Well, it’s coming soon. I don’t know what that means yet, but it’s going to happen. Pegasus News is going to launch their news website, and we’ll finally get to see if their idea is a bang or a dud.
Honestly, I think it could go either way. They’ve been advertising like mad cows on CraigsList for at least the past 6 months, looking for interns willing to work for nothing but to say they have experience with a company that hasn’t even officially launched. The first time I read their ads, I was irritated. “Be on the ground floor of something big!”
Maybe. They have eyes as big as saucers over at Pegasus News. Their goal is to cover news from the regional level all the way down to the neighborhood level. To do what they’ve envisioned will require both extensive involvement from everyday people across the metroplex and enough public interest to read whatever is posted. Seriously, the neighborhood level is too microscopic in my opinion. If I can’t find out what’s happening in my neighborhood without a computer and an internet connection, I don’t deserve to know. City news I can understand, even though I have my doubts as to how many people will come to read about what’s going on in their city.
The only way I see to draw the people in is to pull off a very successful and expensive marketing campaign – i think a radio blitz would do, if you cover the major stations like 106.1, 105.3, 102.1, 102.9, 97.9, 101.1, 107.5, 106.7, and whichever non-dance Hispanic station is currently most popular. KISS FM is, of course, the most important station because it is by far the most popular in the Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex. I think Classical 101.1 or The EDGE come next in importance because one covers the ultra-wealthy and high cultural folks and the other covers the local band scene.
But in the radio campaign, they’ll have to hit their restaurant review and info section hard in order to draw enough people. Food is the number one thing that everyone in the Metroplex has in common. Tell people where the cheap places, the happening places, the trendy places, the ultra-modern places, the world fusion places, the mom and pop shops, the hole in the walls… I mean everything. They’ve got to play it up and have the info to back up the ads. They’ve got to know the best foods, the happy hours, the live music, the busiest and least busy nights, the ambiance, everything.
Do that, Pegasus News, and you may be able to keep enough people relying upon your website that they will eventually visit the rest. Then you’ll have to give people ids like MySpace – only their profile is used to help both the editors remember who writes and sends in good material and also gives the contributors a sense of pride and ownership to what they write.
It’s going to be a complicated mess. I wish them the best. Hell, I’d even consider writing for them if they got their stuff together and started hiring copywriters.
Mark my words. Pegasus News is the company to watch. They’ll either boom hard or bust hard. Because I like the concept they’re going after, I hope it works. I’ll let you know when they officially launch their news website.