Ed Keating, VP of the Content Division of SIIA, engaged Bob Merry, President and Publisher of Congressional Quarterly in a post-lunch interview that served as a neat case study of how publishers of high-value exclusive content need to adapt to changes in the competitive landscape. (Note, the concept of the exclusive model of content distribution was introduced in Shore's 2003 report, How Publishers Can Profit From Contextual Advertising Models.) Congressional Quarterly (CQ) originally provided information about Congress to newspapers, but later found its niche with research libraries and members of Congress (as well as other goverment organizations). Its core market of congressional staffers and government analysts within the beltway share the condition of "information paranoia" in Merry's words; that is, they have to know as much as their colleagues know about the issues or else they will be at a disadvantage. Therefore, they are willing to pay real dollars to assure that they have all the appropriate information at hand.

Bob's key theme was the "power of techology to create and destroy journalistic practices". He emphasized how technology enables faster delivery and more functionality in journalistic offerings and that publishers have to keep up with these trends or risk getting bypassed or acquired (note, CQ acquired its primary competitor Legi-Slate in 1999). While CQ suffered some financial hardships after investing in technologies to move to the Web in 1998, it ultimately paid off when they were able to provide the value to customers that their competitor could not.

The description of the evolution of CQ's weekly magazine, Congressional Weekly, was particularly interesting as an example of the changing role of print. When the hard-core users shifted to the web for timely information on legislative actions, the mission of the weekly had to change (or die). CQ has effectively managed to transition the print weekly to a broader interest publication that covers a wider scope of goings-on in Washington beyond legislative tracking and as a result is able to attract more advertisers with somewhat "sexier" topics.

Also, as Rafat Ali writes in his summary of the interview, Bob's comments illustrate "how his company and other media companies need to think about using search more effectively, with the idea to leverage a mix of open and premium content". Note, Rafat's has posted the full audio of this session on his site, PaidContent.org, along with coverage of many of the other sessions.