The End of The News Group Partnership

Ed Lallo at lunch at Nobile's Restaurant in Lutcher, La, while working at the Imperial Sugar Gramercy refinery.

All good things must come to an end. However, the ending of the partnership that was The News Group Net is a sad tale wrought with greed, deceit, inappropriate actions and misunderstandings. This is the tale that ended the partnership between David Henderson and Ed Lallo.

For more than a year, David and I acted as a team, with no signed agreement. The award-winning newsroom we built for the Imperial Sugar Company, www.iscnewsroom.com, was “proof of concept” and a state-of-the-art test of the future of corporate newsrooms.

Month after month, the newsroom was filled with stories about a company coming back from the brink after a devastating explosion at its Port Wentworth, Georgia refinery. The newsroom evolved into more than either David or I could have imagined, almost taking on a life of its own. It became the “go-to” site for members of the press searching for news about the sugar industry and Imperial in particular. Company stakeholders and employees also came to depend on it for news about the company.

In May of this year, we added the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board newsroom, www.louisianaseafoodnews.com. Louisiana seafood was faced with a severe crisis with oil spilling into the gulf  from the  BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. The addition of this site was the curse that sealed our fate.

On July 31, while David was on a three-week vacation in Europe, he emailed  to say that he wanted to move TheNewsGroup.Net domain from my personal GoDaddy account into our GoDaddy News Group account. Springfield Lewis and I had created The News Group name, and I had registered it. I emailed David that we would discuss his request after his return from Europe.

This was the beginning of the end of The News Group Net partnership; that same day Go Daddy security contacted me about an unauthorized transfer of the domain name.

Perhaps the saddest part of this ending is the lack of respect and class that David showed my wife, Adrienne. Even as we were having troubles, Adrienne helped David arrange a speaking engagement at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) through her old friend and colleague. David failed to have the courtesy to call, email or even write her a “thank you” note.

I can honestly say that I enjoyed the partnership I had with David until that fateful day in July. I will  look back at only the good part of our relationship, and what we accomplished as a team.

One cannot live in the past, so it is with great anticipation that I announce the formation of Newsroom Ink.

Newsroom Ink translates your corporate agenda into a compelling story that the press, your customers, employees, vendors and stakeholders want to read, learn more about, believe in and contribute too on a regular basis. Using a proven newsroom model that delivers timely and influential news, the company newsroom becomes an indispensable tool for a brand’s communications program.

Dynamic online newsrooms are not about pushing the company agenda from the top down, but instead letting the voices of others tell your story in a way that increases the credibility of your company’s brand. This “Corporate Journalism” style adds balance and influence and gives your brand a unique distinction.

The dynamic online newsroom is like inviting someone into your house so they can see everything at a glance, and at the same time putting your CEOʼs agenda in the middle of the news. Newsroom Ink has the expertise to turn the newsroom into a place to openly engage audiences, tell the brands many stories, paint a picture of the uniqueness of your organization and bring it all to life with great images. Newsroom Ink is the only company that has the experience to build and staff your newsroom, as well as produce the measurable results your company requires

Ed Lallo
Former Founding Partner, The News Group Net
Founder, Newroom Ink
Journalists Telling Your Company Story
512.917.6222
ed@newsroomink.com