Not surprisingly, most of the commentary was anti-Patch and came from either competitors or hyperlocals who probably feel threatened by their ominous soon-to-be arrival in their hometowns. I'll admit it. I too sense Patch's growing shadow on my little hyperlocal - and it's something that motivates my team to do the best work we can to prepare for the coming competition.

But the set of most interesting comments came through Twitter from two Indian developers, Arjun Ram and Brij Singh, who pointed out that Patch, as well as hyperlocal aggregators like Fwix and Outside.in are probably not counting on creating stand-alone profitable businesses, but would be part of a group of websites operating under "portfolio theory."

My Indian developer friends are probably right - and that bothers me a great deal. To explain, I must digress for a moment.

Years ago, when I was a political appointee at the U.S. Department of Energy, I was lucky to have a boss named Dr. Mark Mazur. More than anyone, Mark taught me the value of rigorous, critical thinking - and that if you don't understand something, you need to ask more questions.

When I worked for him, Mark was the Chief Economist for DOE. He'd already been a staffer for the White House Council of Economic Advisors and one of the Senate staffers who authored the big 1986 tax code rewrite. He's had a number of similar jobs since DOE. Today he's in charge of tax policy analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Mark's resume is important only to convey to you the wattage of intelligence I was exposed to every day. For example, Mark once told me, "I love the tax code. It's like a big puzzle. Sometimes I just read different sections just to try to see how it all fits together." Then he pulled out a copy of the U.S. Tax Code and proceeded to break down some obscure section with me.

I try to carry Mark's modest, rigorous system of study to everything I do. On my best days, I am constantly assuming that there is more to know before I can really understand.

So, when Brij mentioned portfolio theory, Mark's training sent up all kinds of flags. Here's why:

Portfolio Theory is a finance term, that suggests that using mathematics, you can purchase a basket of stocks, bonds and other investments that reduces risk and thus produce a steady rate of return. So my managed portfolio ensures that when my automobile stock goes down in a recession, I have a brewery stock that goes up when the jobless drown out their sorrows.

Portfolio theory got a lot of attention in the boom-boom 1990's, encouraging business schools to produce and investment firms to hire "quant jocks" that could produce sophisticated mathematical models to choose investments. The whole math-based portfolio system came crashing down in 2007 when the American mortgage market melted down - largely because much of it was based on rickety, too-complex mathematical models with difficult to understand metrics of success.

The complex math behind the portfolios became black boxes that nobody, even the quant jocks, completely understood. So long as the bottom line stayed in the black, there were no problems. But when some things went bad - nobody knew how to fix it, and everything went bad.

The portfolio theory for websites is similar to that with finance. If Yahoo's video website isn't making much money today, Yahoo's entertainment news section will make up the difference. The different operations subsidize one another, supposedly ensuring a smooth rate of return.

But I see two logic flaws with website portfolios: First, unlike a basket of stocks, websites are not independent, dispassionate actors. A stock will go up or down, regardless of what the investor does. Website portfolios react specifically to the resources applied to them by their holding company.  Second, the subsidization process inherently disguises unprofitable, undesirable products.

Applying portfolio theory - and it's inherent subsidies - to websites also sounds suspiciously like the content model for a traditional metro daily. Some people read it for comics, some people read it for obits, some for the columns and there is an expected "bleed over" as readers jump from their favorite obits to the sports page now and then. Yet, nobody really knows which part of the newspaper really makes money and which part is the dog.

Here's hoping the big portfolio websites, like MSNBC.com, Yahoo! and AOL have much better reader metrics than most metro dailies.

So back to Patch and Brij the developer's comment, that most news sites are operating on portfolio theory. So, AOL's Patch doesn't need to be outright profitable, it just needs to channel a bunch of traffic to other AOL sites, and AOL sites can channel traffic to Patch. National advertisers can make just one buy, AOL, and they'll be guaranteed reach into hundreds of hyperlocal community news sites.

From AOL's pristine Virginia campus, this probably makes sense. But I just can't help but wonder: What's the purpose of creating a business with no plan to make it stand-alone profitable?

The fact that AOL could even consider such a thing is ominous news for my little hyperlocal site, the Center Square Journal, since Patch could easily outspend me, as well as channel in traffic from all kinds of other AOL sites. But it's also bad news for consumers, since there's nothing pushing Patch to build sites locals really want to read. After all, what's the profit motive if they're already getting traffic from other AOL sites?

Hunter's talent and ability has allowed me to almost totally focus on the business side of CSJ, which is nothing less or more than sales, sales, sales. No, we are not breaking even yet - and I'm not taking any money from the business either - but I am making inroads and learning a lot.

As I've been making my sales calls, a few thoughts about news media have crystallized for me.

1.     Sales work exposes the flaws and reveals the true value of a product.

This is a "duh" statement for anyone who has spent a day making sales calls (or knocked on doors for a political candidate) but it needs to be repeated since it is the bedrock of everything I've learned in the past month.

In the context of news media, I believe that most of the public dialogue about news has conducted by journalists and those with journalist tendencies. The result has been too much discussion about ethics and mission and not enough about product and what consumers - advertisers as well as readers - really want.

When you repeatedly talk with potential buyers of your product you experience a fiery crucible that reveals what's good about your product and what is unneeded. For CSJ I've learned the true value of local, local, local. Advertisers desperately want a channel to talk to the customer around the corner. We do that very well at CSJ. So now we focus on that and little else. You will never again see a story in CSJ that could reasonably appear in any other publication.

2.     News media is a product, not an art. It should not be romanticized.

Again, I think because journalists conduct most of the public dialogue about news media there are too many people who dreamily recall cigar-chomping men hammering out stories on manual typewriters while wearing bad hats. This is a dangerous habit. You should run from these people as if they have the plague.

To cite Bill Wyman again, newspapers and TV news have thrived on the predication that they provide direct access for advertisers. Those days are gone. Despite zillionaires buying the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Wall Street Journal with no clear business model, the rest of the news world needs to keep a clear focus on figuring out where the money is in this business.

This does not mean news media should become nothing but TMZ and Huffington Post. Those are excellent products - in the same way McDonald's hamburgers are an excellent product. Discussions about news media need to begin with the question, "Who are our customers and what can we charge them?" before anything else. Otherwise you invite large scale money hemorrhaging and eventual bankruptcy.

3.     Brand value is everything in news media success

Unlike a Mercedes-Benz or a McDonald's hamburger, news media is an intangible product that requires long-term consumer interaction to obtain a consistent identity. This is a tricky business that requires clear thinking and vigilance on the part of editors, publishers and sales staff to ensure readers and advertisers are getting the same value messages.

For instance, for CSJ I realized that while readers may value the local focus of our publication, so do advertisers - and so I made it part of my sales pitch. Hunter and I talk about what kind of stories we should be covering and I tell prospective advertisers about those decisions. I believe this conveys to them that if they advertise with us, they become part of a publication that provides clear value to the community - just as they do with their own products and services.

The brand value for CSJ readers and advertisers is reliable, high quality, hyperlocal news. This means clear writing, no opinion, hard news that stays strictly within our coverage boundaries. For instance Hunter and I recently discussed whether we should write about openly gay State Rep. Deb Mell's engagement announcement. In an age when most news consumers click through four or five publications a day as part of their news diet, we decided that while Rep. Mell represents a part of our coverage area, hers was a statewide story thoroughly covered elsewhere.

What else could we write about that day? The Food Network taping a show in a neighborhood bakery and a local alderman's reluctance to vote in favor of allowing Wal-Mart to expand in Chicago. Nobody else wrote about those things and we think we brought more value to our readers and our advertisers. Local news, local readers, local advertisers.

4.     Large media organizations are caught between a need to lower prices, a reluctance to eliminate outmoded, expensive media structures and unclear brands

This is important: While Hunter is drawing a salary from CSJ, he is far from getting rich. And I am far from getting paid. We are pouring in our own sweat equity with the hope that we'll eventually create something sustainable.

This is exactly what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did with Apple. What Henry Ford did. Hunter and I are building a new business in the proverbial garage. It is cheap and we have no legacy expenses. It is a tremendous competitive advantage in the news business: We have no shareholders or lenders monitoring our revenues and it provides us with tremendous flexibility with our product and with pricing.

From what I hear from people inside large media organizations and from my own outside observation it seems that leaders at companies like the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal know they have not yet hit the floor for advertising prices. Yet they are also reluctant to really cut away at their companies - and they still have not identified their brands.

And no, I don't think news organizations have made the real cuts yet. ABC News' 25% layoffs this past week and plan to create "digital journalists" seems to be the right direction. A few years ago I read about Brazilian TV reporters who would carry small Digital-8 cameras, shoot their own footage, do their stand-ups using tripods and then edit the footage themselves. Yes, it probably looks less polished, but in the YouTube era I think we can expect news consumers to accept rough edits and poor framing in exchange for more news choice.

As for brands, I am puzzled why the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are preparing to engage in a local news war. If is this where the advertising is, then Carlos Slim and Rupert Murdoch should invest their billions in tabloid newspapers and slim down the Times and Journal to staffs that can be sustained by their national coverage.

Locally, I can't for the life of me figure out what the Tribune and Sun-Times are supposed to be. A brawny city news tabloid for the Sun-Times? A publication of record with "higher end" reporting for the Tribune? Then why does the Sun-Times still pay Lynn Sweet? Why does the Tribune have a tabloid edition and a broadsheet? Pick a direction, slim it down. Go through the crucible.

5.     Revenue is the cheapest kind of money.

It's not a new saying, I know, but I most recently heard Linda Darragh, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at University of Chicago say it at March's MIT Enterprise Forum here in Chicago. She said it at the end of moderating a discussion about the value of obtaining investors versus bootstrapping a new enterprise.

Almost every successful enterprise (biotech excepted) has had a period of bootstrapping where the concept was proven out by making sales. Successful sales can make an enterprise more attractive to investors - but it also alleviates entrepreneurs from the pressure of investor payback concerns.

And as I said in Point 1, going through the sales process helps you determine what works and what doesn't.

Those who want to create successful news media enterprises should begin not with the question, "Where do I get investor money?" but, "How am I going to make money?"

If you can't provide the answer to that question, no amount of money from the Knight Foundation, Carlos Slim or AOL.com is going to save you.

In a YouTube video they produced called "The Big Idea", Leitner and Timpone pitch directly to potential clients. Who are they? "They tend to be organizations that are best in class and nobody knows it or have a unique take on the marketplace and nobody knows it," said Leitner to me in a phone conversation. "Organizations that need the market place to understand the issue more fully, so the public would know why our client is best suited to help them."

I think of it as being more like "Guiding Light", the long-running, recently-cancelled soap opera that was wholly sponsored by and owned by Proctor and Gamble for over fifty years. As a sponsored television show, P&G paid ABC for the airtime and put on their show. ABC acted as a conduit for the show, whatever the content might be, because P&G paid for it and produced it themselves.

But "Light" was a soap opera and this is news.

I know Leitner professionally, and some months ago he invited me one afternoon to meet Timpone to help them hash out their idea. Mostly we talked about various ways news media companies attempt to make money from their products. The word "journalism" never came up in our conversation. Instead the discussion was entirely focused on how to actually make money from news.

For that reason, there are many who will have a problem with Private Label News. There's also an inherent conflict of interest problem - if I am paying for the news coverage, there's a good chance it might be slanted in my favor. Italy, whose billionaire Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, owns most of his country's news media, is struggling with this problem in a big way, but Berlusconi doesn't seem to have problem with it.

Unlike Berlusconi's Mediaset, Private Label News does not aim to cover the big stories of the day. Leitner and Timpone imagine it will be interesting to those who want the smaller stories of the day to get coverage. As the "Big Idea" video suggests, it would cover industries that have lost their coverage as a result of shrinking news budgets.

"Timpone has been doing this for years on behalf of the U.S Chamber of Commerce," said Leitner. "They want good coverage of the state Attorney Generals offices, [because] AG's are a real battleground on the issues for tort reform debate. That's a real good example of turning the lights on in the gym so people can draw their own conclusions."

The news service Leitner refers to is Legalnewsline.com. It works just like any other wire service, and plenty of local newspapers quote from it. It is hard news, covering a beat that nobody else wants to or has the resources to cover. It has a few small advertisers. The "About Us" page doesn't draw any connection to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Frankly, as a reader, I am not quite sure what to think of this approach. It seems impartial, and I know Leitner well enough to know he is not hiding anything from me. But the average reader would not entirely know who is behind legalnewswire.com - so wouldn't knowing that information change how their news is received?

But then again, think of all the talking points fed to Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman by less than impartial sources. All the effort expended by various PR agencies to influence reporters - the junkets, the personal conversations.

When I first started working in politics, I helped put on a "frozen chicken bowling" event with famed chef Wolfgang Puck in the U.S. Capitol, so Congressmen and the national press would learn how chicken categorized as "fresh" are actually frozen, according to USDA rules. The event was a smash hit, with stories in papers and TV stations across the country. Soon after, the USDA changed the rule on what constituted as "fresh" chicken.

The event was sponsored by smaller local chicken producers that didn't have the resources to freeze their chickens and ship them across the country. My lobbying firm cast it as consumer issue, but for the local producers, it was a money issue.

None of the TV stations mentioned the appetizers handed to them personally by Puck, or that they got to bowl chickens with famous Senators. That must have impacted them, right?

Private Label News is on to something. I am just not sure where it will take us.

But first a polemic: I am a strong believer in the long-tail theory. In that vein, I believe Hyperlocal is yet one more slice of the tail. It will never dominate news, but it will become a hard to ignore bit player, sort of like 12" club remix records.

There's a lot of talk about hyperlocal these days, because people are still assessing its ultimate value and trying to figure out how it fits in with the rest of the media mix. But in the end, I think the talk will die down and hyperlocal will become just one more part of everyone's daily media diet.

It appears that hyperlocal news is separating itself into three broad implementations I call:

• Aggregation;
• Augmentation; and
• Original Content

Aggregation is the easiest to implement, since it is merely grouping news stories by town, neighborhood or zip code. It is growing the fastest since a robust aggregation hyperlocal site merely needs a good news scraper/spider to pull original content from elsewhere. It also provides the least value. Quite a few Google Ad link farms are aggregation hyperlocal sites.

Examples: Outside.in, Patch.com

Original Content is on the other side of the extreme, where original content is generated by some mix of dedicated or freelance on-the-ground reporters. This is time-consuming and expensive since original reporting requires lots of legwork. It is also of high value to readers, since the site is providing content that is otherwise unavailable.

Examples: CenterSquareLedger.com, MyBallard.com, BaristaNet.com

Augmentation is not exactly a compromise between the two but it does take from both implementations. As the name suggests, it is always a part of some already existing news collection enterprise. The hyperlocal content can be either repurposed news from some existing publication, "directors' cut" versions of stories that didn't make it on TV or in print, a reporters' blog or other stories that were never intended to go on air or in print.

Examples: KOMOnews.com/communities, NY Times: The Local, Chicago Now

In my opinion, all of the above implementations qualify as "hyperlocal" news. There are many who would disagree with me, probably mostly those who run Original Content sites.

Also, while all of the above implementations use the name "hyperlocal", I think it is important to note that they are no more direct competitors than Digg.com and NYTimes.com are direct competitors.

To illustrate, let me compare hyperlocal local news to a more common example.

Aggregation = Aldi

Augmentation = Basic supermarket

Original Content = Boutique butcher shop

Aggregation is cheap and gives you no more value than the basics. Just like Aldi.

Augmentation is meant to be part of a broad offering of content. There's lots to choose from, but not all of it is targeted at your needs. Most of it is produced in a distant factory with little local flavor.

Original Content is made just for you, has lots of local flavor and is quirky. It doesn't always have the most professional methods, but you tend to look the other way because you feel like you have a personal relationship with the people making it.

I also believe that each of these implementations serve different groups of advertisers. Because of the audiences served by each implementation, it is hard for me to see how advertisers would benefit by moving between each group.

• Aggregation is almost a pure Google Ad play or for broad national ad campaigns.
• Augmentation would work well to extend national or regional ad campaigns looking to penetrate certain geographic areas.
• Original Content sites are mostly for regional or neighborhood-based advertisers.

I believe we should expect all of these implementations to grow and peacefully co-exist for some years to come. All are potential money-makers because all of them aim to serve a different audience and can carry different types of advertisers.

The Center Square Ledger has been officially publishing for three weeks now and I think we're starting to get the hang of things. After a frenetic publishing schedule to show new readers that we've got a lot going on, we slowed down a bit. The slower pace doesn't seem to have hurt our daily average readers, which has settled at about 350 a day.

This is a GREAT number from our perspective. Outside of flyering the neighborhood el stops on our first day and hitting the local blog scene, we've really been growing by word of mouth. 350 a day puts us just over 10k a month, which was the dream scenario Patrick and I had when we talked about our launch. This is a real number ­- five digits - that you can show people.

So while traffic is doing well and we seem to be publishing compelling content, revenues are not what we'd like.

The mystery to me has been why. I'm pretty sure our ad pricing is very competitive versus other outlets. I know we are considerably more targeted than other outlets. We have solid readership numbers.

Thus a conundrum: Why don't people want to advertise with the Ledger?

A few things come to mind:

• It's January/February and people don't want to spend
• The economy, stupid
• Web advertising is not physically tangible and thus perceived as less effective
• Local businesses generally don't advertise

The first two I can live with. The third requires salesmanship and buyer education. The fourth - well that's the one that gives me the shivers.

Door knocking does not intimidate me. As a political campaign worker I think I've probably knocked on tens of thousands of doors. Probably somewhere in six digits. People have siced their dogs on me, cursed at me, yelled, you name it. As a campaign worker, I know that I have to get through a certain number of doors in order to persuade a certain number of voters.

Eventually you learn a vibe. If you knock on enough doors, you get an intuitive sense if you have a good message. You can tell when, even if the voter doesn't sign on, you've got them thinking.

I've had that good vibe at about 25% of my stops. That's encouraging. But really, I think I need to be reaching out to more people, more often. Mailing postcards keeps coming to mind, but I'm not sure it is cost effective. Besides that, getting contact information is not easy, since no list of local businesses is readily available.  Could I buy one? Probably. But I'm not sure I'm ready to pony up the money considering we have a no cash flow operation.

What we have done is started thinking about ways we can make the Ledger more relevant to businesses. We've considered doing a regular print distribution, but the need to create a whole new operations process for that has held us back. We're looking at doing some special publications, but a few things need to be lined up before we can get that going. We're also thinking about running an ad special - along with coupons to prove the connection.

Clearly we need to get over a hump with local businesses, the question is how.

Before I go further, a disclaimer.

I love Apple products.  I'm on my fourth Mac and I own an iPhone. I was an Apple contract employee my senior year of college. But please leaven that with the fact that I also spent college doing repair work for PCs, VAX/VMS and Unix machines as well as Apple. I used to bleed Windows and hated Mac-heads, until I got sick of fixing the same recurring problems on my own PC. Then I saw why Apple products are great. They just work.

So, my religious conversion aside, here's the things that most impressed me with Apple's demo today:

• 150 million iTunes accounts - That's 150 million people who are have already put their credit cards into Apple's computers. An incredible draw for anyone selling anything.
• 75 million iPhone owners - Like Steve Jobs said, those are people who already know how to use (and like) the iPhone interface. Because so many people already have a high likelihood of purchasing the new iPad, content providers can be sure there will be readers on this platform soon.
• Over 3 billion Apps sold through iTunes - Again, lots of people like to buy stuff through Apple. Not through Amazon. Or B&N or what ever proprietary system devised by Google or Palm.
• Books sold on iTunes will use ePub standard - If you've coded HTML, this open standard is easy to understand. Anyone can create content - text, video or audio and publish it immediately.
• Five major book titles are behind the launch - It's not as big as when four big record labels got behind iTunes, the book market is more fragmented, but it means lots of new content will be hitting iTunes' virtual shelves.

Then, some other things we didn't see in the demo:

• McGraw Hill CEO Statement - Terry McGraw's early leak on iPad yesterday just proves that one of the world's biggest textbook publishers is taking iPad seriously. Imagine if you bought your college textbooks on iPad? Remember what a pain selling your books were? Imagine the money saved by eliminating print.
• Sports Illustrated's "think piece" - Watch this amazing video. SI released it in December and it shows not just how forward thinking SI editors are, but how much cooler SI could be on the iPad rather than print. If you could subscribe to this today, would you buy an iPad? I think I have a sports nut brother-in-law that might. (He does not like computers, BTW.)
• iPhone OS 3.0 In App Purchase API - Bear with me here on the geek speak. Apple announced this last year. It basically means that you don't have to run over to iTunes to buy stuff. From Apple PR, "you can create a subscription magazine app where you ask for payment on a monthly, yearly or periodic basis of your choice...Build a general-purpose city travel guide app and let your customers pick the city guides they want."

Are you excited yet?  It gets better. Although the iPad won't hit the street for two months, you can download the iPad developer kit today and start making your new online magazine/newspaper/hybrid-whatever. Anyone. Even you.

The hybrid-whatever ideas are what excites me the most. With each new information technology paradigm - and that's what the iPad is - we've learned that new technologies bring new uses and new ways of seeing things. We should expect future news products to be a blend of newspaper/tv/travel guide/magazine/blog/etc. Everything will blend. 

Don't try to mash this into your current understanding of things.  It'll be totally different.

The most important lessons of the first week:

1. 
   Leg work pays off. We hit every El and Metra stop for our launch day's morning commute. It was cold, dark and more than half of the people were rude. But many others took our flyers - and we saw an immediate increase in traffic that night. This is yet another case of, "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
2. Tell everyone you know. Even in a metro area as big as Chicago you'd be surprised how interwoven we are. For instance, it turns out one of the close friends of my tenants works for a local chamber of commerce. By the time I called her for help, she had already heard about the Ledger.
3. Join the local chamber of commerce. We live in an isolating world and that's made worse for me by producing a product that's delivered electronically. Opportunities to gather and talk to other like-minded people are important. The local chambers of commerce provide those opportunities, and at the very least I emotionally benefit from those interpersonal relationships.
4. Keep working and be patient. At the Lincoln Square Chamber meeting I was talking to Gunther Kempf, one of the two brothers that founded the Chicago Brauhaus in 1963. After he finished boasting about how his annual Oktoberfests are jam packed, I asked him how things were when he first started. "Well, it was hard, of course. We had lots of nights when the place was empty, and we struggled. But we kept going, and things got better." When you look at the success of a long-running business, it often seems impossible to replicate. But then, how do you suppose the successful people got started?
5. Stay positive. It's easy to be positive about places like Lincoln Square and Northcenter. They are great places to live and work. But I find that humans tend to be sourpusses. As a result of our generally positive (but not whitewashing) coverage this week, we've received at least half a dozen messages and comments from readers thanking us for our positive outlook. I'm convinced that's an element of our future success. And it certainly makes things more fun.

Next week we're going to start really beating the bushes for advertisers. That should be an interesting process - and I am sure we'll learn lots about what we should and should not be doing.

Dang this is fun.

I wanted to be like Michael Scott.

The news of his sudden, unexplained death on Monday morning shocked me to the core. The idea that someone I admired so much is dead - either by his own hand or by someone else's - is very difficult for me to believe.

Michael called a great number of people "friends." Unlike most people in politics it was not because he was playing them along, it was because, I believe, that he genuinely saw some good in everyone and wanted to identify with that goodness, no matter who it was.

With that qualification in mind, I think Michael called me a friend. In my mind, he was more than that. He was a mentor. On occasion he took time to counsel me, give me guidance, provide personal wisdom and relate his own life to mine. I had some chances to watch him work and admire his style and talent. I wanted to emulate him as much as possible - although I lacked his essential coolness of character.

There are certain people you meet in life that become models for your behavior. In my clearer-headed moments I would ask, "How would Michael handle this?" Then I would piece things together and try and be like Michael Scott.

That's why I'm having such a hard time with his death. I suppose now and then it seemed like something darker lurked beneath his surface - maybe that's where his boundless empathy came from - but I just can't believe the darkness was bad enough that he felt like he had no options.

That was one of the things about Michael: "Patience," he would tell me. "You never know what's going to come later on down the road." Coolness. Calm. Patience. Empathy.

But none of that jibes with suicide.

Then maybe he did kill himself. The evidence released so far points to that possibility so I have to prepare myself for that. Denying the possibility of suicide feels like I'm holding on to him a bit more. It is a temptation: As if I am defending his honor.

But the Michael I knew would shrug his shoulders, look down at the ground and probably say, "Well, you never can know someone else's thoughts." He'd give words of comfort and suggest we get on with living.

Dammit. I'll really miss him.

In the past month three new "public interest" news gathering efforts have been launched and I have been told that as many as three more may be on their way. The three efforts already daylighted, Chicago Current, the Chicago News Cooperative and Chicago Public Radio's rebranding into "Chicago Public Media", all call for production of new "public interest" reporting to be distributed on multiple platforms. The other three still-gestating efforts also focus on the "public interest" news arena, each with a different business model.

And then many of Chicago's established news brands are attempting a retool:

• The Chicago Reader's new publisher, Jim Warren, has said that he wants to determine, "where the Reader is situated in Chicago" and then reinvent the paper.
• As part of an effort of all network owned-and-operated stations, NBC 5's new NBCChicago.com has led a big increase in new site visitors with new original content.
• In an effort to rise out of the basement, CBS 2 has been trying every play in the book, including bringing old news anchors back to the broadcast.
• WGN Radio is bringing Chicago Now bloggers to their broadcast.

The common thread through these efforts is that nobody seems to think getting skilled reporters is difficult. Never has high quality, experienced, news-gathering talent ever seemed so inexpensive.

Simultaneously, Chicago's bigger news brands are under attack more than ever before. Chicago's news media outlets have unclear and undefined brands and it is difficult for news consumers to make news purchase choices.

"The intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised." - David Ogilvy defining "brand"

One of the things you learn in business school is that the value of a brand is hard to quantify - but once it is established, it is the most valuable asset your organization can own. For this reason the Chicago Reader and "Chicago Public Media" deserve praise for publicly recognizing they have a specific niche in Chicago news - even if neither organization is capable of voicing it.

The other news brands undergoing their retools as well as Chicago's new public interest news organizations also lack clear brands. Who are they serving? What unique service do they provide?

It is no longer enough to merely provide "hard-hitting" news or lots of it. Because news-gathering is cheap the market is becoming saturated with news outlets - all preparing to provide the same content - in-depth "public-interest" reporting. Occasionally one will scoop the other, allowing them to crow a bit. But how do these various outlets differentiate themselves?

I am sure each of Chicago news outlets believe they have a well-defined brand. But unless the average reader knows and understands a product's brand then the product is in trouble.

What is NBC Chicago's brand? CBS2? The Chicago Reader? The Sun Times?

The big guys are having trouble telling us their brands. It's never been cheaper to start and operate a high-quality news operation. So who's going to be the one to establish the most powerful news brand in Chicago?

There has been a growing fear that Capital-J Journalism, A.K.A. "Public Interest Journalism", is endangered by declining mainstream media budgets and ignorant media executives chasing higher stock prices. "Unless we find enlightened corporate ownership/government subsidy/foundation support," the fearful ones say, "our local news will plunge into darkness and soon be all AP stories and soulless breaking news updates."

This is empty thinking unworthy of a trade supposedly grounded in clear-eyed analysis. 

In response to the hue and cry, Chicago has become the crèche of multiple Capital-J Journalism rescue operations, each heralding Public Interest Journalism as their raison d'etre. They include the money-hemorrhaging purchase and operation of the Sun Times Media Group by Jim Tyree and associates, the MacArthur Foundation-subsidized Chicago News Cooperative and the enlightened capitalist for-profit venture of Geoff Dougherty, ChicagoCurrent.com.

While Capital-J Journalism  projects have been attracting bon mots, outside the limelight Chicago has seen some true news innovation. The renaissance has been led by projects like Everyblock, Gapersblock, The WindyCitizen, Chicagoist, The Beachwood Reporter, District 299, 600 Words, The Expired Meter, CTA Tattler and Lake Effect News. All of these efforts have ignored journalism's "tradition" baggage and has instead provided new meanings to "news". 

Maybe you've heard of Everyblock because of its recent sale to MSNBC. But each of these projects have three things in common: They are online-based, they target a specific demographic or psychographic and they serve a specific need or interest that is otherwise unserved by traditional news media.

When Chicagoist was founded six years ago I stumbled into its then-editor, Rachelle Bowden, and became the site's politics writer. During the two years I wrote for Chicagoist, our writing lacked content consistency and freewheeled like mad, despite Rachelle's attempts to focus us. But we had a snarky, ironic voice and managed to write about events and report news the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times missed. Our daily readership grew from dozens to thousands in two years and now the site averages about ten thousand daily readers - and is profitable.

Is Chicagoist journalism? For the most part it certainly is not. But on occasion it has breaking news and Tribune's Red Eye often swipes stories for its next edition. Other sites, like District 299 and Everyblock are more earnest than Chicagoist and actually attempt to distribute real news, minus the snark.

Together these sites make up the category killers of news. They don't want to serve everyone, just their specific, isolated niche. They do not pretend to replace the Tribune or Sun Times, but together they are dealing our daily newspapers a thousand tiny paper cuts in readership and ad revenue. Enough to kill them? Probably not. But in our post-modernist world, consumers want more choices, not less, and these category killers are here to stay.

This is the future home of Public Interest Journalism. A significant portion of Chicago learned about and rallied against the parking meter privatization at The Expired Meter. District 299 is the only place providing consistent news about Chicago's School Board. Service changes and CTA budget cuts are written about at CTA Tattler first and in more depth than our daily newspapers. You can learn more about zoning changes and neighborhood crime at Everyblock than in the dailies.

Talk to any reporter and they'll tell you that more than half of good reporting is getting information into daylight. Judging by the amount of information coming out into the open, it would seem to me that we are entering a new age of Public Interest Journalism that relies on many smaller, category killing publications, rather than mass market daily newspapers.

It wasn't that long ago that when you needed something, you knew you could find it at a department store. Big ones like Marshall Field's, Carson Pirie Scott, Wannamaker's, Woodward & Lothrop and Filene's worked to be one-stop shopping for everything you needed. Maybe you remember a time when Marshall Field's had a grocery in the basement, appliances and electronics on the top floor and everything else you could imagine in between.

Yes, you could find these things in other places, but Field's carried the best of everything. If you wanted the newest and greatest television set, you could go to State and Randolph with its Tiffany glass ceiling, get your new TV and maybe some great clothes. Later that week a green truck would pull up in front of your house to deliver and set up the TV.

Department stores were designed to provide everything under one roof. Certain items and departments sold better and had better returns than others - but department stores were obliged to sell everything under every category imaginable. If it was new, the department store would carry it. Otherwise, for many consumers it just wouldn't exist.

Consumers and producers alike were drawn to department stores. Consumers, because it was the only place in town to get many items. Producers, because it was the only place in town to sell your new products to the consumers they wanted to reach. It was a powerful combination that made department stores unbeatable and very profitable for a hundred years.

And then came the category killers.

Best Buy exploded on the scene in the late 80's and early 90's, offering a wide selection of electronics and household appliances. The stores had stripped down looks, were located on cheap real estate and were big. You could compare models from many brands - more than Field's offered - and get at home installation - just like Field's, but without Field's prices. These "category killer" stores took high margin electronics and appliances from department stores and left everything else behind.

Desperate to protect their one-stop-shopping reputation and big margins on electronics, the department stores scrambled to compete. They created exclusive brands just for their stores, slashed prices and tried flashy marketing. But nothing worked. Consumers saw the low prices and big selection and voted with their wallets.

Today very few department stores sell electronics or appliances. It was a serious blow to department stores' profitability and sustainability. For department stores that lacked strong downtown shopping districts it was a deathblow. For everyone else, it put them on the ropes.

And then came the on-line stores.

The Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times are facing situations similar to that of department stores in the early 1990's. Not very long ago, if you needed to know something current - news, sports scores, stock prices, movie times, and airline ticket prices - you picked up your local newspaper. Everyone picked up a newspaper. For this reason, newspapers could guarantee unbeatable mass coverage.

Like department stores, consumers chose newspapers because it was the only place to find new stuff, and advertisers went to newspapers because it was the only place where you could find all the people.

But daily newspapers held onto their monopoly of coverage because the cost of production was so high. It was rare for a new daily to be launched, and were usually done by wealthy iconoclasts on behalf of "the people" rather than as shrewd business decisions.

Then the internet arrived. Once production costs were no longer tied to distribution, readers began to choose other venues for specific information. The category killers for news were Craigslist, ESPN.com, Fandango.com and others. Newspapers quickly began to lose their readership.

It's been a long, slow decline for newspaper circulation. Earlier this week the Chicago Tribune announced its daily circulation was 501,000. Ten years ago it was 627,000. For the Sun Times circulation has fallen to 312,000 from 472,000 in 1999.

Worse yet for newspapers, sensing that there are more effective ways to find consumers, advertisers have begun to shift their ad buys to other channels.

Department stores, weighed down by their big, downtown emporiums, went into a downward spiral after category killers arrived. Philadelphia's Wannamaker's, D.C.'s Woodward & Lothrop and Boston's Filene's no longer exist. Carson's is gone from downtown and Marshall Field's State Street store - now Macy's - often seems more like a tourist destination than a working store.

Daily newspapers differ from department stores in that they produce their product as much as they deliver it to the consumer. With this difference comes an opportunity, newspapers can choose to stop trying to be a one-stop-shop and serve individual segments.

Some large daily newspapers will continue to be profitable - like the Chicago Tribune - because of sheer momentum. But like department stores, daily newspapers are living in a changed world that won't change back. Unless they radically alter their model and focus on whom they are serving, their future is bleak.