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Rocky Mountain Independent: Stillborn? Unprofitable in spite of reduced layers/management?

In January I was sad, but not surprised, to see the Rocky Mountain News shut down. They made a cool video did some nice retrospective posts, and shut down the operations. Since then the Denver Post (which was kind of a part owner of the Rocky) has picked up some of the more popular journalists and probably some of the other staff.

So, some of the staffers, photographers and journalists got together and decided they were going to do things right. They weren't going to be driven by corporate greed like the evil capitalists, they were just going to do the news and make enough money to keep the business rolling. They created a site I Want My Rocky as a rallying point for the former employees of the news and as a place to gather interest in a proposed online-only pay-for-content news source.

Old Media: Guess what, you're old and you're doing it wrong

I was most recently drawn to the site by a post from Cindy House - one of the main people in the post-RMNews project - about New models, new challenges. She talks about how they haven't been successful in getting a readership, so they can't afford good content, so they can't build the readership. So, they're going to start providing consulting services, specifically: "Web design, search engine optimization and editing/writing services to other businesses."

So, how good are their consulting services?
Often the homepage for a service provider is weak. This is the so-called "Cobbler’s Son Has No Shoes" effect. However, there are some painful mistakes on the IWantMyRocky site which are actively hurting their efforts. Let's look at the home page:

I want my rocky SEO weakness

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We maded a babby (well, we started one)

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How is babby formed? We needed to know.

We think we found out.

In all seriousness, little Henry Otto (as we call the baby in utero) is now 3 months along and due in the middle of March. Yay procreation!

(p.s. let's face it: it was only a matter of time before we became breeders)

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