1. Editorial Projects in Education Inc. publishes education news, information, and data for policymakers, educators, and the public. How has your business model for content delivery and revenue generation changed since you became publisher in 1997?
The primary mission of the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education is to help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education. Its purview spans local, state, and national news and issues from preschool through the transition from high school. Today, fully a third of the organization's revenue is derived from non-print-related products.

EPE is best known as the publisher of Education Week. Now in its 29th publishing year, Education Week is considered the "must read" news source in elementary and secondary education. The newspaper, published 37 times a year, has a paid subscriber base of about 50,000, and a "pass-along" readership of nearly 260,000 others.

EPE has strategically and deliberately worked since the mid-1990s to take advantage of the electronic distribution of its content in the name of improving American education, individual schools and districts, and student success. Indeed, EPE was an early adopter of the Internet among media companies and published one of the first periodicals to appear online in 1995 at edweek.org.

Our goal from the get-go was to smartly leverage online media as a dynamic new way to distribute the news, information, and data that the K-12 field had come to rely on from Education Week. We also recognized early on that the interactive features of online publishing held great promise for actively engaging policymakers and practitioners in the issues of the field.

Currently, edweek.org serves up more than 2 million page views to hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month. In addition, more than 235,000 people now subscribe to the site's daily newsletter, EdWeek Update, and hundreds of thousands have subscribed to a growing array of themed monthly e-newsletters.

EPE's business model includes a paid-subscription component - for both print and online offerings. (Some of the content on edweek.org is free and available to all users; some requires that users register, and a third "premium" tier requires that users be print or online-only subscribers.) Not only does the model provide a steady and growing income stream, it also underscores the value proposition that high-quality content, information, and data are valuable enough to pay for.

2. As print and online advertising continue to decline for most media companies, what ways do you recommend to grow nonprint revenue?
In a nutshell, it's about diversification and targeted offerings to niche segments of the market.

At EPE, much work has been under way to execute on new business initiatives over the past few years to diversify and grow its revenue streams. New products within the past two years include Digital Directions magazine (and the Digital Directions channel online), the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook (and its online counterpart), and several e-newsletters on topics ranging from curriculum to education research to education technology. Beginning late last month, EdWeek Update, formerly distributed weekly, is now published five days a week and distributed to more than 235,000 subscribers.

At the same time, of course, we have diversified our advertising and sponsorship products, and audience-development revenue is generated from new and different ways of slicing and dicing EPE content. Site licenses - to, for instance, state education departments, education schools, and school districts - are an increasingly important source of income.

3. How does knowing your audience help you leverage the value of your content?
EPE has conducted traditional market research of its print subscribers since Education Week was launched in 1981. In 2004, edweek.org's front and back ends were redesigned to include a requirement that users register to gain access to most of the site's content. The job board and corporate-information pages continued to be available to "anonymous" users. Two years later, after analyzing the information gleaned from the registration data, the site was redesigned again to include a third tier of "premium" content that required a print or online-only subscription to gain access.

As it turns out, and perhaps not surprising, the audiences for our print products are quite different from those accessing content online. Most of our print subscribers are policymakers; high-level state, district, and school-building administrators; and other "influentials" in the field. Less than 5 percent of Education Week's subscribers are teachers. The greatest percentage of online users, on the other hand, is teachers, and a significant slice has identified themselves as parents and students. That said, "power users" of edweek.org generally mirror our print-subscriber profile.

Web analytics have informed the site's development at each step of its evolution, and, as we have become more sophisticated users of the data, and, increasingly over time, we have used the information to inform our decisions about the development of new products and about which content should live in which access tier.

A just-completed engagement with a Web-analytics consultant will ensure that staffers throughout EPE will increasingly be able to take advantage of sophisticated business metrics as new products are conceived and developed. As part of that engagement, 20 reports are currently being developed to inform both business and editorial decisions. Most important, we believe, is a series of reports that will provide information on the "conversion funnel" - i.e., users who convert from the "anonymous" to the registered tier, those who move from the registered to the paid tier, and those who sign up for or buy any one of a number of products offered on the site.

By enhancing our ability to assess usage patterns and serve the market in increasingly segmented ways, such online analytics will help us generate revenue from existing and new products. Another key goal in the months ahead is to improve and update our efforts to gather reader and user feedback, including through surveys and focus-group-like user-analysis techniques.

4. As the president of a nonprofit publishing company, what opportunities do you think exist for content providers in this arena?
Make no mistake: Being nonprofit doesn't mean that an organization can expect to survive without a business plan. In EPE's case, its nonprofit status means it is tax exempt and allows it to raise funding from foundations and other underwriters.

In the fiscal year that ended on July 31, EPE generated about $3.4 million in grant income, or slightly more than one-quarter or the organization's total revenue. Over the years of raising grant funding for EPE, we have often noted the parallels between EPE and National Public Radio as nonprofit news organizations. Generally speaking, both of us make the pitch that we need grants to underwrite specific lines of news coverage. There's an important distinction, however: EPE also generates substantial earned income through advertising, subscriptions, and new-product sales.

5. How have the roles and responsibilities of your staff changed as you have developed more cross-platform products and digital distribution channels?
The convergence of Education Week in print and online passed a milestone this spring with the relocation of the Web production department from its longtime home in our building's Terrace Level to new quarters in the heart of the Education Week newsroom. Along with the physical move upstairs came a management reorganization that put the Web team under the supervision of Education Week's managing editor for online news.

At the same time, the Teacher channel of edweek.org was brought organizationally into the Education Week fold, with Teacher's managing editor also now reporting to Ed Week's ME for online news. The changes reflect not only the degree to which the print and online operations of EPE's flagship publication have already merged, but also our determination to ensure that this integration will keep progressing. They also underscore our belief that Education Week and its sister edweek.org channels will all benefit from greater opportunities for interaction and collaboration.

More important, the signs are apparent in the work product of the Education Week staff. Examples range from the expanding roster of staff-written blogs and the growing use of them to break news, to the increasing output of original video and greater use of multimedia offerings to enhance the print newspaper.

As silos between staff members break down, people have been acclimating to other changes as well. Among them is the frequency reduction in print issues of Education Week, which has presented challenges and opportunities for the online side of the operation as well as the print. On the downside, the reduced frequency has cost the Web site some guaranteed original content from the weekly paper. And, with some users conditioned to return weekly for stories from the latest issue, fewer issues may give readers fewer reasons to come to the site. Indeed, the reduced print frequency may have been a factor in a slight drop in traffic to the site compared with last year.

On the positive side, the reduction in print frequency has further elevated the importance of the Web site as a means of disseminating news. It has increased the need for the newsroom to produce stories and other content first or even exclusively for the Web.

This interview is third in a series of conversations with five media executives who shared their deep knowledge and expertise at API's "Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference in September. The program addressed one of the most critical issues facing the news industry: generating revenue from online content. The conference was based on the Institute's Newsmedia Economic Action Plan , an integrated five-point plan to guide the news industry through the current disruptions and position it for the future. You can download a free copy of the report by clicking the link.