The press release that was never released

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDFW Fox 4 and Pegasus News announce groundbreaking partnership
Fox station and independent news website partner to deliver local, niche and neighborhood news and information to Dallas / Fort Worth


March 6, 2007

DALLAS, TX – Today KDFW and Pegasus News announced a cross-platform partnership that will leverage the resources of the top local news station in the DFW market and those of the biggest and fastest-growing independent local and neighborhood news website in the country.

“Each of us really liked what the other was doing,” said KDFW General Manager Kathy Saunders. “They are covering niche and neighborhood news in a way that we hadn’t seen before.”

“When we first thought about working with TV stations, Fox 4 was our first choice, based on their reach and the fact that they have a similar attitude about news coverage,” said Pegasus News president and co-founder Mike Orren. “They are very serious about local news, but they don’t take themselves too seriously. That fits us well.”

“This isn’t just a limited content swap,” said Chip Mahaney, managing editor for KDFW news. “We looked each other in the eye, realized that we were of like minds, and agreed that we’ll start looking at everything we do in terms of how we can collaborate.”

Although the partnership is in its early stages, there are already some key initiatives for the two organizations:

•    Pegasus News is supplementing many of the local news stories on its website with inline video (including advertising) from KDFW broadcasts.
•    KDFW is supplying Pegasus News’ national and international news headlines, as well as weather forecasts and weather video.
•    KDFW will regularly air more niche, neighborhood and suburban news, citing reports from Pegasus News.
•    A line of communication has been opened up between the two newsrooms so that they can identify stories for collaboration and get the first line on exclusives.
•    The two organizations will provide team coverage of elections and weather-related school closings.
•    Personalities from KDFW will contribute content to Pegasus News and vice versa.

“Our stories are getting picked up by the daily newspapers and TV stations a couple times a week, generally without attribution,” said Pegasus News senior editor Alan Cohen. “Now we’ll be giving the first heads-up to a partner who is going to be the first to broadcast the news and who is motivated to share the credit.”

“This partnership works,” said Saunders, “because we’re each focusing on our strengths. We’re broadcasters who work best in video, while Pegasus News focuses more on easy-to-search databases and text. We reach a much larger local audience with our broadcasts, but Pegasus News catches a lot of residual audience because of its strength in the search engines.”

“This is an example of entities who understand that they may be competitors in some ways finding reason to collaborate,” said Orren. “We both have strong websites, and I know that KDFW’s first duty is to promote their site. But we all firmly believe that by sharing resources, we are not stealing audience from each other. I’ll wager that this partnership further increases traffic to both our sites and the viewership of KDFW, possibly at the expense of other media.”

“The neat thing is that we’re just scratching the surface,” said Mahaney. “Every time we get together, we come up with more exciting ideas.” For instance, a cross-platform series featuring local bands; joint promotions and contests; and team coverage of high school football are already on the drawing board.

“Media companies have been paying lip service to convergence for ages,” said Orren. “The folks at KDFW understand that means working with partners. This is the first I’ve ever heard of a local station sharing its video resources with an outside provider. That tells me they ‘get it’ in a way no one else does.”

Pegasus News is a multimedia local news service providing the depth of neighborhood and niche news with the breadth of a daily newspaper. News and data comes from a wealth of sources including reporting by professional staff journalists; aggregation from local sites; content partnerships with local newspapers, broadcasters and bloggers; and user submissions. Deep interactive databases are a central feature. All of this is customized for each user in a proprietary mechanism called The Daily You™. In only three months, Pegasus News has gained an audience of more than 210,000 unique monthly visitors.

KDFW is became one of the most prolific local TV news stations in the country, with more local newscasts, and a bigger staff, than any other station in the state. KDFW FOX 4 and KDFI 27 are part of one of the country's largest TV station groups, FOX Television Stations, which in turn is part of the vast FOX Entertainment Group. KDFW has a robust local website featuring staff and user blogs as well as news video and entertainment data at http://myfoxdfw.com.