Report Inappropriate Comments

There's a premise in this piece that I disagree with, it sort of starts with, "pure digital sellers simply could not sell accounts in competition with legacy reps whose relationships went back years."

You're right, it's not the people, but what you fail to say is, "It's the business model."

It's not enough just to have a separate sales model, legacy media companies need to start completely new business units.

You worry about the competition, but competition is exactly what needs to happen, of the disruptive kind.

You say the previous separate efforts failed. I content there never has been truly separate units. When I discuss this issue, people will point me to Belo or Knight-Ridder, etc. But all of those efforts were based on legacy media efforts -- they were involved in selling against what the legacy newsroom was making. This creates all kinds of turf war issues, brand confusion, mission creep, etc.

What needs to happen is local news companies, if they want to ensure long-term survival, must create completely separate operations -- news, sales, operations, leadership, the whole shebang.

Back to your original statement -- legacy sales teams have no particular hold on relationships. Look at what I've accomplished with my business. I've had no trouble selling against a legacy team. I've succeed because this is competition, not cooperation. There's no worry about what impact my efforts might have on the mother ship, and I'm able to set my ad model and sales model around what I think will work best for the business, not beholden to any considerations related to the legacy organization, including feeling I must meet margins satisfactory to the legacy CEO.

There is an aspect of it, "It is the people, stupid" that must not be forgotten and is foundational to the lessons of disruptive innovation that Clark Gilbert preaches -- legacy staff, through no fault of their own, because they're not stupid, will never accept, understand, be able to effectively deal with, disruption. You can't have people who have legacy goals and motivations involved in a disruptive operation.

Here's something I wrote on the topic two years ago: http://www.howardowens.com/node/7348c "The Newspaper Original Sin: Keeping online units tethered to the mother ship"