ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of do-ers and innovators that are transforming and re-defining the local space.

Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon Vice Chair/Amex Board Member/Sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the 2 ½ day event includes a pre-conference rundown on Local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of Top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special Venture Capital panel; and innovator panels on Social, Mobile, Deals, Video and Hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated with Merrill Brown.)

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
• Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards;) The Vice Chair of Groupon;, Board member of Amex, former Vice Chair of AOL; Author, The Business of Happiness
• Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; Investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo, and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
• Leslie Berland, Vice President, Social Strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in Amex’s mega FourSquare and Facebook deals.
• Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, UrbanSpoon and InsiderPages.
• Michael Zimbalist, VP, Research Operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
• Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”).

FEATURED SPEAKERS
• Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
• Merrill Brown, co-founder. MSNBC.com, Court TV
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
• Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
• Maria Kermath, Dir.,, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
• Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
• Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
• Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
• Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

For newspaper publishers and newspaper readers, iPad apps tend to be nice-to-have but not especially important. Given the choice of rich newspaper apps like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, I actually opt for the browser versions over the apps: I can see a lot more content at one glance; they’re updated more often; and they load faster.

But I’ve found that newspaper apps for “lite” newspapers much better. USA Today’s headline and short story format is perfect for the iPad. The Washington Post (not such a lite paper) has a great iPad app, too.

In early December, The San Diego Union Tribune –a truly lite newspaper but with good local news and features– also launched an iPad app. The result is vastly superior to the print and browser version of the newspaper. More than 11,000 downloads have already taken place.

The UT’s iPad launch coincides with the elevation of digital chief Mike Hodges to president and COO, and today, a rebranding of the newspaper company, which recently changed hands, to UT San Diego. The new name also does away with the dated “Sign On San Diego” city guide moniker.

An announcement on the company’s website notes that “We will now use one company name and logo on all of our media products and communications: U-T San Diego. This change marks a new era in our company’s history. It will help us unify our print and digital products under a single brand with a clear and consistent expectation of quality. SignOnSanDiego.com is now UTSanDiego.com, to match the nameplate of the newspaper and our newly released iPad app.”

Hodges, a digital real estate marketing vet prior to joining Freedom Communications and then The UT, has been responsible for several new revenue initiatives. These include a heavy emphasis on the local daily deal, bolstered by the acquisition of Discover SD, an events guide and deals platform for a younger demographic.

Hodges notes that the iPad app was specifically designed to have an entertainment orientation. “The primary time that people are looking at it is after 6 PM , when people want to lean back after dinner and watch TV. They’re often reading the App as well,” he says.

The App, designed by MindGruve Interactive, is geo-enabled for traffic and Surfline surf reports. It features a FlipBoard-like news page, along with drop down “sections” for easy access.The sections include a full graphic on the Daily Deal – it shows up very well. It also prominently highlights features that were obscured in print and on the website, including arts, photos and videos.

Notably, in an effort to keep it simple, The UT App doesn’t offer newspaper content such as comics, a television programming guide, letters to the editor, user generated content or local news – although Hodges says a major local initiative will launch in early January. Other Phase 2 items will include more in-depth, iPad-only content. It might also include more localized weather (the temperature in the San Diego region varies by as much as 15 degrees from one area to the next).

Much has been made of the iPad’s appeal for advertisers. The charter advertiser for the UT’s free phase is Cadillac. When the App goes to a premium model next quarter after an introductory period, sponsorship will be available for multiple sponsors on a premium basis.

Pricing for the App, however, is still being finalized. When it is introduced during Q1, there is likely to be an a la carte three month subscription for users who just want the App, especially those outside the San Diego area. My guess is it might be priced in the neighborhood of $5 a month. But there will also be bundles for people who want seven day delivery, or three day weekend delivery.

We’ll see whether The UT pulls the trigger on a firewall for the App. Several other publishers have announced plans to charge but haven’t done so.

ILM West is shaping up to be one of the great ones. Taking place Dec. 12-14 in downtown San Francisco, ILM West really reflects a sea change in local marketing from advertising to the new hybrid model of advertising and commerce (i.e. prepaid deals, reputation management, mobile app sales etc.).

We’ve made some big additions since our last update, starting with Google and Facebook. These add to the existing lineup, including our “rock stars” (Clear Channel CEO and industry legend Bob Pittman AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, Media News Group/Journal Register CEO John Paton and Deseret Media and former Harvard Business School Professor Clark Gilbert), and major sessions on deals, offers, verticals and the whole spectrum of local trends.

We will pursue three unique angles on Google at ILM West:

1- The local efforts, under Marissa Mayer’s local team. Jeff Aguero, head of local marketing, will present on everything local, from Zagat, to Google Places, to the Big G’s new “Get Online” program for SMBs. These strategies have really developed since this summer.

2- The global reseller effort. Global Channels head Todd Rowe will engage in an in-depth conversation with BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek on all his efforts.

3- Google Mobile. Mobile and Local Search exec Surojit Chatterjee will provide insights into this critical area for Google as part of our All SoLoMo morning on Day 3.

We’re also going deep with Facebook at ILM West. Facebook’s new local leader Matt Idema is our afternoon keynote on Day 2, with a lot of new details and a progress report on the local and vertical strategies. On Day 1, we are also taking a special look at working with Facebook’s platform with execs from Trada, Oodle and Kenshoo Local/Social weighing in. Eager but not sure how to play with Facebook? You will be when ILM West is done.

The SoLoMo event on Day 3 itself is going to be quite the cornerstone for ILM West. Curated by the research teams from our Social Local Media and Mobile Local Media programs, SoLoMo features top line data; and indepth and fresh looks at SoLoMo implementations from leaders at Google, AT&T Interactive, Zaarly, PayPal, XAd, JiWire and AppStack (Steve Espinosa’s new project.)

You can see the full agenda here. And register here.

Remember: We are making a donation to the SF/Marin County Food Bank for all registrations that come in by Thanksgiving.

A big chunk of the newspaper industry has banded together to adopt Find n Save, a shopping platform featuring a single place to review deals, product inventory, weekly specials, “cents off” grocery deals and local ads.

Participating newspaper companies include many of the companies participating in the Yahoo search and national advertising consortia and the Zillow real estate consortia. They include Gannett, Media News Group, McClatchy, Advance, Hearst, Cox, A.H. Belo and The Washington Post. More than 200 newspaper titles are involved in all.

Find n Save was launched last year by Travidia, a newspaper services vendor that has specialized in digital conversion of circular ads as well as directory solutions. The consortia is purchasing Travidia as part of the deal.

The conversion of the multi-billion dollar newspaper circular business to the digital age has been a tough one, although potentially lucrative. Chains such as Radio Shack, Target, Frys Electronics and others have increasingly looked to spend outside of traditional newspaper channels as print circulation has declined.

Moreover, the way that shoppers look for information has dramatically changed due to the ability to search for specific products and deals on the Internet. Most online circular solutions have not been fully searchable.

Early versions of Find n Save have tried to meet these changes by offering a one stop, fully-searchable solution. The concept has been especially championed by McClatchy. As of today, the initial launch of Find n Save is live in 19 markets, and will be in 21 markets by the end of the year.

For the newspaper industry, the question has been whether to get behind Find n Save, or Gannett-owned ShopLocal, which has many national accounts and has been similarly evolving. Gannett’s participation in Find n Save suggests they will seek to form a complementary solution. Another shopping solution that may prove complementary is AP’s iCircular product, which is oriented towards mobile users and may be seen as experimental.

To lead the new company, Find n Save has recruited former Yahoo Consortium leader Chris Tippie, who tells BIA/Kelsey that the advantage of the broad consortium is that it provides a truly national footprint, which is vital for circular advertisers. “Our goal is to have a Find n Save presence in every market in the U.S. For us, it is imperative to provide consistent delivery, uniform measurement and ease of engagement across all of our affiliate markets,” he says.”National retailers have been asking for this for some time.”

Tippie also says that it is much better that a one stop shopping approach be offered, even though deals, grocery coupons, inventory and national product ads might seem like unrelated items that newspapers just happen to sell.

“It is absolutely critical,” says Tippie. “Local newspapers provide terrific service to local retailers, and they provide a variety of different products. These are revealed to local shoppers in a variety of mechanisms. This provides a single interface that is searchable and optimized.”

Tippie also emphasizes that local affiliates have a lot of leeway around such issues as sourcing local deals. “We don’t provide a daily deals product,” he notes. “We just make it better” by aggregating and optimizing them. Sacramento’s Find n Save, for instance, had been providing both Groupon deals and local newspaper deals.

One part of the shopping solution that will require more work to be fully integrated is a local retailer directory. Some newspapers are earning revenue from enhanced directory listings, including one developed by Travidia that will continue to be sold by Find n Save. These will likely to continue to be developed locally by each company.

Whether Find n Save is ultimately successful depends on a number of factors. The biggest is whether the national retailers will adopt the platform and switch their circular budgets to it. Many have been developing their own capabilities.

For McClatchy Digital head Chris Hendricks, Find n Save represents a new beginning for newspapers. “It is pushing what we want to do as an industry,” he told us. “We are working together to develop solutions that work for advertisers and consumers.” Hendricks envisions future iterations, for instance, in the tablet space.

For newspapers, the 1/3 circulation/1/3 display/1/3 classifieds revenue model of the print days hasn’t made the transition to online, and there doesn’t seem to be enough time to right the ocean liner. But as a local media channel, newspapers have been written off before their time. Newspapers, of course, remain the single largest source of local content. As analysts, we like them as a giant laboratory for online services, with hundreds of different tests in different markets.

David Carr’s must read Sunday profile on Media News Group and Journal Register Co. CEO John Paton in The New York Times showcases an industry executive as “change agent”. The profile of the ILM West Dual Keynoter (along with Deseret Media CEO Clark Gilbert) shows Paton on a mission to capture the best of the newspaper model that still works, and to abandon what does not. In his first year at Journal Register, notes Carr, Paton’s efforts boosted digital revenue by over 200 percent.

It helps that Paton hasn’t always been an ink-stained wretch (that’s what we used to call industry people). While he started in newspapers, he also worked as the leader of Canoe.com, a large news site, during the first dot-com bubble, and then invested in Hispanic media, buying El Diario La Prensa in New York and other Spanish-language properties, eventually forming (and running) impreMedia in 2003.

“Mr. Paton has become something of a darling among media thinkers for putting his business where his rhetoric is,” notes Carr. “He issued Flip cameras to all the reporters at Journal Register papers, helped create a newsroom cafe that’s open to the community in Torrington, Conn., and has been pushing to dump ancient proprietary newsroom software in favor of free, Web-based publishing tools. He has financed a lab to foster employee innovation, and the company has formed partnerships with a number of Web companies to provide news and information.”

As Carr notes, what began as a tidy little experiment has become perhaps the single biggest bet in the whole newspaper business: The Journal Register and MediaNews are now in 18 states, with over 800 print and digital products, with revenue of over $1.4 billion and 10,000 employees. The second-largest newspaper chain in America is now being run by someone who thinks that print is, if not exactly dead, dying a lot faster than anyone thought. “

Carr also note that Paton isn’t talking to himself, having added sharp tounged new media advocates (and newspaper critics) such as Emily Bell, Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen to an advisory board.

“Mr. Paton hears all sorts of clocks ticking. His newspapers are mostly owned by hedge funds and investment banks, which are not known for patience, and part of the reason that the percentage of digital revenue is rising so fast is that the print revenue that it is compared with is dropping so precipitously,” notes Carr. ”Although he is something of an evangelist, he says he is also a pragmatist.”

We’re honored that John Paton and Clark Gilbert are doing back to back keynotes at ILM West, which takes places Dec. 12-14 in San Francisco. You can register here.

Google, Facebook, Amex, Groupon and others are all working on electronic wallet concepts that can help store and process deals along with other promotions and event tickets.

At least one deals vendor, however, is banking that it will take a very long time before a standard develops. The rollout of wallets is just “handing merchants a problem,” says Max Goff, a technology platform industry veteran who together with company founder John Saltas has launched Kostizi, a deals platform. ”There is a disconnect with the merchant’s back office.”

Goff’s solution is a physical Point of Sale card that can store and process any number of deals from a wide variety of merchants. The Kostizi card, which can complement other Web-based and mobile-based options, has the benefit of immediate gratification for consumers, says Goff.

It can also be co-branded by participating media partners that utilize the Kostizi deals platform — who can put their own logo on cards they distribute — and easily activated by any point of sale device with a simple swipe. The card can be migrated to mobile solutions as they become more widely available.

Kostizi cards have now launched on the back of The Salt Lake City Weekly, an alternative weekly (and the city where the company is based). The company is also working with alternative weeklies in Sacramento; Chico, CA; Reno; Pittsburgh; and Jacksonville.

The company, which is angel-funded, is also developing additional media partners in those cities and others. Business Development is led by newspaper sales vet George Dratelis.

CEO John Paton (photo, Nieman Lab)

Sometimes, you reach a point where you think all the newspapers should just combine their audience and online advertising efforts and be smart, big, technologically savvy and competitive with everyone else. Like the combined effort on Cars.com, for instance.

That’s the game plan behind Digital First, a new management effort that allows the forward thinking execs at , an 18 title chain in the Northeast to manage Media News Group, the 2nd largest newspaper company with 57 titles spread out in multiple regions. Together, the companies will have 11,000 employees, 75 newspapers (and 880 print and online products).

While Journal Register and MNG have been motivated by the interests of their joint investor, Alden Global Corp., it seems possible that other newspaper companies might also eventually join. Alden bought Journal Register in 2010 and is the largest holder of Media News Group.

Journal Register CEO John Paton, for one, has been a vocal proponent of the ongoing value of newspapers in print and online, and has assembled a strong team to execute, including hyperlocal proponent Jim Brady. The reach of the MNG properties should provide more scale to Paton’s efforts.

MNG, itself, for all practical purposes, ends a long history as an industry maverick that sharply cut newsgathering costs (i.e.salaries), and experimented with new formats and services. The company has had a tradition of being an online vendor’s best friend, always willing to take meetings with new companies. But at the same time, its cost-cutting ways resulted in new areas being underfunded.

Recently, MNG has pushed paywalls to block free, non-subscriber access to its content. It has also collapsed its 12 Bay Area titles to two titles, increasing the individual circulation for those titles, but possibly at the cost of less local coverage in print (but perhaps easily segmented online.) These strategies may be re-evaluated under the new regime.

At this point, the newspaper industry have several “we’re all in this together” products. Things like The Yahoo consortium, which has placed national advertising in papers and sold search; The AP; Cars.com; and various national and regional ad nets.

Some work well, but what we’ve seen is that there is no magic bullet. In fact, the impact of newspapers has been a little underwhelming for its partners. Still, newspapers deliver strong retail relationships and a strong and frequent readership (if aging and inevitably, dwindling).

Gannett has now publicly announced that it has expanded its Deals Chicken platform to 10-15 markets, and will be in 57 markets where it has newspapers and/or TV stations.

The company obviously enters a crowded marketplace, but will likely become an immediate contender for several reasons. These include the strength of its local media outlets, existing merchant relationships, and an (often underrated) ability to cross promote deals. Its ability to scale product development is also impressive. Gannett now has over 30 products in its stable. Its various moms-oriented verticals and Datasphere-managed hyperlocal sites should be especially helpful.

We talked with Gannett Digital head Josh Resnick last month about the rollout. Resnick said the company considered several brands, but decided to roll out with Deals Chicken, which has done well for AZ Central for about a year. “The brand resonates, and consumers like it,” he said.

He also noted that the company will work with a deals platform first developed by its Clipper Magazine coupon subsidiary, which is branded Doubletake Deals. Using Clipper’s platform makes sense since it was created to serve multiple local markets at once.”That’s the nature of Clipper’s business,” said Resnick.

The choice to go inhouse differs from other media companies such as McClatchy, which has opted to work with Second Street Media, a white label company. “We’ll do a lot of experiementation,” notes Resnick. “ We are in so many local markets. Each one is a product innovation lab. Resnick also expects some success right out the door, becoming a “Top 3 player” in each of its markets in a matter of time.

With Groupon going public, the promotions space is getting tremendously revved up. Hoping to get in on the action are promotional relatives of the deals space, including providers of grocery “cents off” coupons, retail weekly sales (circulars), retail rewards, and Buy One Get One Free. While most of these don’t do much with local advertisers, they do target local consumers, and they envision a general morphing of the space (to the degree that a cents off coupon for Park’s Sausages can morph into a Groupon night on the town.)

Players include such entities such as Coupons.com, ShopLocal, iCoupons.com, Valpak.com, RedPlum.com, FindnSave, Savings.com, Clipper.com and YourBestDeals.com. Each has sought to integrate the various types of promotions together, sometimes with mobile and social solutions.

Today’s news is that 300 person Coupons.com is taking new institutional investment that will pump a whopping $100 million into its development (another $100 million will be given to employees and investors in an unusual liquidity event). The effort seeks to make the company an investment alternative (and in some ways, more rounded) to Groupon and others.

The Mountain View,CA-based company, which was founded in 1998, claims a network of “tens of thousands” of websites across the Internet, including retailer sites that span 46,000 store locations, as well as affiliate publishers. The network includes consumer electronics, shopping carts and kiosks, as well as mobile apps. GigaOm (via Daily Deal Media) cites sources that suggest the company earned $50 million in 2010 and will earn $100 million this year. It also says that the company ‘s valuation is pegged at $1 billion.

The investment will be used to add 100 people and “further accelerate the company’s growing momentum in shifting the newspaper-dominated coupons industry to digital as well as expand the coupon industry.”

The success of failure of the company, of course, ultimately depends on its ability to shift with the industry, which, pre-recession, had actually been moving away from coupons towards other customer acquisition methods.

Currently, Coupons.com is focused on digital coupons that must be printed out. But major efforts are afoot to integrate coupons.com offers into social and mobile networks, where they might attract younger users.

The company says it is also looking to “reach across the digital landscape—everywhere brands and retailers can engage with consumers.” It already has a head start in mobile via the acquisition of Free State Labs LLC, the developers of Grocery iQ, a mobile shopping list application. NFC-based transactions on mobile phones are in the works.

Coupons.com also plans a new effort to enable “smaller manufacturers, which could not place offers in the newspaper insert because of budget requirements or category exclusivity restrictions.” International is also on the wish list. The company currently offers coupons and vouchers in 12 European countries through its 50 percent ownership of UK-based Couponstar Ltd.

Whenever one writes about the future of newspapers and other news organizations, a voice in the back of your head says: “they’ve tried that already and it didn’t work.” Fifteen years into the digital revolution, that’s the dilemma confronting the news industry as it once again revisits possible solutions. Thankfully, no one is giving up.

Paywalls. Video. Search. Hyperlocal. Mobile. All these things are extensively discussed in “The Story So Far: What We Know About The Business of Digital Journalism,” a new Columbia Journalism School report from Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave and Lucas Graves. The news-centric report doesn’t deal very much with our favorite subject — the transformation of the local marketplace, and the newspapers’ potential role in it. But there is plenty on the plate here.

While there are no ready answers – if we knew the answers, we would have provided them a long time ago — there are strong overviews on each subject. The real focus here is reconnecting to the real “fans” and “regulars” that may engage with a news product 50x more than the “occasionals” and “fly-bys” that make up the bulk of unique visitors. “When people talk about the size of an audience, that’s a sham,” the report quotes Scout Analytics’ Matt Shanahan.

One goal stressed in the report is building a direct relationship with fans to help push contextual advertising. “By producing relevant journalism, deploying data intelligently and relying on social media – not just search engines – to drive traffic, (publishers) can gather a more devoted and involved readership, one that advertisers will also prefer,” notes the authors.

Examiner.com, for instance, does very well when it encourages writes to match their output to social media, search…and advertising. Pet writers did very well last year matching coverage of dog adoption and pet shelters, pushing CPMs from $3-5 to $11 for P&G’s Iam’s Pet Food, a key Examiner sponsor.

In theory, other passion subjects do well too. High school sports especially stands out. The Dallas Morning News’ High School Game Time registers 14 pages a month compared to entertainment (2.5 pages), news (2.78 pages), weather (4.83 pages), and sports (7.71 pages). It also grosses $700K a year of new ad dollars, in partnership with local cable coverage. This year, it is also launching a $1.99 iPhone app., which represents new circulation revenue, along with heavy user paywalls, such as the one recently enacted by The New York Times.

That’s important. Like others, I’ve actually come to conclusion that the news organizations that have the market power to erect such pay walls are the ones that ultimately survive. For The Times, which has boosted per copy costs to $2 a day, circulation dollars have inched up to $683.4 million a year; just behind display advertising, which has fallen from $1.27 billion to $780.4 million. Next year, it doesn’t seem out of the question that circulation will surpass display.