It’s encouraging to see USAToday’s new Hotel Check-In blog platform, dedicated to talking about business travel. It follows Gannett’s overall model of embedding a Pluck social network under it. It’s not a bad start, but I want more.

First, let me say that Barbara De Lollis is a great blogger. I like her voice, and feel she’s producing interesting content. Note how Barbara does a great job of asking readers and professionals in the travel industry about pieces at the very end. I really like that.

What do I mean when I say “I want more,” then, if I’m happy with all this? Simple: I want more lateral participation. I think I want the Pluck networking areas to thrive. Maybe it’s just because you haven’t discovered it. But think about all the value you and I could share if we talked about travel in those forums.

I want more from us. But then, you’d have to agree with me about the content so it means you have to swing by and check it out yourself.

What do you think? Is there a value in a blog content platform around business travel? What else does it need? What will get Barbara’s community talking more in those forums?

If you squint, and remove your “purist” filter, USAToday looks like a microblog. The paper has little bite-sized media bits, easily consumable, with nuggets of data that are useful and fast to absorb. CNN Headline News does the same thing. They work the short form news format, with fast info, quick data dumps, and as they are trying out lots of personable interactions, it’s even turning a bit two-way. (Not that long form is bad, and there should definitely be a place for lengthier journalistic work, but as a consumer, I believe we’re trending more towards the short info.)

We think often about how the web is so amazing and how communication works online, but to really get a sense of dynamism, don’t forget to look at what’s going on offline. This makes me want to look at my blog differently. I wonder if Chris Pearson is up to the challenge of making a magazine formatted theme, or Thesis skin. Wouldn’t this blog be a lot more consumable if you could switch between smaller pieces and long form?

Thanks, USAToday, for what you’ve contributed to information consumption/display models.

What’s Swedish for “Mentoring?”

At 10AM, I wandered into the kickoff of a two day meeting where Jim addressed a room half full of Norwegian and half full of Swedish news professionals. Tord Nedrelid and Bjorn Ottersen were amongst the leaders in the room, learning from Gannett about how to innovate with their web properties, how to build community platforms around news, and how to build blogging into news.

Hanging With the Pirates

Before my 1PM meeting, Jim took John and I upstairs to 11g, the area led by Michael Maness, Vice President of Innovation. We saw their commitment to innovation practices such as those followed by Ideo and InnoSight. The whole area, by the way, was a total pirate ship zone, where all kinds of ideas were being considered. I can’t talk about specifics, because I’m not sure what wasn’t ready for prime time yet, but let’s say that if I were working for Gannett, I’d be looking to sneak in there.

No Scare Tactics Here

Later, at the meeting, I meet with Chris Saridakis, President of Gannett Digital, and some of his team (Jennifer Carroll, VP/content and audience, Kevin LeFew, VP/technology and operations, Peter Lundquist, VP/product development), and John Stone and I pitched our concept to the team. As part of my presentation, I did some of my best faux Jeff Jarvis, citing how media is screwed and they have to get on board, and throw out the old models, and…

..and they were very much in the, “yeah, we get that. We’re on board. Let’s do cool things!” camp.

They’re Already Doing It

Simply, not only did Chris Sardakis and team get it. They, along with Michael Maness’s team, were already doing some really forward-moving projects. For instance, have you seen Make the Charts? It’s local ranking charts for local bands. So, if you’re in a punk band in DC, you can see how you rank, according to the local community. Borrowing from the DNA of USAToday, one of the first truly national-focused papers (if not, the first) in the US, Make the Charts takes National-done-local to a new inflection.

Another project they’re behind is Moms Like Me, which aggregates a mom presence across several platforms.

If you haven’t looked at USAToday.com closely, you might not have noticed their implementation of the Pluck social components under the hood. That extends to their 80-something local area newspapers in the Gannett system. I’ve used USAToday.com on slide presentations forever, because of how there are commenting, voting, and profile elements built in. It was nice to hear some of the behind the scenes from Gannett’s James Ku from Reno, NV, too.

Live In Front of a Studio Audience

Later that night, I presented to a packed crowd at the 11g room. In the audience were all kinds of really interesting and engaged people. I was excited that USAToday’s Executive Editor, Ken Paulson, stayed through my presentation and seemed reasonably engaged (he didn’t jump up and yell bullsh!t at any point). I also had people like Broadcast president Dave Louge, and a few other executives that Jim Lenahan kindly named, but that I failed to write down (so sorry, but you were appreciated, too). I saw my friend Jodi, and my new friend, Mary, and I spoke to Larissa, and Eduardo (from the 11g) team, and lots of other people who I might not remember your names well enough to type here.

The presentation is balled up in a trash can somewhere, but essentially, I imparted a message that media makers need to atomize, to modularize, to give your ideas handles, and to start seeing themselves as being in the information business, not the newspaper business. I pushed with passion the idea that communities want better relationships with advertising, as opposed to simple placement against content, and that media organizations could actually lead this space, instead of accepting the editorial-only side of the business equation. The rest of what I said might eventually come available here, though Mogulus had trouble at the very moment we started recording.

What I Took Away

I never presume that companies “don’t get it,” at least not the companies kind enough to indulge my visits, and seek out what I think might come next. But I guess I do still have some bias around what I perceived would be the level-set of people inside a big news organization like Gannett. I need to keep myself open to the perspective that these big companies “get it” just fine, and that my role is to help further augment their visions with my industry learnings and implementation guidance, instead of thinking that I’m going to bring fire to the natives every time.

Sure, not every company gets it, and yes, every company has different views of how this will all go, but with my eyes opened by all the bright minds I encountered in my long day at Gannett, I feel that I’m going to presume that there are voices and minds inside who see the future just as clearly as you or me, and I’m going to listen better.

By the way, Jim Lenahan and I met at the first BlogWorld Expo, where I complimented him on being the only big media company there. I got more long tail business leads out of that one conference than any event before or since. I hope some day someone says that about my New Marketing Summit events.

What say you?