Advertising Age interviews Michele Slack, vice president of digital media for SFGate.com, the website for the San Francisco Chronicle, which recently introduced content from Demand Media to its website. The interview looks at editorial outsourcing and issues of quality control:
Ad Age: Does bringing in outside content, supplied by freelancers, undermine the need for your own full-time reporters, or does it support the business that pays for the newsroom?
Ms. Slack: I prefer to think it’s the latter. This provides us with additional revenue opportunities that we can use to support our core newsroom. Our core newsroom is our competitive advantage, so we really depend on the content they provide us with. These partnerships are about bringing in additional users and incremental revenue. All of that is to support our core business and the newsroom is an integral part of that.