FAIL FAST AND MOVE FORWARD

FAIL FAST AND MOVE FORWARD

Denise Schuster, Tribune Company | September 11, 2012

d i g i t a l i n n o v a t i o n a t t h e t r i b u n e c o m p a n y

" S o m e t i m e s b y l o s i n g a b a tt l e , y o u w i l l f i n d a n e w w ay t o w i n t h e w a r. "

– D o n a l d T r u m p

Agenda

• Introduction

• Fire in the Hole!

• Success or Failure

• Where We Are Now

• What’s Next

• Key Take-Aways

• Questions?

2

DENISE SCHUSTER

Senior Vice President Technology Innovation, Tribune Company

3

Who is Tribune?

4

• 8 Major Newspapers

• 23 TV Station

• 50+ Websites

Timeline

5

2008: Tribune Web Services 2009-2011: Smartphone newsreader apps

iPhone Newspaper apps Droid Newspaper apps Single-subject iOS apps

2011: iPad apps for Newspaper and Broadcast

2011: Windows Mosaic POC 2011: Native rewrites of iPhone and iPad apps 2012: Tablet POC and additional Tribune Web Services 2012: Windows 8 POC 2012: “Touch” Device-Agnostic site 2012: Making Tribune content available on mobile aggregator apps and Kindle

Will updated this timeline 1847 1995 Present

1847: Chicago Tribune Newspaper Launch 1995: Chicagotribune.com website debut

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

Tribune’s Path of Urgency

6

Trending in the Industry

7

50.4 The percentage of mobile subscribers that own smartphones (Nielsen)

The projected number of the US population that will own a smartphone, tablet or both in the year 2015 (In-Stat)

204million

Date that Chicago Tribune predicts our mobile traffic will takeover desktop traffic

Q2, 2013

Average monthly unique visitors to the top

25 news sites, in 2011 (Nielsen Online and PEJ research)

342million

Stay the Course?

• Bet Small on Digital

• Proceed with Caution

Fork in the Road

8

Act Now?

• Bet Big on Digital

• Focus on Mobile

Act Now

• The urgency to evolve was in part due to:

o Rapid explosion of devices/platforms/content providers

o Consumer demand

o Need to reduce manpower, cost and time

o Need to increase monetization

• Our platform needed to be more agile

Shifting our focus to the mobile space opened the door to failure, opportunities and successes

9

SUCCESS OR FAILURE

Is There A Difference?

10

Mosaic by Tribune

11

Mosaic by Tribune • Tribune’s first application optimized for a tablet device

o Aggregated content across the Tribune enterprise and other media outlets

o Built on Windows 7 and Windows phone 7

• Designed to deliver a rich user experience – Highly visual

• First time we used cloud services for an application

• Initially developed as an internal prototype o Invited to present at the 2011 Consumer Electronics

Show in Las Vegas by Microsoft

o Microsoft picked up for their online store

12

13

The Learning • Facilitated the idea of leveraging cloud services to deliver content • Our content services were too complex – Not sustainable or reusable • User experience is a priority • Ensure business buy-in when developing new technologies – Educate • Must be multi-platform – IOS, Android, MS – Cost considerations

Mosaic: What Happened

Key Pieces

Fail or Success? • Little support from our business units – Disconnect on trends • Care and feeding important – Users want new!

Stay the Course?

• Proceed with Visibility

• Next Up?

Fork in the Road

14

Act Now?

• Bet Big on Digital

• Focus on Mobile

• User Experience #1

• Reduce Complexity

Windows 8 Beta

15

Windows 8 Beta

• Windows 8 is a new operating system compatible on desktop and tablet

o Microsoft’s new operating system

• Partnered with Microsoft for early access to beta platform

o Bet on Microsoft audience migrating

• Developed news reader app in 30 days

• Decision to be agnostic a critical decision

• Received some business buy in – Still wary

16

17

The Learning • Developed and released an app in 30 days • Successful use of the cloud services with elasticity and reusability • Decision to stay device agnostic hurtles Tribune forward • Responsive & app like experience is eye opener • Successful HTML5 use, highly scalable

What Happened

Key Pieces

Fail or Success? • LA Times app featured on Windows 8 Beta; Chicago app created in 5 days • Picked up 40k users in 1 month

o Audience confirmation in Microsoft’s new platform

• Microsoft deployed platform update, took 2 hours to adopt – Design confirmation

Stay the Course?

• Bet Big on Digital

• Proceed Aggressively

• HTML5

Fork in the Road

18

Act Now?

• Address User Experience

• Focus on Mobile

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Tribune’s Path of Learning

19

Consistency and Reusability

Responsive & Device Agnostic

• Consumer-centric

• Save manpower, money and time in both the short and long run

• Consistency of design across assets

• Identify consumer preferences to be used everywhere

• Consumer experience

20

Agility and Scalability

Cloud Services

• Allows us to fail fast by significantly reducing the development process

• Allows us to deliver content on a scalable bandwidth model

• Continuously evolving the cloud services:

o Device Services

o Notification Services

o Logging Services

21

Device Agnostic Adoption

22

Android iOS

iPad

Pag

e V

iew

s

Chicago Tribune Touch Site

Chicago Tribune Desktop

Pag

e V

iew

s

Friends & Family

Stay the course? • On the Right Track! • Highly Reusable

o Site o Content

• HTML5

Fork in the Road

23

Act now?

• More Faster

• Hybrid

• Apps Decision

WHAT’S NEXT

Tribunes Path of Success

24

What’s Next for Tribune Company • More failure, more learning

o Reduce complexity in systems

• More risk-taking

• New opportunities o Big Data o Hybrid on device agnostic site

• Continue building a consistent user experience with our brand across all mediums

• User experience overhaul

• Speed to market

25

Key Take-Aways

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• User experience should be a priority

• Platform services should be defined on how and when to use – Any delivery platform

• Business partnership is key

• Speed = reusability and less complexity

• Shifting our focus to the mobile space opened the door to failure, opportunities and successes

Failure can lead to Success!

Questions?

27