Tom Davidson

I had a quick conversation the other day with someone interested in using my colleagues at GrowthSpur  to help launch his news web site. As usual, I encouraged him to charge ahead – but urged him to pick a niche, not launch a general news web site. This goes against years of training and experience [...]

Note: My friend and former colleague Bill Day is one of the sharpest sales-side guys I ever worked with. He’s adept at dealing with traditional, agency-driven advertisers and their massive buys – and maybe even better at bundling together innovative ideas like events, direct marketing and promotions to tap revenue from people who rarely advertise [...]

Much kerfuffle – and more derision than warranted – erupted earlier this week when the New York Observer reported that Newsday has sold only 35 online-access subscriptions since it walled off the site last October. There was astonishment at the low numbers: “Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification. “I heard you say [...]

A snarky comment on Alan Mutter’s blog set me off the other day. Alan was reacting to Mark Potts’ excellent riff on the coming iSlate (not just a fanboi dream, but potentially a great leap forward). Predictably, some of the commenters were pining for 1994: “This smells a little like Google, which siphoned off $21 [...]

My older brother used to joke that when I wanted to learn to play baseball, I read a book. Mike’s style: Pick up the ball and throw it harder than seemed humanly possible. Hey, we all learn differently, right? So when friends – especially newsroom lifers – ask how they can catch up with the digital [...]

Like an awful lot of Americans, I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day gorging on filmed entertainment. In between fistfuls of unhealthy popcorn, I started to think about the lessons two of the movies — Avatar and Dr. Horrible — can teach entrepreneurial journalists.