Hitting on all four cylinders

I'm in Reston, Va., waiting for my turn in front of the room at the American Press Institute. The seminar is "Internet strategies for community markets." Gordon Borrell is up right now and is pointing out the inherent weakness of one-note news sites, citing Pew research that says the "yesterday market" -- the people who went online yesterday seeking local news -- is 9 percent at best, while there are many other things to do online.

He's so right.

For years I've been citing four key concepts: timely, useful, interactive, entertaining. So many local news sites are none of that. You can't build success on the Internet by building an HTML version of your daily print product.

I've only been here fore a couple of hours but it seems that most of the seminar participants get that, and are eager to dig into new areas, especially participation/interaction.