News and Updates on Quantum Partners and Projects

• “The Story So Far” Available At Amazon

July 01, 2011: 

"The Story So Far: What We Know About The Business of Digital Journalism" is available at Amazon and on the Kindle.  The paperback, published by Columbia Journalism Review Books, was co-authored by Bill Grueskin, Quantum Principal Ava Seave, and Lucas Graves.

The report focuses on the economic issues that news organizations - large and small, old and new- face with their digital ventures.

You can read an excerpt and order the book on the Amazon website.

• FCC Releases Report On Information Needs of Communities

June 19, 2011: 

Quantum Media Principal Ava Seave contributed to The Federal Communication Commission's report on community information needs in a broadband world.

In culmination of its work over the last year, the FCC Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities delivered a report on June 9, 2011 addressing the rapidly changing media landscape in a broadband age. In 2009, a bipartisan Knight Commission found that while the broadband age is enabling an information and communications renaissance, local communities in particular are being unevenly served with critical information about local issues.

Soon after the Knight Commission delivered its findings, the FCC initiated a staff-level working group to identify crosscurrent and trend, and make recommendations on how the information needs of communities can be met in a broadband world.

You can read the full FCC report here.

• The Huffington Post’s Road To Success

June 03, 2011: 

From its launch in 2005 until its sale to AOL in 2011, The Huffington Post online gathered a huge audience of unique visitors—Google says 60 million, ComScore says 30 million--and it reached $60 million in ad revenue. CEO Eric Hippeau described the principles that produced this entrepreneurial success.

A bit like “Forrest Gump,” Eric Hippeau (pronounced EeePoe) seems to have been in many interesting places at just the right time.  Call it prescience or instinct—or call it operating from a set of business principles that guide his choices.

“In every major economic cycle, there is one big breakthrough company,” he said, at the Harvard Business School Club of New York on April 5, 2011.  He was speaking at its popular “Media Guru” series of breakfasts, not long after his triumphant $315 million sale of The Huffington Post to Time-Warner spinoff AOL.

He recalled watching years earlier as Ted Turner built CNN into the breakthrough company of its cycle, creating a 24-hour cable news channel, built on excellent video from all over the world.

Like Facebook in the social media space and YouTube in the online video space, The Huffington Post was that breakthrough company in the digital news, opinion and blogging space.  “It has created a new genre, open-source and very social,” he said.

You can read the detailed reasons Hippeau lists for the success of The Huffington Post on the Casium media case study website.