Wired News: Open Arms for Open-Source News

Daniel Terdiman of Wired News reports on Bakersfield’s The Northwest Voice newspaper giving its readers control of its content through online article posting. “36 percent of the content is photographs, while 13 percent is school news, 11 percent is community events, 7 percent is youth sports and 2 percent is church news. Ten percent of coverage is columns written by locals selected by Fulton for their expertise on things like horses, cars, schools and outdoor life.”

Fast Company on Whole Foods

Charles Fishman writes about Whole Foods in the July 2004 issue of Fast Company. The management insights are very interesting. Every new hire has to win a two-thirds yes vote from their team before being permitted to join the staff permanently. (via Jason Kottke)

Every four weeks, individual work teams (there are roughly 10 per store) are assessed for productivity, and profit sharing is awarded in every other paycheck.

BBC expanding its search offerings

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashley Highfield of the BBC mentions their new push into search as alternative to U.S. based companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. “[A]s the market came to be dominated by US sites – the most popular of which is Google – there was value in investing licence fee payers’ money in a UK-centric search engine.” The BBC‘s current search offering uses Inktomi but optimizes results for a UK audience.

McKinsey Quarterly on the business of sports

The July 2004 issue of McKinsey Quarterly does a good job breaking down what makes sports successful and what hinders large scale success. Tekla V. Back, Philippe Blatter, and Jacques R. Bughin authored “Playing to win in the business of sports” and focused on tennis and golf as two case studies. Some interesting facts:
  • The 2002 FIFA World Cup accounted for 8% of global television-rights revenues in 2002 (about the same as the NBA and NASCAR combined).
  • In the United States the average golf or tennis TV viewer has an income of more than $100,000 a year.
  • Professional tennis is fragmented. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) handles Olympic tennis events, the Davis Cup (men), and the Fed Cup (women). The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) runs the men’s circuit, and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) runs the women’s circuit.

Major League Soccer expands to Salt Lake City

Major League Soccer announced Salt Lake City as the site of the league’s newest expansion team. The team will be owned and operated by Dave Checketts’ Sports Capital Partners. The team will play at the University of Utah’s Rice-Eccles stadium for its first two seasons. Rice-Eccles stadium is the home of the United Soccer League’s Utah Blitzz and was the site of the 2002 Winter Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. The playing field is synthetic Field Turf, not real grass.