SIPAlert Daily – ‘You have to care about what people want’

Speaking about the changes that journalism has undergone, former Atlanta Journal-Constitution government and public affairs editor and current George Washington University professor Al May said that when they first told him that he had to put his email address at the end of his story, he was flabbergasted. “I’ll be deluged,” he thought. “Instead,” he laughed, “it was, ‘Is anybody out there?’”

I think any writer in today’s age has wondered that at times. Why am I hearing from people on this topic and not that one? The story on that one is better! It used to be, said Geneva Overholser, Pulitzer Prize winner and former director of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, that journalists published what they thought the public needed to know. Now the mechanisms are in place to find out.

“Fundamentally, journalists do need to care about what [their audience] is interested in,” Overholser said. “You have to care about what people want.”

The occasion for this discussion was a talk this week at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs on Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in Global Perspective. How do we maintain that level of professionalism for journalists in this new age when everyone is a writer? People may not want to pay for great journalism, but they probably won’t pay for bad journalism either. May’s story—plus the ensuing discussion—led to one of today’s fundamental questions: Are we trying hard enough to find out what our audience wants?

Specialized publishing has the advantage of a niche community that you are helping to foster with resources and information. Building that community and providing it a forum then becomes a huge factor. How are you listening to your audience? Are you getting comments from articles or blog posts? Are you testing? Are you talking to them at your live events and through social media? Are you monitoring Twitter? Do they have their own forum? Are you surveying at the end of webinars? It’s probably worth an incentive or two to get that feedback.

The panelists still believe in the power of good journalism. However, they did wonder aloud, “How do you make that part of someone’s everyday routine?” Columbia Journalism School Professor Michael Schudson said he was surprised that when he visited a music school, they were not just teaching musicianship. They were also teaching entrepreneurship. It’s something journalism can learn from, he said.

“It’s still a great moment to be a journalist,” Overholser said. “I don’t think professionalism has been undermined [by citizen journalism].” You would just hope that people will realize the value of “having a professional journalism source as part of their daily diet.” This is also part of the reason that building your mobile business becomes essential. If you are to succeed at supplying a “daily diet” to your community, then it has to look appealing on every platform.

Overholser said that the most important element today is the “collaboration between journalist and reader.” Do they trust us? Are we telling them what they need to know? Do they follow you? It may just be that the definition of good journalism has changed. Yesterday it was more about ethics and fancy prose. Today, good may just mean helpful.

She ended by using a Churchill quote to defend journalism: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Journalism may not be perfect any more—indeed, citizen journalism can make us cringe at times—but it’s still what some of us signed up for and remain passionate about. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – Guidelines for your paywall strategy

One day, the Toronto Star newspaper launches a paywall—a “new paid digital subscription program that will allow readers to receive full access to all of the award-winning content on our website across all devices…” says publisher John Cruickshank. Another day, the San Francisco Chronicle drops its paywall after just two months. “The SFChronicle.com site will continue to provide readers with an online version that replicates a newspaper experience and reflects the changes in the news…”

This summer, the Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper, launched a new digital subscription package that turned their website into a paywall, where you have to take out a membership to access. It was called exciting at the time. Two days ago, it was called “disastrous” in a blogpost in The Guardian. (Monthly site visits down by 62.4% from 37.3m visits in July to 14.4m visits in August.) Something about codes in the newspaper that could be redeemed sounded way too complicated.

In specialized publishing, the landscape is also varied. Joe May of Pro Farmer told me that they are going to offer more free content in hopes of lead generation. Others prefer to keep most of their content behind a wall/gate/enclosure. Regardless, you can see that there is no consensus on what works best. After an excellent discussion on the SIPA Member Listserv a couple months ago, Molly Lindblom, principal of Business Transformations, adeptly and kindly wrote up the following: 

A Guide to Formulating Your Paywall/Free Content Strategy

1. Define the objective. Are you trying to drive traffic to support an ad model? Generate leads? Upsell? Build a community? Lots of ways to go. Defining your objective will help you determine your strategy and ways to measure success. Let’s go with Generating Leads.

Strategies:

- Consider your target. A high level decision maker (VP,CEO, CFO) may require a different offer such as a white paper or strategic industry analysis, etc. A director/manager may find news or analysis on a very specific topic rings their bell.

- Require something in kind. Contact info (name, title, company name, email) and/or other commitments such as spending 10 minutes on a call to provide feedback on a new product or answering a five-question survey. Not only does this help you achieve your goals, it’s a way to reinforce the value of the content that is being given away and moves the sale along.

- Don’t let them get their fill through a freebie. Limit free trial duration and restrict content access. There needs to be incentive to purchase.

- Build awareness/drive traffic. Email, SEO/key words and highly targeted paid Google ads are just a few ways to do this.

- Name it well. The name should reinforce the value of paid vs. free. A few options:

** Levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum or Value vs. Premium 

** Description: Today’s Headlines vs. In-depth Analysis 

** End Benefit: Quick Tips vs. Insight

- Always brand. Include your brand—such as MDM Premium. If you get nothing else, you will build brand recognition.

2. Define next steps. Sales or customer support should follow up on leads within a few days if not same day so they don’t go cold. Sign up for a free offer is an indicator of immediate need for your content. If you are entirely marketing driven, nurture the lead to build knowledge of your offerings, benefits and special incentives. This can be time consuming but it generally pays off.

3. Metrics. Make sure you have a measurable goal so you can determine what worked/didn’t work (opens, click throughs, time spent on site, bounces, leads generated, alignment of leads with target market, content accessed, sales driven) so you can determine how to modify your campaign going forward.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – Member Profile: Joe May, Marketing Director, Pro Farmer, Cedar Falls, Iowa

SIPA: Tell me about the big Crop Tour that just finished.

JOE: Yes, the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour. It was an outstanding week-long event. This was the 20th year and we had 100 volunteer crop scouts with eastern and western tours that converged in Rochester, Minn. The scouts sampled thousands of corn and soybean fields, and took measurements that we plug into formulas we have. Editors and analysts then dissect the results to give yield estimates. There were seven events in all with a total of just under 3,000 people attending. The media coverage was tremendous as always—the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, AgDay TV, U.S. Farm Report, AgriTalk. They followed it start to finish.

How does it tie in with your audience?

The Tour is followed closely by the farmers we serve—as well as international grain buyers and commodity traders who also make up a portion of our audience. It’s extremely timely and important for the industry. We’re giving them a historically accurate yield estimate for their state and the nation as a whole, which is released in that Friday’s Pro Farmer newsletter and on our website.

Sounds like a lot of work leading up to it.

Yes, there were a lot of moving parts to get it going. It’s a big event in the industry both here in the U.S. and internationally. Coverage really blew up online, and on Twitter again this year. We also had a video crew embedded on the Tour that filed daily reports.

How long has Pro Farmer been around?

Forty years! But this is only my second. Several hundred of the original members are still members today.

How does your subscription pricing work?

We have levels of membership that go from Classic to Preferred to VIP. Most of our content is gated and ad-free. The Classic just includes the newsletter and web access. Preferred gets that plus advice alerts, the Monday Morning Wake Up Call and special reports. The VIP membership gets all that plus text quotes, the LandOwner newsletter and the Pro Farmer Today email service which is 7-9 emails throughout the day. These folks are information junkies and we give them a mix of content that’s available, and content that we push to them.

What’s on your agenda now that the Crop Tour is over?

We’re in the process of redoing our website. We’re going to test something new, giving more free content, but you have to register to access it. We expect this will be a successful lead generator. Another new thing will be more audio and video reports that will be free for registered users. We have a small studio in our office here. Every week our editors record two- or three-minute segments for Friday’s AgDay TV. We also have some handheld cameras for posting breaking news on our website; we’d rather not add time with post-production for these, plus the handheld recording will add some urgency to the look of the report.

How many staff in your office?

There’s 13 here and 15 in our Call Center. We’re all part of Farm Journal Media, which allows for cross-platform content and resource sharing. It’s all a real positive relationship to continue building our brand, and it gives us access to a wealth of experts across Farm Journal Media to turn to with various questions.

What are your main tasks?

I work on renewal strategies, attracting new members, planning and marketing live events, while supporting the sales team for all of our products and services. We also have a new educational product geared to farmers, teaching them how to market their grain. It gives strategies in a four-chapter, hour-long DVD and accompanying workbook. We’re also expanding our audience by speaking to ag educators at the high school level. Vocational-ag teachers currently don’t have a good source to go to for grain marketing educational materials.

I assume some of your tasks are seasonal.

Yes, we’ll have conferences in the winter months when farmers don’t have as much to do. We’ll hold those from Ohio through Nebraska—ten full-day sessions in 10 locations. Farmers will come from as far as 150 miles away. I like getting out and meeting our members; they’re very loyal to our product so it’s easy to start a conversation. For me being new to the company and industry, it’s good to hear what they have to say.

Where were you before Pro Farmer?

I spent the last eight years at an ad agency for the automotive industry. We used a lot of the same concepts—building awareness, using data to deliver specific messages, focusing on membership over “sales.”

You mentioned Twitter?

We have a constantly increasing Twitter following. We don’t give out too much information there—just enough to give a taste of what we provide, then direct followers back to our site for the complete story. We’re still working on finding the best way to convert Twitter followers to paying members.

Is email marketing still best for you?

Yes, we use email quite extensively, tying it together with the call center, which is a big driver for sales. As for the time to send, we look at analytics and know our opens spike from 6 -7:30 in the morning, lunch, and then early evening. We’ve also found more and more farmers using tablets, taking their iPads with them on their tractors and combines, as our tablet web traffic has grown exponentially this year.

iPads on tractors?

Yes, though stereotypical commercial images don’t show that. About 90% have high-speed Internet through satellite.

And finally, what keeps you up at night?

It was the Crop Tour. Now it’s the new website. The other thing would be that we have all of this data and services we offer for people—much of it is even mobile friendly. So it’s trying to find the right match for the right segment of our membership and who can benefit most from what specific service. Then, trying to find more people like them.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – Learning the right mobile business model for you

I sat down next to Larry Schwartz, president of Newstex, at a roundtable at the recent SIPA Conference. The subject was tablets, and Schwartz showed me some of his company’s intricate and attractive mobile-design work—banner ads, interfaced rows of pictures, branded mobile apps.

“Things have changed a lot in the last 18 months,” he said. “There are a lot more self-serve tools. The hardest thing to figure out [for going mobile] is, how are you going to use it? What’s the purpose? What’s the model? There are some people who take all their time trying to find the perfect colors. Really.”

Schwartz will join Ed Keating, chief content officer for BLR, this Thursday in the second of SIIA’s Mobile Essentials Webinar series—Monetization and Business Models. SIPA/SIIA/ABM members can listen free by registering here. The first webinar made the business case; this one will help you build the right model.

Considering that this is just an hour of your time about something that might become a huge percentage of your business, it’s highly recommended. Mobile commerce now accounts for about one out of every 10 e-commerce dollars. Integrating mobile platforms into your overall business models and strategy is crucial.

A blog post on the comScore website at the end of last month listed five things that every marketer should know on this topic. It’s a helpful list:

1. Be there. “One out of every three monthly visitors to the average digital retailer website comes exclusively on mobile platforms. …retailers who do not (at a minimum) optimize their mobile browsing experience or introduce mobile apps are effectively turning away a third of their potential customers.”

2. Know thy customer. “Mobile apps drive smartphone retail engagement, while mobile browsing wins on tablets.” You probably don’t have the time or resources “to develop a fully optimized experience for every platform. Knowing how your customers engage with retail on their phones and tablets can help you better prioritize your efforts.

3. Prioritize. “Smartphones drive a higher share of m-commerce dollars than tablets, but less on a per device basis.” Tablets are gaining in numbers, however, so you’ll have an interesting decision on where to first focus your user experience.

4. Know thy content. “Retail category browsing can vary considerably by platform.” Basically it’s common sense but still important to think about. Is there a visual component to what you are selling or how you are selling? Perhaps you want people to see charts and graphs in your marketing? Speakers’ faces. That might do better on tablets, where apparel and home furnishing sales excel. Interestingly, health care is the only category listed that does better on smartphones, though it’s pretty close on books and consumer electronics.

5. Plan now. “M-commerce spending seasonality shows wider variance than traditional e-commerce.” It may be quiet now, but with holiday season lurking, expect a huge jump. “Consumers…are also increasingly comfortable using [their devices] to transact. Retailers with an advanced understanding of m-commerce will be able to most effectively deploy their assets and marketing resources during the year’s most crucial spending period.”

Schwartz went on to show me—on his tablet—a list of Time Inc.’s 25 top love story films of all time. It was impeccably designed. “They could easily do 100 and get sponsors for it,” he said. In other words, the sky’s the limit.

U.S. adults will spend more media time on mobile this year (19.8%) than on their laptops and PCs (19.5%). Tablets are sparking this trend. Last year, 10% of tablet time was spent watching videos; this year it’s 19%. Join us in this important webinar series. Register here now.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – For Voci, analytics and engagement are team tasks

“Are you still interested in ‘Detroit’?” the subject line flashed on my screen. Detroit is a Pulitzer Prize-finalist play now in Washington, D.C. I had checked out ticket prices yesterday. “We noticed that you viewed ‘Detroit,’ but didn’t finish your purchase. The good news is, there are 8 dates available.”

Marketing of this type is pretty standard now, and it does make you look at your “destination” again. But in the current world of analytics and engagement—authentically voiced at SIPA’s recent Conference by Valerie Voci (pictured here), vice president, marketing, for CQ Roll Call—it’s just the beginning.

“We’re always looking to decrease the people who just leave,” she said. “We’re looking when they abandon, where they go when they abandon.”

Voci made clear that it is increasingly a team effort. “Some of the things the editorial team does [now] used to be on the marketing side. Editorial is looking every day on their most read stories. They’re looking at who’s referring [their readers] and where content is being shared. They’re learning from it and they’re making some changes.

“They’re certainly not going to change what they’re writing about. They have their goals as well. But they’re starting to see [that] this works a little bit better. They’re even going so far to look at placement on the site, how they’re creating images for their blogs, also looking at social measurement tools, so we have a lot of tweets from our Roll Call editors. [There’s a] Roll Call handle that our marketing manages; we’ll put some promotional things there. But mostly it’s about our content.”

Voci is happy to let the editorial people be the stars. Her job revolves around lead generation, so if social media can bring the audience closer to the reporters they follow, all the better. “We’re looking at our reporters and editors who are industry experts, to use them in different ways,” she said. “I didn’t know if this one great reporter would be good on TV and he’s amazing [in two-minute videos].”

CQ Roll Call has topic-specific Twitter handles, and reporters also have their own handles. “We’re looking at the activity—who’s following them, are they being retweeted, how many mentions?” Voci said. “Are they really engaging? So it’s changing from just looking at raw numbers to really analyzing it. You can see why that takes more than just a Webmaster and a marketing person.”

It takes an audience engagement team, collected from various departments. Listening to Voci—and you need to be attentive to do so; she talks qualitatively and fast—leaves you feeling that the ball is in your court. “We know who’s on our site,” she said. “We know what device they’re using. Mobile early, then desktop, then iPad usage around 10 o’clock at night—really people! 10 o’clock? But that’s what happening.”

She said they even know that people are illegally sharing passwords. “We’re not trying to be cops but trying to understand how people use our data and our content and their subscriptions so we can be better informed and we can better inform our sales team when it comes time for renewal. We’re looking at all the referrals.”

Speaking about renewals, Voci said, “We’re looking at critical points in the subscription cycle, 30 days [in], 60 days, 90 days and we’re starting to map now when people don’t renew. And seeing what their traffic was. We’re using a couple pieces of software for that and creating retention programs that kick in automatically when we reach these critical points. I like to fail fast and learn quicker… When they reach a threshold [of contact points], we’re scoring them. [Maybe they] filled out a survey, read a special report, read stories.”

She said that her team’s main job is to “nurture, nurture, nurture”—meaning that the leads they give to sales should be strong. “That forces the marketing team to think differently, a little more logically. [But you] have to put a lot of stuff in to get a lot of stuff out.

“You know how your prospects find you,” she said. All the information is there to track their behavior on your site. If you need more information, she suggested sending something out that you know your audience will value and respond to. CQ Roll Call is a thought leader when it comes to Congress, so when they sent out a survey based on their knowledge, it got a 71.7% open rate. And that gets them clean data.

They have gone as far as creating personas based on how people use their site. “Sometimes the mythology is that the person who reads free stuff will never buy paid stuff,” Voci said. “And in marketing we’re all about measuring. I want to prove that true or false. Because that will change what I do [and] will also help with product development—you need to constantly be developing.”

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – New finds in the crowded technology corridor

SIPA’s Marketing Listserv was brimming with activity yesterday with discussions on digital revenue, publication exit strategies and calculating the value of a subscriber. SIIA Content Division, ABM and SIPA members can sign up here for this valuable resource.  It’s a secure and actionable place to post, posit or postulate.

One of yesterday’s responses recommended Evernote’s Clearly for a “Zen like reading experience” (no ads or disruptions). Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read. Publishers need to monitor this type of tool, especially ones who depend on digital ad revenue. Evernote is a service that works on your desktop or laptop, on your iPad, iPhone, Android phone, etc., and synchronizes your information across each platform. So if you take a note on your iPad, you can view it later on your smartphone, and vice versa. In addition, Evernote Hello lets you remember people easier—a good Conference tool—and helps to bring in information about those people you meet.

Here are a few more technology tips I’ve heard recommended around our digital water cooler.

- CamScanner turns your smartphone into a scanner. Users can scan documents by taking a picture with their phone’s camera and save them as pdf files. The app has some capability to recognize words in a scanned document, so you can search for phrases…

- I’ve heard good buzz about WalkMe. From its website: It “enables your business to simplify the online experience and eliminate user confusion. Think of it like a GPS, but instead of giving driving directions, WalkMe guides users every step of the way to successfully complete their online tasks.”

- Two tools from Google: First Click Free. If you offer subscription-based access to your website content, or if users must register to access your content, then search engines cannot access some of your site’s most relevant, valuable content. Implementing FCF for your content allows you to include your restricted content in Google’s main search index. Google is calling Helpouts “real help from real people in real time.” It’s a new way to connect people who need help with people who can give help. They’re “collecting” experts for now so might be worth it to “apply.”

- Speaking of Lifehacking, which someone referenced on the Listserv yesterday, Safely Go (free) for Android turns off your ringer and alert tones and sends an auto-reply to people who call or text you while you’re on the road.

- Grid is a new organizational app. Tap on an empty grid square and you can mark out an area of the document that suits your content.

- A new Poetry App lets users find poems by mood, subject and poet, as well as by browsing through online audio files. Might come in handy for your next marketing piece or spouse’s birthday.

I am quite sure that most of these “inventions” did not happen without some kind of group discussion, either in flushing out the idea or helping to develop it. That’s also the idea behind SIPA’s upcoming Fall Publishers Roundtable, Monday, Sept. 30, here in Washington, D.C. The topic is Creating Profitable New Products, and the two leaders, David Foster of BVR and Don Nicholas of Mequoda, will harness the amazing group knowledge that will be present to help you create the next new thing.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – LinkedIn CEO talks about the ‘content experience’

Listening to Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn—as I did yesterday in an online interview from the Tech Crunch Disrupt SF 2013 Show in San Francisco—you hear the familiar notes of today’s publishing business. He calls his LinkedIn audience “members.” “Relevant” and “curation” are two of his favorite words. And he acknowledges how crazy busy everyone is (though insistent that we set aside time to think and strategize).

Yet, content is not king at LinkedIn; the content experience is. Weiner’s goal is to create the “most relevant content experience” for his members. “The objective for us is to be the definitive professional publishing platform,” he said, “to make it as easy as possible for publishers and anyone to share professionally relevant content, and for our membership to be able to tap that business intelligence.”

Obviously, it works for them. In yesterday’s column, I wrote about the value of good storytelling, but also how hard that is. “Most small businesses go wrong because they’re creating content that’s just okay—and okay content doesn’t cut through the clutter,” an expert warned. LinkedIn has found other ways to cut through the clutter.

- Let experts speak for themselves. Weiner talked up their Influencers feature that showcases people like Richard Branson and Jack Welch.

- Curate. Weiner said they have “world-class editors” looking for the most relevant content for you.

- User content. LinkedIn now wants more than your resume. They want experiences, articles you’ve written, ambitions, any photos you’ve taken and “rich media” like keynotes you’ve given. (Video!) It’s your inferred identity, Weiner said that they’re after.

“If we were going to offer original content, I think it would be a very lightweight layer,” Weiner admitted. He ensures that LinkedIn’s editorial does not come at the “exclusion of machine learning and data optimization or social connectivity and viral dynamics. Our job is to package up the most relevant content we can find for our members…We want to be in a position where you can put your best foot forward. And that may happen through partnerships or our own platform.”

I’m not reporting on all this to promote LinkedIn. They certainly don’t need it. It’s more the model they’ve developed. They try to make everything they show us relevant and personal, be it content, our connections, or the groups we want to join. And they’re doing all this by creating “lightweight” content at best. As niche publishers, you have the heavyweight content; now you must strive to make it personal and valuable—and yes, relevant—to each of your subscribers/members.

One last thing. Weiner wrote a blog post a few months ago titled The Importance of Scheduling Nothing. He spoke of the demands that we all have, especially business leaders. “If you’re not carving out enough time to just think, or schedule impromptu meetings or get out from under your inbox, it can really start to compound and get worse,” he said. “So I’ve made it a point to carve out buffers. I gray out portions of my Outlook calendar. It’s really time to do just that, to think and think strategically, where we ultimately want to go. These are things that take time, and you don’t want to have interruptions and constant context switching that limits your time to be effective.”

He said that this has also given him time for coaching—so if someone is experiencing a problem, he can find a coachable moment and share an experience that he’s had. “This can pay huge dividends,” he said.

I believe Weiner would be very much in favor of you taking time to attend one of the in-person events that we have coming up, be it the SIPA Publishers Roundtable on Sept. 30, Data Content in mid-October or the Las Vegas Marketing Conference in December. Just the plane or train ride alone might give you that time away he’s talking about.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline