The Modern Journalist

Pegasus News: Community-Driven News in Dallas

I first stumbled upon Pegasus News at South by Southwest Interactive and I wasn’t very impressed. To be fair, it was near the end of the event and we were crammed in the back of the Lucky Lounge. I was tired and exhausted.

Clearly this was another case where my better judgment decided to take a holiday because they have deployed several very cool, web-centric ideas that seem to be getting this whole modern journalism thing right:

We start with the idea that what happens in your neighborhood — to your family and in your niche areas of interest — is more important to you than things happening on the other side of town, and certainly far more important than what’s happening elsewhere. For that reason, we customize content and advertising for each individual user, in a mechanism we call The Daily Youâ„¢.

Once you register for the site, you can:

1. create your own home page
2. set your neighborhood to customize information
3. search for specific topic areas covered at the site

But the really revolutionary idea stems from their content partners.

When we think syndication, we think places such as the Associated Press or other organizations. Pegasus News has done exactly what you should do: they’ve reached out directly to information sources and made them content partners.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, neighborhood blogs that track institutions such as the police, blogs that follow local and state politics, college newspapers, radio blogs and even some traditional outlets. All told there are 60 content partners specific to the region.

And each user experience is customized.

It’s surely not a perfect model at the moment; however, it’s drawn enough attention that Fisher Communications, a communications firm in Seattle, purchased the site with hopes of replicating the model in other cities.

A bit out Fisher:

Fisher Communications, Inc. is a Seattle-based communications company that owns or manages thirteen full power, eight low power television stations and eight radio stations. Fisher owns and operates Fisher Pathways, a satellite and fiber transmission provider, and Fisher Plaza, a media, telecommunications, and data center facility located near downtown Seattle.

I’ve put in a request to interview the folks at Pegasus because this model really seems like it’s right on target, one of the ways people could build (say without all the databases that I love so much) in a much shorter time frame.

Not that it would be easy. Nothing is easy. Simply that it uses the Web in a native way, which could be done with existing tools.

Definitely a very interesting company.