Peter Horan understands why the announcement that he was leaving his post as president and CEO of About.com scant months after its acquisition by the New York Times Company might surprise people and encourage speculation. But, he says, the decision was driven by a sense of accomplishment and a desire to move back to California with wife Pam, who will continue her work for the Online Publishers Association from San Francisco.
Horan is triple-booked these days as he finalizes plans for a new start-up, prepares About for the change in top executives, and gets ready for the move. All this, and he still found time to talk with paid Content Executive Editor Staci D. Kramer about his reasons for leaving, the selection of Scott Meyer as his successor, the transition and the role of About within NYTCO — and that new start-up. (Audio may be posted later if we can get the sound levels adjusted adequately.)
–On future plans: “I’ll do another web media start-up. I’ll probably have an announcement in the next week or so.” He joined DevX.com in its early stages and was president when it was sold to Jupitermedia.
– On leaving: “What set the field in motion was that I made a kind of lifestyle decision that I wanted to get back to the west coast. My wife and I always joked that we should look at our time in New York as an extended vacation. I had taken the job with the expectation that after about a year and a half I’d be heading back, so, with the transaction completed and the business going well, I figured I finished one part of the job and before we start the next adventure of integrating into the Times digital network, maybe this was the right stop to take my bow and go home.
“The Times tried to talk me out of it. We tried to figure out a way that I could reasonably do this on the west coast, but the nature of this biz, you really need to be here in New York. … It is every friendly, very orderly. At the end of the day, everybody gets what they want.”
–On his post-employee relationship: A lot of executives leave today with consulting agreements that bind them to the company. Not Horan. “I continue to be heavily, emotionally invested in About and the Times … but I will not have a relationship with the Times after I get back to the West Coast.
– On his successor: Given the way NYTCO and About stressed the strength of the About team as an important part of the transaction, it stands out that Horan’s successor is Scott Meyer, a Times insider who was gm of NYT.com prior to his post as vp-strategic planning for the New England Media Group and the Boston Globe. Horan said he was involved in the selection and the decision was unanimous. “Certainly, whoever came in had to be a strong online person, had to know online, breathe it, live it, love it. At the same time, as I looked at the skill set that’s going to be required to make about a successful part of the Times digital network, one of the things that I thought was valuable is somebody who came in with relationships with Times management, somebody having more understanding the Times, Times resources, what’s going on over there … how the paper thinks. That is not something I’ve got. If we have a talented online person, who has greater visibility in the Times’ organization and more bridges … Scott comes to the table with all that stuff. He knows who to talk to, what issues the papers are facing and what their world is. He can speak newspaper when he has to.
– On integration: “We want About to work with the rest of the company. … We all have to go to market to compete with Google and Yahoo. We’ve got to sell to General Motors and Toyota and Sony Pictures that are big clients. And our customers, our readers are … looking for comprehensive solutions. About has done extraordinarily well making contact with new readers. With the Times, we have the opportunity to expose those readers to broader content, very complementary content. The Times is really strong in traditional news, sports, weather, stocks. About is strong in service journalism. We’re the sidebar or the back story to a lot of the Times news coverage.”
– On TimesSelect: “I spent 10 years at IDG and we always believed that you have to have a balance of revenue streams. Certainly, we love and have benefited from advertising but you want that direct reader payment. The reader should pay for quality content.”
– On About’s role when more content goes behind the pay wall: “What we’ve got to do get as many readers as possible exposed to quality content both from About and the Times. … We’re bringing folks in and we’re showing them a range of content and what that will let us do at best is rebuild the base, whatever impact there is on uniques as a result of putting stuff behind the firewall, we can start to add uniques back into the mix. The other thing the Times gets from About is simply expertise, About has spent more time learning search engine optimization and how it works, and so as a result, will contribute some knowledge of techniques and tools.”
“To make all this stuff happen,what we’ve to be willing to do is run it as an intelligent network, where you draw on the strengths of each and you combine it in a way which benefits the reader and benefits the advertiser. Too much laissez faire doesn’t help anybody here.”
Comments have been disabled for this post