Mathew Ingram talks with Angus Frame, editor of globeandmail.com, Tomi Poutanen of Yahoo, and Tomer Strolight, president of Torstar Digital. The followinng is a summation of the panelist's comments.

Introduction: Craigslist sucks millions out of local personal ad markets every year - Fifty million(?) alone from San Francisco. "The Roman empire of media is breaking up..."

MI: To Angus Frame - what is like to take an old entity like the Globe and Mail into the Web 2.0 age?

AF: It is a slow, daily conversation. The first phase is that they are publishing 24/7 which was a shift for the company. Control issues have to change. They are no longer the only voice. The Globe allows people to comment but many within the org resent that. We are leaders in trying to get this new kind of thinking.

MI: To Tomer Strolight - Are you finding resistance within the organization?

TS: Torstar is coming along and is going after, for example, Craigslist. They are building products that attract advertising. Their value proposition remains good content. Newspapers are getting better at the technology.

AF: Social Networking allows suppliers of aggregated news like Yahoo the ability to overcome the issue of focusing only on the most base topics to attract multiple clicks.

AF: The online Globe reader is mid-forties and is no more tech inclined than the print reader so surveys tell them.

Audience: Really informed tech people are not going to traditional media.

AF: People go to the content they like the best.

Audience: Newspapers are backtracking on their demand for registration...

TS: It was a lose-lose proposition. People gave fake names and when it was removed readership went up by 50%.

Audience: There is a site http://www.bugmenot.com that offers login info for registration sites . . . (I'm there after (...read more...)