Here is the one-page summary of C3 that I gave colleagues at the Poynter/McCormick Big Ideas Conference today.

The central point of my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection is that media companies need to change our relationships. We need new relationships with our communities and with businesses. Here’s how I explain it in the blueprint:

For consumers, we will be their essential connection to community life — news, information, commerce, social life. Like many Internet users turn first to Google, whatever their need, we want Eastern Iowans to turn first to Gazette Communications, whatever their need. For businesses, we will be their essential connection to customers, often making the sale and collecting the money. We will become the Complete Community Connection.

Examining how this will change our relationship with businesses:

• Old relationship. We sell advertising to businesses. We are a large expense line in their budgets. When times get tough, they cut expenses, just as we do.


• New relationship. We help businesses make transactions. We send them reven