In 2006, Adam Klawonn cashed out his newspaper job vacation pay to reinvent himself as a digital journalist. He bought a laptop and a camcorder, and trained himself how to create a blog, edit HTML code, shoot video and edit it in Final Cut Pro, edit photos, create graphics in Photoshop, and manage a Web site—specifically, “The Zonie Report,” an online regional news magazine about Arizona (tag line: “The rest of the Arizona story”) that he started on his own dime without any big funders or major journalism connections.
Last week, Klawonn announced that after nearly four years, and “not a penny to show for it,” The Zonie Report would shut down. He had hustled to promote the site: attending mixers and industry trade shows, relentlessly marketing online through social networking sites, and speaking at media-related events. He even showed up at local charity road races with The Zonie Report logo prominently displayed on his chest alongside his runner’s bib, wearing a sombrero just to draw attention. He had also worked to create a steady stable of contributors. He got local journalism students involved, hired some regular bloggers, signed freelancers to contracts and paid them—out of his own pocket—the shockingly competitive rate of forty to fifty cents per word. He freelanced on the side to keep himself afloat.
In the end, he had a total of five inquiries from advertisers over nearly four years, and lost all but $500 of the $20,000 he sank into the endeavor. At the height of his site’s traffic, his audience was 8,000 monthly visitors out of the six million Arizona citizens that he considered potential readers. “In hindsight, I stuck with this longer than I should have,” Klawonn said. “I should have quit two years earlier.”
Wow, Mr. Klawonn did a rather poor job of marketing his site.
I live in Arizona, and dwell online for 10+ hours a day, yet never heard of his news site.
Four years ago, tidings still to tough to brave a local oriented news site. But I am surprised at the low numbers of page visits, given that I was part proprietor in a similar venture (phxnews.com, now totally defunct), and we had metrics far in excess of that reportedly for The Zonie Report. With advertising revenue that, while certainly no retirement windfall of or even plentiful enough to quit the day job, significantly exceeded the $500 (cited in the aforementioned article) mark netted in the 4 years of The Zonie Report’s existence.
I suspect with broadband penetration much greater, that eventually, someone is going to succeed at building a local news site. But they’re going to have to a much better job of marketing than Klawonn did — it’s simply bewildering to me that I did not encounter “The Zonie Report” prior to today.
Never seen its presence at a tweetup, social networking gathering or collaborative online creator conference. Or advertising in any form.
