News organizations should recognize themselves to be either a fire hose or a neighborhood block party and, if particularly robust, they should have both and discern the different strategies for each.

After joining an Aspen Institute Roundtable in D.C. back in June, I met up with NPR Project Argo’s Matt Thompson, who I teamed up with around CAT Signal a few months earlier. As we tend to do, we got lost in a long and rambling conversation that came to a philosophical point from Thompson: not enough news sites recognize what they are, simply a fire hose, spreading their audience to what is interesting and important.

First, two quick definitions in this context: (a) a fire hose site has relatively large traffic with more drive-by readers and (b) a block party site has relatively less traffic with highly focused and more loyal readers. In our conversation, Thompson introduced the ideas of fire hoses. I started thinking about block parties.

Right now, Thompson said, the organizations behind those fire hoses are limiting their future by focusing on the decaying destination site model and so limiting their fire hoses to only their own content. That is, as I’ve written, Philly.com should be a hub community gathering all the best information in the region, but, despite some early experiments, it isn’t significantly playing the game. The site only points to content from its sister papers, the Inquirer and the Daily News, so when, say, the Inquirer misses (or flat out ignores) some big stories, it’s as if they never happened.

If the online audience comes to realize that, Philly.com could lose that viewership. Fire hoses, Thompson and I discussed, need to be indiscriminate in their blasting. If it’s good, credible, relevant content, spray that fire hose. That becomes the value of the fire hose in the future.

What I pushed on was that block parties need to be intensely local (in geography or topic), attracting those loyal, relevant readers. The wider in coverage a block party goes, the more it risks failing. Indeed, the transition from block party to fire hose is a tricky one.

However, something Thompson and I did talk about was how in any given relationship within reason, a site could be a fire hose in one case and a block party in another, if done correctly. Meaning, Philly.com could be a block party (for Philly readers) and, say, a Yahoo News page could be the fire hose, yet that same Philly.com site could be a fire hose for Technically Philly, which, in turn, could be fire hose for a web developer’s project blog.

The revenue, marketing and editorial strategies of any given site should be focused around a true understanding of which it is first: fire hose or block party. That can mean everything.

Then he tweeted he was “starting a hyperlocal project,” and followed that up by calling for South Philly activists.

It’s worth noting that I’d bet a lot of old head Inquirer folks will remind others that the paper tried something not unlike hyperlocal with its Neighborhoods initiative, dropping Inqy staffers to every gosh darn civic meeting around. It didn’t take, from what I hear.

That said, this is surely part of what Dan Victor and company are doing over there, and I’m always excited to experimentation. I support people doing anything with a plan. Maybe it’ll fit into my vision for what Philly.com should become.

Philly.com Vice President Wendy Warren, at left, and Philly.com producer Daniel Victor lead a BarCamp NewsInnovation session on the direction of the news site, on Saturday, April 30, 2011.

For Philly.com to maintain and expand upon its role as the dominant hub site in the Philadelphia region, it needs to become a comprehensive, collaborative and open source for all news, information and analysis that happens, reflects and impacts this metro area.

For 15 years, the now Philadelphia Media Network-owned news website has exclusively featured content from its sister newspapers, the Inquirer and Daily News (also owned by PMN), in addition to online exclusives and Philly.com-led multimedia content.

Contrary to what perhaps many at PMN may believe, the more than 200 combined editorial staff members are not, and likely cannot, currently produce that comprehension. Nor should they.

Philly.com’s reach will always be stilted — by other major, also growing online audiences for local TV news websites, suburban newspapers, a nascent, if not yet real, threat in the NewsWorks initiative from WHYY, and other community sites — until it realizes it shouldn’t be a newspaper landing page but the ultimate authority of regional content. That’s a problem for the future success of a brand with a business model predicated on more eyeballs.

Let me be clear here: I have many friends who work there. I think they do great work. This is not at all a criticism of the work done there, but rather, some thoughts for developing their Philly.com brand. I’m an outsider and a journalism geek, so it’s fun to brainstorm. OK, follow my thoughts below:

Though reflecting of other trends too, Philly.com’s competition for audience (though with more than the six million monthly visitors they claim, it’s not small) is in no small part due to the reality that where we get our news reflects who we are. Philly.com is not a true online hub for the region. It is seen as the landing page for the city’s two biggest daily newspapers. Repeat: Philly.com is not actually seen as a separate business, though it is, but rather just another newspaper dot com. So, readers flood the 6 ABC or CBS 3 or, yes, the NewsWorks websites, because that’s where they get their news.

To succeed, Philly.com should strive to be seen as the curator in chief, above all them all in purpose, reach and partners.

The brand of Philly.com should be the still influential Drudge Report for Philly, curating and aggregating all the important, engaging stories of the region: irrespective of content producer or location.

It’s my argument that by sending people off site — linking to other news providers in the region — this would not decrease traffic and, more importantly, engagement in the long-term but instead increase it. Meaning, what might be lost in sending people off site could be filled in other ways, broader audience because of that new mission and. That, of course, is only if it is done honestly and authentically — two qualities that I fear will not be taken seriously by those with the power to do so.

What do I actually mean?

• Philly.com has an editor and a handful of producers, who develop partnerships with the Inquirer, the Daily News and every legacy and independent media outlet, blogger, content-creating nonprofit, group and person in the region. These partners schedule and suggest their best content be highlighted by Philly.com. The Philly.com producers take those recommendations and consume news to find their own, all to make suggestions for what’s strongest to the editor, who ultimately creates the often-moving homepage, and pushes via social media and other device platforms and tools. Much of this is not unlike what D.C. online news experiment TBD did, which is in large part why former staffer Dan Victor was poached by Philly.com. But guess what, WHYY is doing a lot of this in practice already at NewsWorks.org (see ‘The Feed’), but they would not be able to execute at the scale quickly enough to compete if any of this was actually set in motion by Philly.com. As browsers fade, this workflow for curation still has promise, as Philly.com RSS, social media, mobile tools and the like should all take on this ethos.
• Most of the lead content will still be from the Inquirer and the Daily News, because — here’s a little secret — the two daily newspapers still employ the most, best journalists in the region that puts out the most, best content, so, still, it’s going to be mostly stuff from them.
• Philly.com should move forward with this incubation initiative [read that link's sidebar], suggested by new CEO Greg Osberg, though internally I’ve heard again and again that it’s a sore subject as culture battles rage on. That’s why it should be a Philly.com initiative, which can be leaner and more progressive than its sister companies.
• Philly.com should maintain its video production unit, though I’d like to see any of their projects get the kind of long-term support that could let it flourish. Video production should be making money, through distribution and perhaps even back-end video production services.
• Philly.com should maintain and expand its Dealyo, daily deal initiative, though if sales are actually making it profitable, there ought to be a couple tracks: sports fan, adventure, family and/or female services (as I mostly only saw the last and unsubscribed because I found it consistently irrelevant to me)
• Figure out some relationship with GPTMC, because the local tourism and marketing agency kicks ass and has calendar and content production down, two things and coverage areas that should be seen on Philly.com. Don’t try to beat them, find a way to partner and bring more eyeballs to their work.
• The Inquirer and Daily News should maintain their own home pages, or their e-readers or whatever their staffs are doing. This can help calm staff concerns and give people who are very particular to a brand this option. But understand: the mentality that news consumers care where they get their news (or give a shit about your brand) is falling away, if it was ever really there.
• Formal content partnerships and a local advertising network is a waste of Philly.com’s time, as I see it, because hammering out details to host other people’s content (as opposed to just linking out) is a drain on staff time and, aside from a handful of meaty general interest sites (read: local TV news) no one else in the region has the kind of traffic that would be worthwhile to Philly.com. It didn’t work at TBD, and I’m not sure that’s only because full effort wasn’t put into it. Philly.com just won’t need it enough.

Problems:

• Money, as Dan Victor points out, direct linking is seen as a loss of revenue due to reduced page views for hosting even partial feeds of partner content or, perhaps alternately, a branded bar (perhaps with advertising) that would run across any partner sites Philly.com would link out to. But here’s what I say to that: when you ignore clear best choice for user experience and focus on your immediate, short-term goals first, you almost always lose. The right, clear, obvious choice is to link clearly and directly to good content. That’s how the web works. This is fundamental stuff. As described above, the answer here, is that you won’t be creating less content and, as said above, most of the best, featured content, will still come from in-house, so, while, sure, yes, you may see a short-term dip in traffic (it might even be a lot), what Philly.com would be creating is a real, genuine, true hub that can try to build broad audience (not, as I say above, be seen as just a landing page for two newspapers) and will, in the long term, have a better, stronger audience, and, Hell, I might even guess bigger. But this might take time — a year, maybe more, and a shift into other avenues beyond the homepage — and as I also said above, I don’t know if I trust in the leadership and the pressures that come with that leadership (from an entity owned by blank-faced banks) to do that the right way. As a final caveat to the money issue, as I, once more, noted a bit above, Philly.com and the organization as a whole needs to diversify its revenue beyond strictly advertising. What is its catering business? But, hell, I was whining about this in 2008 and 2009, so who cares!
• Trust, giving Philly.com producers a heads up on your best content gives the chance for them to share with their content-producing colleagues at the Inqy and Daily News. The brands are too confused for that to be overcome any time soon, so none of the legacy players will play nice to start. Philly.com has to make the first steps to link out when a story is broken by someone whose desk isn’t at 400 N. Broad Street.
• Habit, as Inqy and Daily News reporters see Philly.com as their homepage and only theirs. Many won’t want to see any other news outlet getting play. That’s why it’s so important to separate the brands.
• Branding, since, as stated above, Philly.com has two reputations: the landing page for two declining daily newspapers and home to click-grabbing content, like photo albums and video content with any excuse to show scantily-clad women (downtheshore standups, Philly Naked Bike Ride, Eagles cheerleader tryouts, celebrity shock photos, etc.). To grow, you need to be seen as this hub of news and information. Not all of it will be serious, but you can do so with professionalism and with greater respect once what Philly.com is made more clear.

I find it altogether interesting that during a series of meetings in late 2009 and early 2010 with a series of foundation representatives and thought leaders in this space, the idea of a regional hub site kept coming to the fore. I pushed back, suggesting that the idea of a destination site is wavering (due in large part to new mechanism to find content, and it won’t be primarily through visiting a specific site on a browser), but I understood it would still have a place for some time because of that familiarity to many people.

What’s interesting though, is that through those conversations, Philly.com was never talked about as a serious, viable option. Again, it was a newspaper landing page and home to click-grabbing garbage.

If Philly.com wants to stand up and be that true connector and driver of what is happening in Philadelphia — and monetize those eyeballs, that hub and more — then it needs to start with the obvious, in being a comprehensive, collaborative and open source for all news, information and analysis that happens, reflects and impacts this metro area.

In addition, journalists set free as the city’s newspapers spiraled into bankruptcy have founded independent Web sites, said Chris Satullo, executive director of news and civic dialogue at a site launched in November by WHYY, the local public radio and TV station. And journalism programs at Temple and LaSalle Universities turn out a steady stream of tech-savvy grads eager to add to the mix, he said, pointing to TechnicallyPhilly.com, a Web site founded by three recent Temple grads as an example.

The Philly.com icon that welcomes you to their headquarters on the 35th floor of 1601 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia, as seen on Jan. 8, 2009.

I owe Philly.com an apology.

I got heavy traffic on a recent post of mine in which I complimented the video product  (particularly Philadelphia Business Today) but regarded it as incomplete in many ways. I haven’t shifted much on my analysis, but I have learned I put the wrong address on the post. Find out where it should have gone below, and what every newspaper – or company, or organization, or individual – can learn from it about branding.

Philadelphia Business Today is not a product of the Inquirer… exactly. I know, Inqy business columnist Mike Armstrong is the lead host. Of course, it’s not a Daily News product. It’s a Philly.com product.

Do you know the difference? This is the most powerful, storied media organization in the fourth largest media market in the country, so if you live near Philadelphia and you don’t, they have a problem. If you aren’t from here, you should pay attention, too.

On Thursday, I got the extreme pleasure and privilege to nag and ask questions of two important fellas in this newspaper-digitization revolution we have on our hands: Yoni Greenbaum and Bob McGovern, executive producer and managing producer of Philly.com respectively.

I always had a vague sense that Philly.com was a different animal than the two newspapers whose content is hosted there. But it’s more.

They are full-throttle three different companies who just happen to be owned by the same company – Philadelphia Media Holdings. These different companies poach and they pilfer and share, for sure, but different companies they be.

So, get it straight. the Inquirer is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country, the region’s paper of record with 18 Pulitzers and a reputation as a once-was-truly-Great. The Daily News is the city’s 83-year-old tabloid known for its headlines, sports and city coverage. Philly.com is PMH’s future, a “portal” for Philadelphia, as Greenbaum said it. It has a content agreement with the two papers but creates its own multimedia content because the newspapers aren’t doing enough of it and has its own devoted advertising department, all in its own headquarters in skyscraper row along Market St.

That means my compliments for the innovative newspaper video I credited to the Inquirer was misplaced. While Armstrong, an Inqy columnist, is being leveraged, its produced by Philly.com.

While it doesn’t change that I like the product – and, to be fair the multimedia that is being produced by the Daily News – it also doesn’t change my criticisms.

During my time at Philly.com, Managing Producer Bob McGovern told me most readers don’t care about who creates the content. Of course he is absolutely right. Maybe – just maybe – one out of ten redaers cares, only those most loyal to either the Inquirer or Daily News brand. The trouble, I think, is that that number can only be dwindling.

Look, Yoni Greenbaum knows what he is doing, so do his bosses. He claims Philly.com is profitable, and not by a slim margin. We already pretty much guessed the Web site was becoming the workhorse for PMH – which owns other properties, including the Northeast Times.

But Philly.com, and, I am willing to guess, PMH CEO Brian Tierney, aren’t as concerned about the longterm brands of the Inqy and the DN. To be fair, they don’t have to be. They may be doing just fine – or near to it – in the business that many people say they should be, online content creation and advertising dissemination business, not the newspaper business.

But that can’t be the only solution, can it?

Let’s peer into the future of possibilities. The three players could split and play the online game on their own, or the more like-minded newspapers could merge and split with Philly.com. Unless some newspaper ideologue wants to swoop in and buy two financially-struggling newspapers at an inflated price (to cover the costs PMH took on) neither will happen. What’s a lot more likely is the three completely merging.

And the only one of the three really planning for the future is Philly.com. So, it figures that’s the brand name that will stand – however strange that seems.

What’s a possible alternative? Could the Inquirer survive on brand monetization and take on its own Web venture? There doesn’t appear to be any signs of that. I get the feeling that Chris Krewson, the Inquirer’s executive online editor, is overwhelmed with the little fights to be leading revolution. As I’ve said, he seems to get it, but I don’t know how well-supported he really is. The evergreen content – interactive flash design, maps, in-site RSS collections, etc. – that is to the future what 70-inch investigative stories were in the past are nonexistent. If the New York Times can’t get enough genuine clicks to support itself online, the thought of the Inquirer doing it on its own is, sadly, laughable.

After fighting the threat of technology for generations, the Internet has shook newspapers in a way we’ve never seen before. The newspaper bubble, I say often, is bursting. Newspapers need branded personalities in the way cable news has scored with the likes of Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly. They need to convince online advertising is worthwhile – best done with innovation that doesn’t appear likely in that environment.

So, of course, PMH and Tierney rightly and sensibly see Philly.com as their future. It isn’t innovation. It isn’t bold. It just appears to be the only reality.

Because conversely, Philly.com is boasting five million unique visitors per month, Greenbaum said. That’s perhaps a sixth of the Wall Street Journal and a fourth of the New York Times. Considering the Inquirer was absolutely on par editorially with any paper in the world in the 1970s, it’s hard to say, but that’s probably not a bad proportion, to be a fourth of a newspaper that is likely more than four times the size, cost and output. (Some very real criticism of using unique visitors as a metric has surfaced, but to compare similar entities, we can assume the flaws in the totals are comparable too.)

It isn’t what I’d like to see. I suppose fortunately, this is all generally seen to be a slow death – though some wonder about faster versions. There will be at bare minimum a sunday Inquirer for a decade in some form, I’d think, if only out of nostalgia and pride – I should hope. But what then? What does Philly.com need with an old brand that has now developed a grumpy, failing connotation? I would think the plan is for Philly.com to usurp the Inquirer’s national recognition (however now diminished), the urban regard for the Daily News, all with developing a something-else-ness. Their  fresh design from May,  seemed to tell that tale.

But, gosh, could the Inquirer really be put to bed?

The historic white Inquirer building, longtime headquarters of the Philadelphia Inquirer, as seen from the headquarters of Philly.com