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Rick Ellis

Apple Valley, MN
Commenter for
5 years 24 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 01/06/10 at 02:13 pm in response to Examiner.com: The fastest-growing national 'news' site's local impact

Examiner.com has went through a number of business models since its launch. It originally was a bit of a spin-off of the print editions, and their first effort involved hiring local managing editors to handle all the local examiners. I think they only hired four or five before deciding that approach was too labor intensive/expensive.

Then they were aiming for a mixed staff of "national" examiners and local ones. The theory being that the national folks would cover the areas where...

Posted on 09/30/09 at 12:05 pm in response to Star Tribune hires freelancers to drain comment cesspool

My question is...how did I manage to miss this when they hiring these people?

I'm up at 3:00 am.

Posted on 09/16/09 at 10:35 pm in response to Star Tribune, Pioneer Press editors intrigued by paywalls

Given the PiPress's lackluster TwinCities.com, I can't imagine that they would seriously consider any sort of a pay wall, tiered or not. There are a lot of things they could do to boost web revenue, but a paywall is probably the least likely to succeed option.

When it comes to major markets, paywall experiments haven't been especially successful. And it's difficult for me to see what sort of content you can put behind a paywall that wouldn't just leak out some other way.

The...

Posted on 09/03/09 at 01:59 pm in response to Real-Time Ads moves beyond beta

Is this something you've built in-house?

A great idea, and I kind of wish I had something like this for my web site.

Rick Ellis
AllYourTV.com

Posted on 08/13/09 at 01:23 pm in response to Is Star Tribune bringing back its TV section ... for a price?

Great read, David.

As someone who's recently struggled mightly with the Strib's circulation department, I would settle for them providing a bit more training, particularly when it comes to dealing with orders that come in from those third-party telemarketers they use (Grrrr.)

But as someone who a)lives in the Twin Cities and b)makes his living writing about TV and running a web site targeted to TV fans, I'm extremely skeptical that a subscription TV section would work here....

Posted on 02/04/09 at 08:58 pm in response to The gutsiest PR person in town

David--just to be clear (and I thought I was). I didn't say I think A&E critics aren't journalists. I said that editors and management often believe that to be the case.

Yes, there are exceptions. But overall, my experience (and that of a lot of colleagues I've spoken with) is that the average arts critic is generally considered to be less journalistically talented than their "hard" news brethern.

It's not fair, and often not accurate. But that attitude does influence what...

Posted on 02/04/09 at 02:03 pm in response to The gutsiest PR person in town

Jason makes a good point about whether or not sports PR would make the same complaint--and I suspect they would.

But that's because at many local publications, sports/arts/entertainment critics aren't *really* considered to be journalists, and as a result, what their bosses expect to see them writing about is limited to snapshot reviews and often less-than ground-breaking interviews.

I have a pretty solid journalism background (including a stint as a financial reporter), but...

Posted on 01/29/09 at 12:56 am in response to Next thing you know, they'll be giving it away

I'm as supportive of journalism as the next guy, but the subscription price difference between the Pioneer Press and Strib is striking.

I live in Dakota County, and I recently reupped for the three-issue week PP deal that cost me $15 for $13.

Even though I've subscribed to the Strib for a long time, the best deal I can get from them for a somewhat similar deal (they also throw in Saturday) is nearly $40.

While I enjoy the Strib, I'm pretty sure the quality isn't three...

Posted on 12/12/08 at 10:59 am in response to A no-newspaper town?

I want to throw out a different scenerio. Given that the Pioneer Press owns the memorable TwinCities.com URL, might it not make sense to use that domain to build a bigger online presence?

One possibility: the Hubbard family's commitment to the web side of their business is marginal at best. So why not roll the Hubbard online sites (like the ones for KTSP and their radio stations) into TwinCities.com. Hubbard would probably be thrilled to just take a cut of the ad revenue and not have...

Posted on 11/26/08 at 01:27 am in response to WCCO Radio asks big names to take a pay cut

This is the thing I find fascinating.

WCCO-AM has a *22-minute-an-hour* commercial load. That's past the point of audience unfriendly and real close to the territory of being passive-agressive with your audience. And yet, they still need to cut overhead?

Either their cost structure is way out of whack, or money is being sucked out into the other CBS properties.

In the end, it doesn't matter the size of your audience. If you can't return a solid enough revenue stream...