Speaking Fluently
 By John Twohey
General Manager
FluentMedia
To our friends:
We’re pleased to report that with your help FluentMedia is off to a wonderful start. Now that our content-syndication platform is in place, we’re building a solid base of customers excited about our offering—news and analysis from the most respected names in publishing plus sophisticated technology that makes it easy to integrate content into a wide range of client web sites.
FluentMedia doesn’t aim to offer everything under the sun—just authoritative content from the top media sources, and best-of-breed content-management software. We’re well along the path to aggregating the sources we need to differentiate ourselves and to succeed. We’re excited about our new relationships with The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Reed Business Information, CMP United Media, the Gale Group and others.
Because of these and other content partnerships, FluentMedia is now able to offer unbeatable content in the following areas:
General news and analysis. Our sources here include major national and regional newspapers—The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and others—plus such broad-gauge sources as the Associated Press, the Knight Ridder-Tribune News Service and PR Newswire.
Technology. We now have three superb sources of technology-related news that are updated throughout the day: CNET News, TechWeb and Newsbytes from the Washington Post. Complementing this coverage is content from many key trade titles, including Information Week, Network Computing and Broadband Week.
Entertainment and media. Our lineup here includes Variety, Daily Variety, Advertising Age, Electronic Media, Broadcasting & Cable plus strong entertainment coverage from top newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal
Banking and finance. This spring, FluentMedia adds more than 20 key financial publications to its lineup, including the Daily Deal and Bond Week.
We’re gratified that so many of the nation’s premier publishers have chosen to license their content through FluentMedia. Thanks to all of you for your continued support!
For a complete list of our publication sources, please visit the sources page on FluentMedia's website.
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The FluentMedia difference
 Editorial Director Mark Miller talks about FluentMedia’s differentiation in the content syndication marketplace in the February 2002 issue of EContent Magazine.
“Our proposition here is aggregating premier media brands—and premier brands only—into this service. As we‘ve gone around recruiting publishers, we’ve talked about the focus on the corporate market not only because it’s where the business is, but also because there’s a certain comfort level for these publishers who don’t really want to see their content going into dot-com sites they see as almost competitive with their own online initiatives.”
Miller noted that enterprises are “looking for pricing that isn’t punitive based on the numbers of users. I think companies are looking for flexibility in the way they deploy information across the enterprise and ways to do that so it’s not painful on a price basis. That’s one clear trend. Also, the idea of site licenses is getting to be somewhat outmoded because of notions such as personalization of content and the way companies are filtering information to their own employees doesn’t always align itself longer to the idea of licensing it for, say, just strictly one particular Internet URL.”
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Marketing news
 FluentMedia raised its profile in the content-licensing market in the first quarter of the year through a series of brand-building ads in the trade press, a direct-mail campaign, an online promotion effort and the introduction of a robust marketing site: www.fluentmediainfo.com
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EContent, December 2001
 The December 2001 issue of EContent Magazine featured the top content companies to watch, including Tribune Media Services. With a focus on organizations distributing digitized text, images and multimedia across many platforms, the list of players illustrates the great variety and depth of participants in the content-licensing arena.
Link to article
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Newspapers & Technology, January 2002
Link to article
Associate Editor Hays Goodman surveyed the current landscape of content syndication, focusing on unique offerings that can break through the clutter.
David D. Williams, president and chief executive officer of TMS, echoed those thoughts: “The Web has developed into a highly reference-oriented medium. Users go there for very specific reasons. In the case of our entertainment information business, it is to seek TV, movie and Internet listings and information. Today, people are comfortable dealing in a multiple media environment, and being accessible is key…FluentMedia fills a critical function for corporate Web sites providing access to news, commentary and analysis from highly regarded media sources. In this age of information overload, we are offering companies a sophisticated filter to garner highly relevant information that is significant to their communications function.”
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Report on enterprise portals
For publishers who missed it late last year, here’s a summary of some of the findings of a provocative study by Forrester on the evolution of corporate intranets. It’s the kind of report fueling our belief that the demand for high-quality content and easy-to-use content-management tools is only going to grow in the next several years. Highlights:
Knowledge workers spend 25 percent of their time—10 hours per week—hunting for external and internal information At many large corporations, there is a rising level of interest in providing employees with a single, customized path to online information resources
Enterprise portals are opting increasingly for credible, branded content from familiar sources
Corporations also are creating rich extranet sites to differentiate themselves and to serve as sources of strategic information for clients, suppliers, partners
For many, marketing sites are proving more effective than online advertising, with companies seeking editorial content to attract visitors and ensure return visits.
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FluentMedia contacts
FluentMedia welcomes input from its content partners. Please forward any comments to:
Mark Miller, Editorial Director, 312/222-5019. mjmiller@tribune.com
FluentMedia
Suite 1609
435 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611
312/527-8170
www.fluentmediainfo.com
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The Wall Street Journal joins FluentMedia lineup
In mid-March, FluentMedia added The Wall Street Journal to its roster of top information providers. Under an agreement with Dow Jones, FluentMedia now offers current news from the Journal to corporate clients for use on their intranets and extranets. “We’re very pleased to be able to give our customers access to Wall Street Journal content,” said John Twohey, FluentMedia’s general manager. “As one of the world’s preeminent providers of daily business news, the Journal brings a new dimension of coverage to our already strong lineup of media partners.”
“No serious intranet would be complete without news from The Wall Street Journal,” said Jessica Perry, vice president of business development for Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing. “We’re delighted to strengthen our affiliations with Tribune Company to deliver this collection of daily Journal content.”
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Content roundup: Associated Press, Reed Business Information, CMP United Media
 The Associated Press joins the FluentMedia lineup this spring with a robust feed of approximately 700 articles daily, available to FluentMedia customers on a continuous, 24 x 7 basis. We’ve established another major partnership with Reed Business Information. Reed publishes more than 150 industry publications in a wide array of fields, including entertainment and media, food and lodging, technology, manufacturing and supply chain management. Among Reed publications already available to FluentMedia customers are Daily Variety, Broadcasting & Cable and Wireless Week.
We’ve also added titles from CMP United Media, a major publisher of technology magazines including Information Week, TechWeb News, Network Computing and Networking Magazine. Meanwhile, the National Journal Group is contributing its specialized weekly and daily publications covering such topics as federal government policy, information technology, Congress, national politics and healthcare. PR Newswire will be offering its valuable, for-the-record corporate press release service. And the Daily Deal will be providing a daily feed of merger-and-acquisition news for the investment banking community.
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Photos a key strength of FluentMedia platform, content mix
A key strength of FluentMedia’s content-management solution—SiteWare—is the ease with which its users can integrate photos and text. This spring, FluentMedia leverages that strength by adding images from the Associated Press and Knight Ridder/Tribune to its content lineup. Using SiteWare, FluentMedia customers can easily search our database of thousands of photos, and join images to related articles with just a few clicks of the mouse.
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FluentMedia at Buying & Selling eContent Conference
Tribune Media Services President David D. Williams will be among the featured speakers at the annual Buying & Selling eContent Conference April 7-9 at the Camelback Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Williams will talk about the partnering opportunities that exist for aggregators and enterprise content buyers. Buying & Selling eContent focuses on the strategic issues faced by top-level executives responsible for buying and selling content in the electronic marketplace. More information on the event is available at this page on econtent's web site.
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Executive appointments
FluentMedia announced the appointment of three veteran media executives to senior positions. Editorial Director Mark J. Miller supervises content development and editorial operations; Mitchell Lederer, director of sales and marketing, oversees the day-to-day efforts of the FluentMedia sales team; and Nedra Plonski, director of technology, manages daily operations, short- and long-term product development and vendor relations.
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