1990s - early 2000s, it was amazing how quickly digital businesses were growing.

I was at The Denver Post at the time and we grew our digital business from $2 million to $20 million in the course of about five years, so the rate of acceleration into digital was pretty substantial in the beginning. And, it was fascinating to see that growth and the adoption, not only by publishers, but also by consumers. And the fact that it grew so fast and then there started to be lots of disruption in the space with all kinds of online-only players emerging, and publishers trying to understand how they needed to adjust their businesses to adapt to changing consumer habits and changing the way businesses communicated with consumers — that’s been a long journey over the past 20 years.

And there’s actually some very positive outcomes to that transition in that consumers have lots of ways to connect with each other and with businesses, and to find out news and information. Now, we’re to a point where we’re trying to help consumers understand where they can get credible information. And also, help businesses better understand how to connect with quality audiences because, actually, not all audiences on the internet are desirable to have your brand associated with. We are starting to see some trends with advertisers in that they are trying to direct their dollars towards more credible local media outlets than they were apt to do even two years ago.”

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