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Alt weeklies innovating key verticals, better at social media

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With strong arts, entertainment and political franchises, alternative weeklies are known for sass,  sex  and creativity. How far that creativity extends into the digital world was on display at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN)  2012 Online Conference. 

Several publishers spoke about their experience innovating more deeply into key verticals and areas of strength (find  top take-aways and thought leadership from the conference here):

*Village Voice Media  Group has launched a national events database and site, that all of its weeklies can post items directly into, and which serves as the events channel for their sites.

With more than 20 newspapers, including most top 20 markets, having a combined database allows Voice to launch a variety of national events apps or other platforms, as it already has done with its national "best of" app, a smart and sassy move.

*The Charleston City Paper, owned by Jones Street Publishers, completed an initiative to create disposable html apps for big events, with Web Editor, Joshua Curry, leading the charge.

Not just a cutting edge idea, but also proof of digital chops; a gage of how well - and whether - small media companies will survive industry disruption is the ability to master technology. Disposable html apps are ahead of what we see even some large magazines being able to pull-off. It's interesting that in the allt-weekly world, the passion for innovation often starts in the newsroom. 

*The Arkansas Times social media director Kelly Ferguson now has 17 to 21 outside clients. Selling Facebook services successfully means getting "personal" with business, something the scrappy urban newspapers do well (Ferguson personally has keys to three of her clients' businesses), while some large dailies have  been unable to create a workable "hand-off" from the rep to the entity responsible for developing the posting calendar.

This is also a good example of "redeploying core competencies" we talked about in "How to create an inhouse ad agency." In the "specialist model," a local media offers a key service it already does well, rather than hiring up for a full service agency. If you have the right, motivated Social Media Director, even a small company can expand the marketing department into a revenue producer.

*The Stranger has launched "Stranger Tickets," starting with the famous rock'n roll club, The Crocodile, who kicked Ticketmaster out of the role and became the beta-partner. The ticketing system, which includes online ticket sales and on-site redemptions, landed the contract to be the ticket seller for Bumbershoot, Seattle's largest arts event with 80,000 people over one weekend, last year.

Tim Keck, publisher, says the venture is more lucrative than a typical sponsorship, which competition between two weeklies in the market often reduces to a battle for who can give most to the event and eliminates significant branding ("our logo is on a wall of logos") in addition to revenues. At last year's Bumbershoot, The Stranger brand appeared on all the tickets and T-shirts of its ticket-taking staff at the event.

This initiative shows how "going deeper" into the franchise model works for a company that is both fearless and success at developing its own technology.

Aside form these stand-outs, we also saw companies who told us their biggest  take-away was "we are way behind." 

Something to think about: The Boise Weekly brought not only its publisher, but also a total of five people to San Francisco to get up-to-speed on digital best practices - not a cheap trip!  In our experience, it has been a long time since any small paper took its whole team to a media conference.

Back in the day, sending a new employee or top rep to an AAN conference was a reliable way to glue them to  the company and the industry. A sales person or new editor would return fired up, full of great ideas and "on the same page" as leadership. That's what we saw at AAN this year for companies able to send teams to the West coast. Whether leading the charge or catching up, teams at the conference left with a better understanding what's possible and with a sense of urgency.

Find  top take-aways and thought leadership from the conference here.