You wrote an article recently with the headline, “Tomorrow’s life-or-death decisions for newspapers are suddenly today’s, thanks to coronavirus,” discussing how today’s sudden economic and news climate is forcing media companies to face some big decisions a lot sooner than they anticipated. Can you share more about it?

If you’re strong going into a recession, you can probably survive. You’re going to be tattered a little, but you might even gain some market share. If you’re weak, you’re just trying to hold on. And this isn’t just companies that are weak, it’s the entire news industry that’s weak. And the pandemic has caused a lot of damage. The publishers and CEOs that I talked to might’ve entered the decade thinking they had three to four more years to figure out a new stable business model. But now they’re saying “we don’t have that time.” It’s sped up. And as they plan for 2021, they’re asking — What’s the nature of our business? Does it really have an office anymore? How much of it is print? How much of it is digital? Do we really need outside salespeople? All of those questions have become immediate questions.

How does the media get on a path to a more sustainable business model?

We have proven models and they are almost all national models. And the model is a business that’s driving a higher percentage of its revenue from digital, as opposed to legacy, whether it’s print or other. And if you look at The New York Times, The Globe and Mail in Toronto, they get two-thirds of their revenue from reader revenue. That’s a very good benchmark for 2020. Most of the rest comes from advertising. So advertising is still very important, but it’s a secondary source and the kind of advertising, especially branded content advertising, that does what Google and Facebook can’t do. A third or fourth revenue source could be different cuts of professional services such as events in non-COVID times, or virtual events as we get into 2021. That model is pretty clear. As they go more digital, they cut as many legacy costs as they can and save money. So they are focused on two things: producing great unique content and selling it to their readers, backed up by advertiser sales. That’s the model.

You started a company last year called “Lookout Local” which aims to build a new model for local news in the 2020s. Tell us more about it.

It’s based on a lot of what I’ve learned and what I believe about the business: the appetite for local news has never gone away. The idea is to create a news company in any local community — a very good platform, centralized technology, state-of-the-art design, mobile-first, digital-only – that offers enough content from experienced reporters that people can say, “I haven’t heard about that news company before, but what they’re writing about makes sense.” The great market opening in many communities is to become a new primary news source. The difference between Lookout and many local news sites is that they tend to be supplemental. What’s needed are new local news institutions that really operate as businesses. Lookout is for profit, but it’s also a public benefit company. A lot of ideas in there are borrowed from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Guardian as well as little sites like Charlotte Agenda, etc. We hope to prove our new model and we’ve got to get it right in the first market. And then, we hope to see that model expanded in other places.