Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Work

My Work

My Family Ending 140 Years as Daily Newspaper Publishers

vcrosbie

  With nostalgia and some sadness, my family today announced that after 140 years, it’s leaving the newspaper business on May 1st. The daily Chronicle of Willimantic, Connecticut, founded by my step-great-great-grandfather John A. MacDonald in 1877, will be sold at the end of next month to Central Connecticut Communications, the owners of the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press, two other Connecticut dailies. Following John MacDonald, my great-grandfather George Augustus Bartlett, grandfather G. Donald Bartlett, mother Lucy Bartlett Crosbie, brother Kevin Bartlett Crosbie, and my sister-in-law Patrice Pernaselli Crosbie have in turn, generally after the death of their predecessor, published the paper every day since that week when John founded it — during which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, Chief Crazy Horse was fighting the U.S. cavalry, and President Ulysses Grant was ordering home the last federal troops occupying the former Confederate states. We have been the oldest newspaper family in New England. My father Arthur W. Crosbie was the newspaper’s general manager during the middle of the 20th Century. I worked there during the 1970’s, and had grown up in a multi-generational household where the news business and substance of newspaper editorials were dinner table conversation. When I started in the business, we still melted lead to make that day’s printing type (a slug of which, pictured above, I’ve kept from those days) and the newspaper received international and national news via rolls of one-inch (2.5 cm) wide paper tape punched in teletype code. Fire and police radio monitors sat besides our TV. The daily deadlines made it both a satisfying and frustrating occupation. One hard to let go. Yet Facebook friends who have known me as a news industry futurists/consultant from 1996 onward (and as well since 2008 as Syracuse University’s postgraduate instructor in the New Media Business) will know from my professional and trade journal writings and speeches during the past 15 years that newspaper publishing, with quite rare exceptions, is now an unsustainable business due to epochal changes in how and why people consume news, entertainment, and other information. Times change. Business life cycles end. And we’re closing our 140-year story. #

Lucy Crosbie and Kevin Crosbie

Mother’s and Brother’s Induction into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame

vcrosbie

I am proud that the New England Newspaper & Press Association has inducted my late mother and my late brother into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame. Please click this link to see photos of the induction dinner and event, which was held in the Park Plaza Hotel, in Boston, Massachusetts. Besides my surviving family, many people from the New England newspaper were there. Charles Ryan, editor of the daily Chronicle in Willimantic, Connecticut, gave the nomination speech. Patrice Crosbie, Kevin’s widow and his successor as Publisher of the Chronicle, accepted the award, which was given by Gary Ferrugia, publisher of The Day, of New London, Connecticut.

My Comments About the M.O.B. Conference

admin

Shortly after I biked to work one day this summer, the Navigate New Media blog interviewed me about the the Monetizing Online Business conference that I co-chaired on June 25, 2010, in New York City. I must begin keeping a spare shirt in my office. And if only they could build a shower in my office, too!

27 Years in the News Business

Vin

Ah, I’m entering my 27th year in the news industry. I started as a reporter covering cops, fires, and courts for a small daily newspaper in Connecticut. Later, I worked for the old UPI, Reuters, and News Corp. My thanks to Prof. Ben Compaine who at the start of the 1980s interested me in the potential of new media and to venture capitalist Jon Gilbert who in 1993 brought me into new media full-time. I’ve never regretted that move. (By the way, I don’t think the Connecticut State Police really minded that I didn’t return my police pass after 1979 ended. Indeed, I felt it odd being nearly invulnerable to speeding and other motor vehicle infractions during those years. The police departments of many towns and state police barracks knew my auto and wouldn’t stop it in speed traps. Only once was I pulled over, when I was late for work and driving 85 m.p.h. on a 45 m.p.h. rural road. The officer, rather than asking me for my driver’s license and vehicle registration, said , “Has anyone told you the problem we in the police union are having with management?” and gave me a story. Oh, to be a police reporter again!)

Some of My Recent Work

Vin

(The original was released on PR Newswire this morning.) TV Search Provider Critical Mention Inks Marketing Partnership with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions MacNeil/Lehrer Expands Paid Distribution Opportunities and Extends Brand Through Partnership With Critical Mention New York – April 26, 2005 – Critical Mention, Inc., the leading Web-based television search and monitoring service for corporate communications and business intelligence professionals, today announced a marketing partnership with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, producers of the PBS program NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Under the agreement, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions will receive a partnership fee based on the usage of clips from NewsHour with Jim Lehrer within Critical Mention’s TV search services. This relationship underlines Critical Mention’s commitment to partnering with the world’s most prominent broadcast and cable news providers to help them expand their content distribution and generate revenue in online applications. “Besides providing business and government leaders with the most comprehensive online TV search service available today, it is our goal to extend the model to enable content producers and broadcasters to participate in the explosive revenue opportunities of aggregated video search.” said Sean Morgan, CEO of Critical Mention. “We look forward to providing MacNeil/Lehrer Productions with new revenue opportunities as video search and related services become pervasive online.” Close to 3 million people tune in to The NewsHour each weeknight (1.1 HH rating) and close to 8 million unduplicated viewers watch at least one night a week. In addition, the Erdos & Morgan Opinion Leader survey ranks The NewsHour first among all television news programs as the most credible, most objective, most influential and most current news program on television. “People look to the NewsHour to get the full story and information about what’s going on in the world. We’re very pleased to have Critical Mention distributing our program to corporate and government organizations in a new way,” said Dan Werner, president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. About Critical Mention Critical Mention Inc., the most comprehensive Web-based television search and broadcast monitoring service, is changing the way corporate communications and business intelligence professionals search, track and view critical information from television news. The company’s CriticalTV platform provides real-time monitoring and email alerts for organizations that require up-to-the-minute news about their company, customers and competitors. CriticalTV allows users to easily find a video clip online immediately after its broadcast; instantly share the clip within a workgroup via secure video-email or a private video gallery; and order a professional transcript or […]