Outside Looking In

The Web is adopting one of he worst habits of Hollywood: an addiction to blockbusters. It's drunk with phenomenal, if ephemeral, riches. When only billions matter, only the broadest possible target audiences matter. The Web once promised something different - a low barrier to entry and the kind of intense consumer loyalty that only niche content can bring. But investors, it seems, are focused on the mainstream plays.

Don Rojas can't understand it. He's struggled for three years to keep his Web site up, but if he can't make someone understand the promise of the Black World Today by September, he'll have to throw in the towel.

"I'll be 50 years old in October," says Rojas sadly, sitting in his Baltimore office. "It's a critical juncture in my life. I thought that apart from my family, TBWT would be the greatest achievement of my adulthood."

The Black World Today is a daily news Web site for African-Americans, and Rojas, the site's founder and editor in chief, must come up with some way to bolster his meager advertising revenue. The former editor in chief of the Amsterdam News, Rojas has worked for three decades as a reporter, radio journalist and newspaper editor. After a career in traditional media, he decided in 1995 to try to realize the promise of the Internet, figuring that publication costs were low and potential was high - not just for a profitable venture, but for crafting incisive news analysis and distributing it internationally. But since Rojas began, the Web has lost sight of that promise, and he can't afford to keep the site going for much longer.

Rojas is the kind of visionary that made the Web possible. The man works long hours, is unwaveringly devoted to crafting high-quality editorial and won't quit until he's dragged from his desk.

As in Hollywood, though, the funding often depends on the pitch, not the product. Mastering the pitch involves making lots of connections and looking the part. It means confidently articulating over and over again, in the vocabulary of the new-media marketer, speculative business notions like brand, reach and - most speculative of all - revenue. Those who can't talk the talk are left behind.

Venture capitalists attest that it's the executive team that sells the company, which is a serious impediment to Rojas' chances. Rojas doesn't look the part, and he doesn't speak the language. A bearded man with large glasses and a slow, professorial demeanor, Rojas speaks intricate English in a lilting Caribbean accent as he admits, "I'm not a businessman by training or propensity."

Rojas needs someone to mediate between his vision and the VCs'. He needs a strong executive to walk in and convince an investor to hand TBWT what it needs - enough to at least upgrade the site's ramshackle design, which obscures its high-quality editorial. But investors need to recognize the site's potential first, and few seem able to see it.

Why should they look at TBWT? A news outlet that serves African-Americans can create an intensely loyal audience by taking advantage of the community's ongoing feeling of exclusion from mainstream media. NetNoir and Black Voices are the two highest-profile sites, and Cox (dossier) Media's BlackFamilies.com has recently entered the scene, but Rojas believes they are not filling the need that TBWT could. "NetNoir and Black Voices are strong in the community dimensions, stronger than we are, but in terms of the journalism, we are unparalleled," he argues. "People will come to us on a regular basis, because we're addressing a hunger not only for information, but also for an interpretation and analysis of that information."

TBWT has no promotional budget. It has managed to proliferate among African-American Web users solely by word of mouth. Those who do find the site tend to stay - Rojas' 250,000 hits a month work out to around 50,000 regular readers. Seventy percent are college-educated, in their 30s to 50s, and earn more than $55,000