(Annette Moser-Wellman) It's easy to get tied up in our underwear debating what should be the mission of the news organization - delivering news or providing information?  Jack Lail, News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel, knows his answer. "I'm a big believer that we have to be useful to our audience.  That is really what we do. If being useful is making it easy for you to find out stuff or acquire social currency at the water cooler, that's great. But it's also how to plan your life or what you're going to do this weekend. If you focus on being of use to your audience, then the news is very important, but it doesn't have to be the only thing that you try to accomplish."

And the Knoxville News Sentinel is finding a lot of fresh ways to be of use.  Facing the challenges of any local news service, the paper and its Web site, knoxnews.com, are focusing on serving audiences in a multi-platform way.  From text alerts to Twitter feeds, their goal is a deeply useful engagement level with consumers.

"In our local market, we need to be the largest player in  monthly visitors to our Web site," he says. "We are using different strategies to get people to come more frequently, particularly if they are not print newspaper readers."

And of course in a local market, you have to find ways to be useful vis-a-vis TV stations and their sites.  Knoxnews.com differentiates itself in two important ways: breaking news and video.  Breaking news is updated on the site frequently and provides in-depth reporting.

"We have to have more breaking news than they do and we have to do it more completely than they have it," Jack says.  The News Sentinel's staff has produced more than 600 videos in the last year – possibly as much video as the local TV station. Reporters are given inexpensive flip digital cameras for talking head interviews and on-the-scene reporting. These video can be e-mailed virally or even embedded on a MySpace page.

As a holding of Scripps Newspapers, experimenting with new technologies at the News Sentinel and knoxnews.com is important. Jack mentions the ownership's penchant for being first to try new things, such as the new Yahoo ad serving system, APT.

He notes that trying new things in the mobile platform is important too.

"Mobile may be the dominant platform eventually," Jack says.  "Certainly with devices like the iPhone, you can see how mobile could be the primary way people get information.  We have our eye on it, but for now we are doing a lot of text messaging.  In a week we'll do 75 to 80 text messages.  As we update the Web site, the mobile sites are also updated." Knoxnews.com also has a site for the community to upload and share photos.

Jack sees more 'low-hanging fruit' in the media group's core Web sites.  Growing audience penetration and monetizing every page view confirms their mission.  Knoxnews.com is even launching a new site, Knoxville.com, that will be entertainment-oriented and provide more 'go and do' sorts of information. 

A central factor of the marketing equation is the good use of outbound linking.  "We use a blog aggregator called blognetwork.knoxnews.com to either link to or list stories.  On our sports site, we often do round-ups of what other newspapers, Web sites or bloggers are saying about football, basketball, coaches or whatever.  Newspapers sites need to do more linking like this instead of trying to create all the content.  Instead, make it easy for others to find the content, even if it's from a direct competitor. It all goes back to the mission of being useful," he says.

So whether it's news, information or someone else's news and information, serving the needs of your audience prevails.  Because when you become the trusted authority, you've built brand loyalty and never have to be tied up in your underwear again.


What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.

Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age, published by the Media Management Center. She teaches in MMC's Advanced Executive Program and Digital Strategies for Media Executives seminar.

This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops - both based on the TechScout research - will debut November 11.

Click here to view other articles in the TechScout series.