Raw text of my 'Directions' interview

Directions Magazine is doing their (semi)annual Internet issue in August, and I'm one of the people that's being interviewed for the piece. This is typically a report on what local developers are doing and what new technologies have popped up. My friend Leo Babauta is penning it, which is cool because he's a great writer. He sent me a questionaire, which I responded to but is undoubtedly going to be chopped up during editing. So for your amusement, here's the raw version of my responses before the article goes to print.

1) Tell me about your National Edward R. Murrow award ... what is it awarded for, when did your site win it, and why was your site given the award?

Sabrina Salas Matanane and I found out we'd won the 2006 National Murrow Award for Best News Web Site for Small Markets on June 21, a day before for the official announcement was made. This was a major accomplishment for our company and for local communications in general. The nod recognizes a news organization's excellence in distributing content to the masses through hypermedia, rewarding innovative ways to produce news online. That we won such an award on a national scale really elevates us to an entirely new competitive landscape.

We previously won the Regional Murrow for Best News Web Site for the second straight year this past April, and we've won a total of five regional Murrows over the last three years for our reporting, so to add something this prestigious to our trophy case is very satisfying.

We're proud to be from Guam, and to represent our island to the world and before our peers is a real honor. We're included in a very distinct circle - other web sites that won include CourtTV.com and WashingtonPost.com, so to have our domain mentioned in the same breath as organizations on that level is incredibly rewarding.

We really feel at KUAM that if anyone represents Guam on a national stage, it should be us. We're not the people who brought the Web to Guam, we're the people who made it work. Our job from Day 1 was to create the best possible online experience - to be "Guam's best source online for news, information and entertainment - anytime, anywhere, on any device". That's the mission statement I drafted at the onset and it's been our guiding principle ever since. To this day, I have that very phrase hanging above my desk to remind me precisely why we're in business and exactly who we're working for.

KUAM.com has gotten a ton of accolades for its tight integration with its broadcast brethren KUAM-TV and KUAM Radio, our sleek design philosophy, and our family of next-gen delivery services. Collectively it constitutes the most powerful, most flexible collection of media properties on Guam. People have really latched on to our "On Air. Online. On Demand." concept, and there's a high degree of usage between all three platforms. People watch a broadcast and then jump on the Web to check out an exhibit we've done. It's not a gimmicky sales ploy, it's a real commitment to bringing people the news. Users realize this - and that makes for unbeatable consumer retention and loyalty.


2) Tell me about the development of the KUAM website ... I know you have been the major developer of the website ... how did you get it going, how has it evolved?

My primary role is to direct all our efforts involving interactive media - pretty much everything under the sun having to do with accessing KUAM through non-traditional means. What I do is think about new and helpful ways to let people access content across devices asynchronously. Functionally, I oversee six main areas of development: KUAM.com, KUAM Broadband, KUAM Wireless, KUAM Alerts, KUAM Web Tools, and KUAM Desktop. We're constantly expanding our foundation to accommodate a growing amount of capable devices and rapidly increasing amounts of storage, bandwidth, and processing power, feeding people's insatiable appetite for information.

Our work is centered on combating a universal dilemma facing mainstream media. The major fallacy of ANY news operation is the requirement to maintain coordinated access - people wanting to find out what happened in the world today via a telecast or radio program have to be within range of an originating signal, tuned into a certain channel or frequency at a specific time, remaining attentive for some duration, and using a certain device. That all makes for a very poor distribution model because once you're off the air, your connection to someone is severed. You won't be able to captivate them until the next time. Magazines and newspapers are naturally portable and have phenomenal circulation, but they're too out of touch, too reactionary. Even "classical" web access (through a web browser application running on a desktop PC or laptop) has fallen out of style due to its cumbersome, coupled nature.

So my gig is keeping us on the cutting-edge: finding out what's out there, determining if it can be a good fit for us, and then making it work. We invest heavily in developing constant connectivity between our Harmon studios and the world, expressing our broadcast products through the Web, leveraging multimedia, and making access convenient.

Since 2000 our news stories have been available as text and in various audio/video versions; several years ago we introduced RSS syndication, which has really taken off and has been a huge success for us in maintaining exposure. And this past year we introduced access at the atomic level for video on demand (VOD) - letting people see the day's events at a glance in KUAM Video Player, and then empowering them with the ability to jump ahead to a single story that really like, bypassing all the things that don't concern them. They can optionally download clips individually, copying them onto a digital device for later playback or sharing them with the community. The a la carte method of content delivery doesn't force an entire show down someone's throat; a presentation becomes more valuable because a user has ownership of it by being able to control what they see, when they see it, in whatever order they see fit. Users can still watch entire newscasts, beginning to end, in our webcast archive.

Either way, even when we're off the air we still maintain a strong presence in someone's life.

Constant connectivity.


3) How has the site grown in popularity?

We're fortunate to always have had a huge, devout following. I'm a marketing guy by trade, and one of the reasons I came to KUAM was because of the strength of the brand. Mention our call letters and everyone instantly knows who you're talking about and what we do. KUAM.com by association is the region's most-known web presence. People e-mail me all the time and say the first site they ever visited when they got on the Internet was KUAM.com, or they went out and bought a computer just to check out all the cool interactive exhibits we mentioned during our newscasts, or that they visit our site as many as twelve times per day to get caught-up. The loyalty of the community we've built is an incredible competitive advantage for us, and one we don't take for granted.

In the early days of KUAM.com (circa 1997-1999), the web site functioned more as an online corporate brochure, providing contact information, reporter bios, and the company's history. What I picked up on immediately was that there wasn't a strong presence with news, nor was there any real interactive element to the site. It was pretty much static and read-only. So news and functionality were the components that I wanted to commodify and exploit online.


4) Tell me about the news business evolving as the Internet has grown in popularity ... how critical is a web presence for a news company, and how do you see the news industry changing because of this, now and in the coming years?

Our online endeavors (web and otherwise) are truly what separate us from the rest of the pack. KUAM.com is a major factor in what makes us the most dominant force in Guam media, and our National Murrow certainly validates that.

At the macro level, the Internet and the public World Wide Web is evolving into a media platform of its own. Even companies that previously prided themselves on being web portals are now morphing into legitimate media properties. Services like the iTunes Music Store, Google Video, YouTube.com and various methods of content rehydration by Yahoo! are changing the way people get information, and really setting a baseline for younger demographics who accept today's delivery mechanisms as the standard. I'm old enough that my media expertise pre-dates the Web, so I'm continually amazed at some of the things people are doing out there.

Serious news organizations at any scale these days can't afford not be accessible online. Add to that the stipulation for media companies to be REALLY good at being online. The media industry can be pretty unforgiving - with any mass communications product or service, if you're not absolutely rock solid when you first launch, you're written off for all time. You can't introduce an unorthodox method of doing something and then expect an audience to just get used to it over time. People aren't that stupid.

So news organizations need to have massive archives of stories in multiple formats with strong, unmetered search facilities, maintain a presence in the wireless space, timely publishing, and a high degree of interactivity. We're in a unique industry because (1) people are always going to want our content and (2) all of our stuff's available for free.

And you can't be afraid to report news online before you go to air with them - TV continues to be world's ultimate platform, so breaking items online won't be cannibalizing your own core product. You can't live in fear of scooping yourself - you need to constantly augment your distribution chain. Your users will appreciate that.

The business is constantly changing, and that's why I enjoy being in it so much; it's unbelievably challenging. With improvements to infrastructure, reduced costs for consumer technology and an increasing number of software tools to produce content, it's really easy and cheap to become part of "the media". Mainstream entities are relying on participatory journalism a lot more to add to their reporting.


5) Tell me about how Guam companies can use the Internet to grow, to better serve their customers and to reach new customers. How important do you think this is?

I'll be the first to admit that we're very atypical in terms of our attitude towards integrating new media with our workflow. And that's honestly very unfortunate. We're a lot more liberal in terms of trying something our online, and pretty much every show, segment, series, or special we produce these days has a corresponding URL. The obvious benefits are the extended market reach to a worldwide audience, the always-open/always-on advantage of a web enterprise, and the operational economies of scale realized from not having to use costly and unreliable human resources.

Technologically, we've pioneered a lot of new and exciting technologies on Guam that other organizations are starting to creatively emulate in their own uses. It's great to be first to do something cool, but there are a lot of headaches that come with breaking new ground, too. Again, for companies like us it's important to have active participation in the bleeding-edge space.


6) A lot of companies are afraid of using the web because they don't have a strong grasp of the technology ... how do you recommend they deal with this?

In my opinion, that we continue to ask this very question in 2006 is ridiculous. It's never been easier to get established and technically relevant online. This being an election year, look at how many local candidates have URLs. Even if they're not the greatest feats of design to ever hit the Web, this proves which ones get it. It used to be that businesspeople just saw the Web as being something you could throw a couple hundred or even several thousands of dollars at to save your operating and marketing costs. The dollar amount now typically required for developing, maintaining and expanding a professional web presence are a pittance compared to what they used to be in the DotCom Boom era.

Being technically incompetent isn't an excuse - you've just got to have the right attitude. Personally, I feel my greatest contribution to KUAM's success over the last seven years isn't technical at all - it's behavioral. Anytime you introduce a new technology product within an organization, the larger challenge is going to be the social engineering involved with getting the people to embrace/evangelize it, more so than the technical complexities behind the product itself. I've gotten the company to adopt a mentality of wanting to publish everything to the World Wide Web.

And the entire enterprise has to get completely into and behind your web efforts. This is key. Our site is the product of some very hardworking, very smart, very talented, very focused people who've really put their heart and soul into this for the last seven years. Sabrina, executive producer/assistant GM Marie Calvo-Monge, creative director Jamil Justice, senior reporter Mindy Fothergill and I enjoy a unique synergy when it comes to thinking about webbifying our broadcast products. Sure, I'm the guy who ultimately writes the code, but it's a total team effort.


7) Feel free to add any other comments you'd like regarding this topic.

There is a growing amount of really revolutionary web and software development work being done locally with companies like iCON, Data Management Resources and KUAM, and Guamcell is very proactive at distributing diverse content. But tragically, it pretty much starts and ends with that group. I want to see more pioneering work done in translating processes and publishing information online.

We took the homegrown approach to winning on the Web. We wrote our entire codebase and content management system from scratch, and did it all in-house, and developed strategic partnerships for niche applications. It's not for everybody, but it's worked out nicely for us. :-)