Inside LINK is a weekly column from our CEO, Lacy Starling. If you have questions you’d like Lacy to answer, email her at lacy@linknky.com.
After my first column, I received a few comments from folks, asking questions and sending suggestions. (LOVE this, by the way—keep engaging!)
One that I received brought up an interesting point — why not cover the entire region, instead of just the NKY Metro?
It’s a good question, and one we discussed at length as we were forming LINK nky. We discussed not only potentially covering Cincinnati, but where we should focus in NKY, and should we do anything about the rest of the state?
Here’s where we landed on those questions:
Cincinnati: With four television stations, a legacy newspaper, a business newspaper, and several other publications focused on entertainment, nonprofits and other areas, we felt that Cincinnati was well-covered. (Why they all pretty much ignore NKY is a question for their leadership.)
When you are creating a startup, one of the most important considerations is addressable market — do people need what you have to offer? We felt that Cincinnati truly did not need ANOTHER media entity, and that to try to compete with the established media across the river would be business suicide.
However, we recognized the fact that having a partner in Cincinnati would be beneficial, which is why we have a content-sharing agreement with WCPO. We can pull their relevant stories into our site for our readers, and they can use our coverage of the NKY Metro to supplement their own coverage.
The NKY Metro: This is obviously our bread and butter, but we did have an extensive debate about the definition of Northern Kentucky. Is it just Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, or do we include the entire eight-county region that is sometimes used?
Again, it came down to a question of resources – we knew that it was going to take a lot of time, energy and money to cover just the three northern-most counties, so we made them our focus. We are open to expanding in the future, if resources allow.
Kentucky: One area of coverage that was extremely important to us was having a reporter in Frankfort for the legislative session this year. That’s why, before we hired anyone else, we hired Mark Payne, our government and politics reporter.
We rented an apartment for him and sent him to the capital for the entire session, so he could be there in-person and report first-hand on what your elected officials were doing this year.
For the rest of Kentucky, however, the cost of covering the whole state would be enormous. We are pursuing content-sharing agreements with other news outlets around Kentucky so we can bring more of what’s happening in the rest of the state to you. If you have a favorite news source in another part of the state, let me know—I’m looking for the good ones.
In summary, we made the decisions any startup has to make about work scope, resources, and where could have the most impact. The NKY Metro hasn’t had a large-scale, dedicated news source in 15 years. That is the gap we’re working to fill, and until we feel as though NKY is getting the coverage it truly deserves, we’re going to stay laser-focused on it.
