Mike Orren – Pegasus News

Posted on 08. Oct, 2007 by David Cohn in Citizen Network, Hyperlocal

Your Work in networked/citizen/collaborative journalism.
President and founder of Pegasus News, which launched in DFW in 2006. We’re a “panlocal” site, meaning that we deliver hyperlocal news and data on an entire metro area. We then customize that content for each individual user via a mechanism called “The Daily You.” We use a hybrid of staff, content partner (professional and blogger) and community-contributed content, and don’t distinguish between the three.
What are your goals

To connect communities all over the country with niche content and commerce that is personally relevant.

Notable Achievements

Quickly generated substantial visits, pageviews and community on a single-market site on a shoestring budget.

Sold the company to Fisher Communications in July 2007, with the team staying on board to grow the original site and roll it out to other major metros nationally.

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)

No matter how good an idea is, the days of raising capital on a shoeshine and a smile are long past.

Very few people want to be “citizen journalists” and the few who do will do so on their own terms. But people want to share interesting information and will do so readily — so long as you make it easy to do so.

(We have more “citizen copy editors” than “citizen journalists.”

Are you getting revenue for this? How

Selling advertising, with higher rates for deep behavioral and geographic customization: “Opera lovers in East Dallas tonight.” Really just getting started though as we couldn’t afford to pay a sales team prior to the acquisition.

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?

Running the DFW site as though we’re no longer broke and then launching in other cities. To get to the next level, we need good partners in each city, whether those are Fisher stations, other incumbent media outlets, or entrepreneurs.