By Jeff Nachtigal — University of California-Berkeley

Five teams presented ideas on how to best attract the youth audience during the ONA's inaugural Master of the Web Universe competition. In the final round, judges asked pointed questions about revenue sources and sex columns before picking a theoretical, longer-term approach that focused on communicating in the language of the target audience.

"When they pitched Miami Vice, the summary they used to describe it was MTV meets Cops," said Amp.com team spokesman Matthew Stanton. "The Jon Stewart-Craiglist model is what we're starting with."

"The mandate is not to be quick or fast, but to follow the news at all times. Amp.com won't be safe, but it will be real," said Stanton, design editor at Journal Interactive in Milwaukee. "We want to talk in the language of this audience."

In an effort to tap into the creative expertise of conference participants, the ONA introduced the friendly problem-solving competition to this year's annual conference to brainstorm new ideas to better attract the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic.

"I think the notion of giving free stuff was a very good way to reach the target audience," said final round judge Rich Jaroslovsky, the founding president of the Online News Association and currently editor at large for Bloomberg News.

"I was struck by the number of times that Craigslist was mentioned. I'm not sure that last year it would have been as talked about. I'm going to have to spend some more time on the site, because it appears to be the current zeitgeist."

Competition judge Neal Scarbrough said that overall, proposals could have better emphasized the use of multi-media, and incorporating student journalists into coverage in specific areas.

"I would definitely have liked more on using students from assigned areas, like the state beat, or an area they're interested in, because they know the most about their own university," said Scarbrough, vice president and editor in chief at ESPN.com. "Amp.com was more ambitious over time with ideas about building packages, like the story idea about how federal home rates will affect students in the future."

Scarbrough also was impressed by Team Amp.com's proposal because it didn't focus only on typical themes that other teams tended to favor.

"It was not just about music, beer, sex and people's voices, there was a thrust for knowledge from the kids."

Team Amp.com proposed a free-access site with reader registration that would offer real-life issues content in areas including career, social life, leisure and places to live. Site editors would actively monitor user-generated content and mimic the tone and voice of the readers. The site would "extend the bar" on revenue stream and take non-traditional advertising, such as liquor ads, unacceptable to the parent newspaper.

Bulking up coverage of entertainment and sports was a commonly-mentioned idea from many teams, as well as relying heavily on user-generated content, from columns to streaming video.

When the use of unpaid student journalists came up for the third time it prompted a question from Jaroslovsky.

"I've heard that you're counting on the youth to create content, but my own experience is that user created isn't very good content," questioned Jaroslovsky. "Is the fact that it's created by students going to make it popular, or is it good content that does this?"

The It's a Wrap team leader broke the ice for day two when he asked the judges to take it easy on them. "Be a little nicer, we're not getting paid for this," said SignOnSanDiego editor Bob Hawkins, prompting laughs from the audience.

More audience applause broke out when Ohio University student journalist Jen McGraw suggested that what was needed was a student sitting on the panel. Her comment drew a loud and positive response from the audience and the judges, who invited her to sit on the panel for the duration of the competition.

Although they weren't named overall winners, Team Green Weasel was an audience favorite based on its approach that included provocative columns and a long list of resources about bars and music they would offer to their audience.

The main idea for the competition, according to moderator Neil Chase, was to put the creative talent assembled for the conference to work answering the question nearly every news organization tries to answer: What attracts the twentysomething audience to a Web site?

"At so many conferences we sit all day," said Chase, vice president and managing editor of CBS MarketWatch. "The idea was to get the brightest minds together to learn from everyone, and put into practice the common knowledge that's represented here. It's like Survivor, right here in a Hollywood."

Co-moderator Kurt Greenbaum said the best ideas come from other attendees, not the "expert" panels so common at conferences.

"Everyone here is already an expert in these areas, so hearing their new ideas is probably more valuable than another PowerPoint presentation," said Greenbaum, the Online News Director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Ultimately, we hope people come back with a CD full of all the teams' solutions."

In the first round, more than 25 teams proposed ideas that ranged from using blogs, forums and student-contributed columnist and photos, to adding sports and entertainment content and using video clips originating from local TV affiliates and camera phones. Other ideas included dating services, classified ads, student guides and user-controlled music reviews and MP3 downloads.

But information about drinking -- which bars are hot, which are too crowded, and which have the best drink specials -- was the most often suggested type of content to attract the college-aged audience.

One plan to come out of round one called for nothing short of a complete coup d'etat of the old Web site model. "The goal is to freshen it up and make it timely, relevant and hip," said team spokesperson Bill Gannon, Executive Director of Yahoo News. "It's not so much a redesign as a 'revoicing.' This isn't your parents' news Web site anymore."

The "Sheboygan Rocks" team argued that to win audiences they needed to put an "irreverent spin" on the existing brand content. They suggested that if a new Web site were to "put a funny hat on the brand," then the students would recognize that effort and return for more.

"Young people are much more visually articulate and get bored by crappy presentations," said Dan LaMont, a freelance photographer and the director of the American Society of the Media Photographers Foundation. "So have a really strong visual, multi-media presentation, and with a meta-story template you could put young journalists in the field to build multi-media features at a low cost."

For this year, it was the ideas that looked beyond present-day technical gadgetry and models that resonated with the judges.

"People don't talk about going on the Web anymore, they talk about how often they check their email," said Team Amp.com's Stanton. "Our idea of the Web is that it's like electricity; it's there and we all use it."

"Let's take more of a Jon Stewart or Onion approach, and talk about things in a different way."