Alan Rusbridger at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin on April 22, speaking on the future of journalism and explaining how the Guardian opened up its site to a wider pool of contributors.
Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeo.
Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s (@arusbridger) sharing some thoughts.
Making commercials for the web -from SethGodin’s blog
The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one. The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.
Businesses that rely primarily on advertising revenue take note. I’m looking at you Mr. Newspaper, and MS. Magazine and… oh well you get it. The internet paradigm breaks traditional busines models by undermining prohibitive cost structures. I don’t need a printing press. I don’t need a television studio. All I need is a computer, camera, and passion.
How will you adjust?
THE BIG DEBATE: PRINT OR DIGITAL MEDIA – WHICH IS MORE SUSTAINABLE?
Strategic Business Leaders with answers to address The Green Media Conference
MERCER ISLAND, WA – April 29, 2009 – Which is more sustainable, physical mail or email, a magazine page or a web page, a book or an ebook? Which has the larger carbon footprint and what is the risk to a brand if their messaging says one thing and their media supply chain choices say another? Publishers, advertisers, marketers and supply chain professionals are increasingly being challenged to make decisions that address climate change and that are consistent with the principles of sustainability.
Carbon Dioxide has been ruled a pollutant dangerous to human life by the EPA, climate change legislation is pending in congress, and the leaders of 192 nations, including the US, China and India, will meet in Copenhagen this December to agree on a climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. With an eye to the future, what efforts can be taken to measure the carbon footprints and otherwise qualify and quantify arguments for the sustainability of print and/or digital media? Continue reading
Why do I love it? LOOK AT IT! It’s all about the user experience. The redesign was done by BrassTacksDesign. Click here to see the before and after.
A Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection is exactly what it sounds like. Steve Buttry is editor of The Gazette and GazetteOnline a news source for eastern Iowa, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City. On his blog he graciously shares his detailed 38page blueprint for the path ahead for Gazette Communications.
This is a must read for all news media professionals. The document is insightful and creates great potential for reflection on business practices. I’m not saying his blueprint is THE best, but even if you hate his ideas, there are lots of salient points to build on. One obvious forehead-smacking point he raises is that the details of his blueprint, “will be determined not by my decree but by the needs of the marketplace and by the creativity and abilities of the staff”. Did you catch that? THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE. In the internet paradigm, what needs are you now filling? I love it.
Something I wish Steve would have addressed more clearly is the distinction between geographic communities and communities of interest. Does he agree there is a distinction? Why or why not? Can print and online serve both communities equally well? How does his blueprint address these distinct communities?
I emailed Steve and asked about the above points. Here is his response:
Robert, absolutely there is a difference between geographic communities and communities of interest. However, the local media organization has its strongest opportunities to appeal to communities with at least a geographic tie. For instance, we attract attention of Iowa Hawkeye fans around the world. They are a community of interest, but they have a geographic tie. The blueprint details plans to help countless communities of interest within and overlapping a geographic community – the family/friends of each high school graduate or engaged couple, congregations, etc. Print can serve some communities of interest (we have a business magazine and a magazine geared for young adults), but because of the cost of transportation, print is quite geographically based. Thanks for asking.
There you have it metaprinter readers, ask and you shall recieve.
RELATED:
How are you going to make money? By changing your relationship with your community -from OJR.org
Dying For An A -from Investors.com
Investors Business Daily has a short article in their editorial section today entitled “Dying for An A”. The article starts out with this line, “From once-revered print institutions to formerly dominant TV giants, the major media are crumbling. And the White House press secretary just told them why, “grading” them a “strong A” — A for acquiescence.”
The article then goes on to explain that “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who recently took it upon himself to give the White House press corps a collective report card affixed with a gold star, telling reporters he was awarding them “a strong A” for their coverage of the administration’s first 100 days”.
Zing!
IBD has an agenda and people usually either love IBD or hate it, but you have to respect their ridiculous number of revenue streams, and print circulation… growth! IBD generates approximately $10 million in annual revenue from its seminar business.” as reported recently in TheBigMoney.
The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly & Sarah Milstein
–New from O’Reilly
The Definitive Guide to the Planet’s Most Useful & Effective Communications Channel
Sebastopol, CA—Given the intense media spotlight shining on Twitter right now, chances are if you haven’t twittered yet, you’re probably considering it. Even Oprah twittered for the first time recently and Twitter traffic surged 43 percent as a result. Continue reading
Eric Schmidt on Google’s New Plan for the News -from TheWrap
Sharon Waxman who writes Waxword for the Wrap… ugh, we get it we get it, has an interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt who reveals that in about 6 months Google will launch a premium ad service for “premium content”. The pilot news outlets to get this treatment will be the NYtimes and WashingtonPost.
The participating news outlets won’t get direct revenue bumps but the theory is that they will enjoy greater traffic from search.
In my opinion and Google’s too, websites need to figure out a way to better connect with their audience to create a community and lessen the reliance on search for revenue generation.
Sandy Sanders, the publisher of the Valdosta Daily Times in Valdosta, GA gave TweenTribune the green light this week. Here’s his page of local content on the site: http://tweentribune.com/valdosta.
David Leone, the publisher of the AmericanNews in Aberdeen, SD, told TweenTribune owner Alan Jacobson that he wants to move forward with TweenTribune. Here’s what Dave said:
“I like the content, the look and I have some ideas on how we can utilize it, not just for NIE purposes but to market it towards that tough age and frankly, the age where many kids have no clue about newspapers or newspaper websites. I do think there is a good opportunity to sell local advertising also.”
Local news from both papers, as well as Norfolk, Bakersfield and Wilson can be seen beneath the “your town” topic at tweentribune.com
RELATED:
Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site -metaprinter
Teens Love Aggregation and ‘Free’, Newspaper Study Finds -wired.com
Online newspapers: Where’s the revenue? -BrassTacksDesign
This giveaway requires you to do only one very simple thing, and you can do it right here in the comments section of this post. But first…
All are listed in US Dollars unless otherwise mentioned.
. iPod Shuffle (1GB)
. iPod Shuffle (4GB)
. $20 Amazon Gift Certificate
The main thing that I want to do over the week is to add to the sense of community on this site – to have some fun – to get a few lurkers participating and to thank readers for being a part of Metaprinter.
In the comments section of this post (and you’re welcome to post your entry on your blog if you wish, but it’s not required as long as you’ve posted it here) finish this statement: “If I owned a newspaper company…”
So there you have it. Be funny, silly, serious, it doesn’t matter! Just finish that statement in the comments section of this post and you’re entered to win one of the above prizes.
Rules: One entry per person. If we cannot contact a human at the email address you provide we will redraw for that prize. Winning one of the prizes listed above will prevent you from being able to win any other prizes for the duration of the giveaway.
Winners are chosen at random using a random number generator and will be notified by email. You may not “pick” the prize you want, we will award them in the order that we receive the random winners.
This contest begins at 8am on Monday, April 27, 2009, EST (New York, USA) and ends on Friday, May 1, 2009 at 9am EST (Again, New York, USA). We will close comments at that time.
Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up to date and put yourself in a position to win!
THANK YOU FOR PLAYING. THE CONTEST IS CLOSED AT THIS TIME. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.
RELATED:
Metaprinter Offers a New, Innovative, Digital Newspaper Business Model – Infinite Zoning
The Newspaper Publishers’ Dilemma – Is $179 Million the New $890 Million?
Please note the additions to the panel. This Event is Free. Be sure to RSVP!!
The NEW, New Journalism
As newspapers and magazines downsize themselves into oblivion, the blogosphere asserts its power. Digital tools like Twitter and Facebook are redefining how bloggers report and comment on the news, turning the Web into a giant, hyper-connected networking system. Join us to learn how traditional journalists must adapt in order to seize new opportunities.
Matt Winkler, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg News
Rachel Sterne, Founder & CEO, GroundReport.com
Mark Egan, Bureau Chief, New York and Northeastern United States, Thomson Reuters
Matt Cooper, Contributing Editor, Portfolio; Editor at Large, Talking Points Memo
Moderator: Rachel Sklar, Director, Abrams Research; former senior contributing editor, The Huffington Post
WHEN: Tuesday, April 28, 6:30 to 8:00 pm
WHERE: NYU, Abbe Bogen Faculty Lounge, 11th Floor, Kaufman Management Center, 44 West 4th Street (at Greene St.)
TO REGISTER: Please visit www.cencom.org, OR email info@cencom.org OR call The Center at: 212-686-5005
Data via Marketing Charts and Hitwise
“What does your audience want from you – and do you know what they will pay for?”. -from PWC
Many newspapers have not honestly asked themselves this question because if they did they would be the largest creators of business websites in their DMA. As a consultant I work with local business owners to do things like build / rebuild their websites, add their sites and business to listing sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp and others.
Newspapers should be doing this, not me. It should be a big, growing part of their revenue stream. I know of only one newspaper doing something close to this and that is Cox Ohio publishing. Here’s an excerpt from a quick interview with Internet General Manager Ray Marcano from Cox Ohio Publishing explaining more.
End America East Session Follow up with Ray Marcano:
RI- Looking forward, what will your main revenue streams be?
RM- Direct sales not tied to print / classified upsells. Our direct sales are up 30% year over year.
RI- Tell me about your Ad Studio business. When did it launch? Who is using it? Is it a major revenue stream?
RM- We started that business in 2008. Our biggest customers are media companies outsourcing to COX for ad design. It is a significant new revenue stream.
RI- Is an online only presence like the what the Seattle P-I did anything your company has considered?
RM – No because our product is thriving, that’s not to say we don’t have stand alone online sites because we do have 937moms.com and activedayton.com
RELATED:
Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers
Part 2 More Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers where I talk about setting up an advertising fair for for courting local businesses.
Second Street Media Solutions Owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard Discuss Upickem online contesting platform.
Outlook for newspaper publishing in the digital age | 2009 report -from PWC.com (pdf)
56 page report on the outlook of the industry ask lots of great questions the industry should be asking itself like “What does your audience want from you – and do you
know what they will pay for?”, many newspapers have not honestly asked themselves this question because if they did they would be the largest creators of business websites in their DMA.
Newspaper Outlook 2009 Related Video (sorry PWC doesn’t allow embeds at this point).
Wikipedia Founder: How To Save The Newspaper Industry -from MediaPost.com
News is widely syndicated — and that’s one reason why it’s difficult to charge for the content, Wales said. “If you went into Google News and didn’t see 600 copies of the same story, but just one, that one could make money — and spreading it everywhere doesn’t make sense”.
I personaly feel that newspaper are too worried about damaging their credibility and cache to just give up something like the sports section to local sports nuts, but if phased in properly I can see it working. Look at Seeking Alpha (I’m a contributing media writer, though I haven’t contributed anything in a while) as a model. I don’t know what their balance sheet looks like, but I know that people trust the site enough that it has formed partnerships with companies including Yahoo! Finance, Dow Jones MarketWatch, E-Trade, and CNET. The company is backed by Benchmark Capital, a firm that funded eBay.
The key to launching successful user generated content and sections is #1 visibility: Get the authors in front of lots of people and they will usually do their best to look good and do good. #2 selection: Get the most enlightened and fanatical users onboard. #3 strict enformcement of guidlines: to give readers a sense of security.
But Robert, you just laid into Topix in a recent blog post for being a big useless, flame war inducing, data dump. That site is user generated. Yes, and one of their big problems is ignoring rules #1-3 above. When Wales said “give up”, he was refering to newspapers’ attempt to move their business model online. Clearly the internet paradigm demands new models and revenue streams.
Topix is a news aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic and geography. Topix LLC is a privately held company. Gannett, The McClatchy Company and Tribune Company own a 75% stake in the company.
Today Topix announced that Topix becomes #1 news site of Gannett, Tribune & McClatchy Internet Portfolio -from Topix blog. I have a few problems with this:
1. This sounds like a made up category, ie. Metaprinter is the #1 news site of the Metaprinter Inc. portfolio!
2. Topix is ranked #32 in the news category on Alexa.
3. Compete doesn’t show Topix beating USAToday as stated in the above article.
4. I don’t know anyone who uses or likes Topix. In fact, reading through the comments at the above post, it seems most people suspect the site is full of flame wars, trolls and hate speak.
5. For their size, Topix does not have a vibrant hyperlocal online community.
6. Where are the local advertisers?
I’ve contacted them for an interview. We’ll see if they can clear some things up.
UPDATE:
An anonymous tipster has revealed to me that some news sites use Topix for their article comments section. See for example this Gannett owned news site: citizen-times.com
Note the ‘comment on Topix forums’ option directly below the social bookmarking tools in addition to the Pluck Sitelife comments option at the end of the article.
“If you choose the Topix comment option, and enough discussion is generated on topix, it presumably bubbles up the story on Topix and the inbound links to the news site generate page views and more discussion”.
A little more digging on my part revealed that Tribune is using Topix.net to link to “Related News From the Web” as here below the Google Ads box in the body on their Baltimore Sun site. The purpose here again is to increase pageviews and links. It seems that Topix is nothing more than a solution for member newspapers to game the system and/or get more Google Juice.
UPDATE: 04/25/2009
Kenneth Lerer delivered the following speech at the Columbia Journalism School Annual New Media Lecture Series on Thursday, April 23, 2009
How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here
——————————–
Nicholas Lemann, Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, cordially invites you to
the annual Hearst Foundation New Media Lecture
Thursday, April 23, 2009 (6:30-9 pm)
Columbia Journalism School
116th St & Broadway (#1 train to 116th St)
Join us to hear Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post deliver an important lecture about the media industry:
“How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here”
6:30-7:00 pm – reception – drinks and light food
7-9 pm – lecture + Q&A (dessert will be available after the Q&A)
No charge; no RSVP required; all are welcome. Continue reading
“In general, I have very little time for Scoble, and true to form there are about six things in the first half of this alone that make me want to beat the stupid out of him with a shovel. But there’s also food for thought in there this time.” -lifted from a delicious note
Here is the offending article: The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left? -from scobleizer.com
What isn’t explored in Robert Scoble’s article, or maybe what isn’t understood by the author of that article, is that when a disruptive technology comes along, The Internet, in this case, little to nothing can be done to prevent seismic changes in business practices. Mark Federman sums this up way better than I can. Here he is talking about Marshall McLuhan’s famous line “the medium is the message”. Continue reading
TweenTribune is on a tear signing up their third newspaper, in almost as many weeks, since launching the platform. The North Carolina based Wilson Times is now using TweenTribune for their NIE program and founder Alan Jacobson reports that “ads are running at wilsontimes.com on its homepage and interior pages to promote tweentribune”. If Alan Keeps this pace of new announcements up I’ll have to start charging him for bandwidth consumption on metaprinter.
Read my interview with Alan Jacobson to learn more about “community of interest” news sites and how TweenTribune can monetize a newspaper’s NIE campaign while bringing it into the internet paradigm.
What is Printcasting? From their site:
Printcasting is a first of its kind online tool that assists users in dynamically creating customized newspapers and magazines comprised of information gathered from local news sources such as blogs, newsletters, news organizations, user content, and other Contributors. Creating your own publication is as simple as adding the elements you want included in your publication through the easy to use Printcasting.com interface. Without having to hire a team of editors, graphic artists, or authors you will be able to create your own, professional publication for distribution.
Publishers will also be able to allow Advertisers to place targeted advertisements in their publications and, in the future, receive a portion of revenue generated from those advertisements. Publications created by the user may then be available for print, download, and distribution to Subscribers.
I wrote about the years-ago-created RSS to print application FeedJournal and it’s potential for a digital newspaper application last year, so Printcasting’s claim to be the “first of its kind” in this realm isn’t necessarily true, what is unique though is their attempt to monetize the resulting product with a simple ad creation tool (among other things).
Printcasting is a Knight News Challenge winner and their website is inviting so I decided to give it a try for Metaprinter. I want to emphasize that the Printcasting site was in open Beta / preview mode when I did this so don’t judge too harshly.
Step 1. Definitely watch this instructional video before doing anything. Continue reading
BIO: Merrill Brown is the founder and principal of MMB Media LLC, which provides clients with management and strategy consulting, corporate, editorial and program development, business analysis and marketing services. Since the founding of MMB Media, clients have ranged from companies in the news, information and wireless businesses to a large foundation. Brown serves as Chairman of the Board of NowPublic.com, the leading citizen journalism company in the world. (bio provided by Journalism Online LLC)
RI- what is your affiliation with journalism online LLC?
MB- I am the strategy consultant at the moment, this is a start-up so we all have varied roles.
RI- I see in your Bio that you are an advisor to evri.com, a site that looks and feels to me like a news aggregator, does this complicate your involvement with Journalism Online LLC?
MB- No, it’s not an aggregator at all it is a natural language search site that builds related topics pages for new sites and others. Our largest distribution deal is with WashingtonPost.com and if you look at the bottom of every new story page you’ll see our widget there. Continue reading
The Bakersfield Californian joins The Virginia-Pilot as early adopters of the Alan Jocobson inspired news platform, TweenTribune. Both newspapers are using the site to revitalize their moribund NIE programs. The platform is web based, safe for kids, NIE compliant, and monetizable. If that is not incentive enough to consider it, the Audit Bureau of Circulations will cease to count NIE newspaper copies as a form of paid circulation in the beginning of 2010. The TweenTribune sites will fill that need.
Though TweenTribune is a niche site for kids, Alan’s concept focuses on newspapers publishing many “community of interest” news sites rather than a single geographic community newspaper website. Currently, this is a more common strategy for magazine publishers and blog networks, but the idea is to publish many independent niche news sites to focus readership, drive engagement and command higher CPM’s from advertisers.
In an email with Alan he emphasized that newspaper publishers are interested in the TweenTribune platform as a model for lots of niche sites – “…the number we’re throwing around is 1,000 sites. They want to use TweenTribune to test the efficacy of that strategy”. Continue reading
Dernbach to Address the Government’s Role in Sustainability
Highlights:
1. The size of the United States’ GDP requires a more active involvement in sustainability by its citizens and its corporations along with the federal government.
2. Dernbach’s work within both state and federal government has given him a unique expertise in creating environmental law and sustainable practices.
3. Dernbach to discuss ways and means to accomplish sustainability goals in his keynote address at The Green Media Conference, June 9 in Washington, DC.
MERCER ISLAND, WA – April 15, 2009 –John C. Dernbach, Distinquished Professor of Law at Widener University Law School and editor of Agenda for a Sustainable America, will be the afternoon keynote speaker for The Green Media Conference, June 9 in Washington, DC at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Professor. Dernbach will be discussing the role of the government and the United States in general in creating a sustainable world.
QUOTE: DON CARLI, CONFERENCE CHAIR AND SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNICATION Continue reading
I attended two big newspaper conferences recently and was horrified at the powerpoint presentations I had to sit through. If you are going to use powerpoint (and remember YOU DON’T HAVE TO) please follow the best advice that I ever got from my days in graduate school.
Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 PowerPoint Rule
10 slides
20 minute presentation
30 point font minimum size
In my interview with Alan Jacobson recently he emphasized the importance of newspapers shifting their online focus to “community of interest” news sites instead of geographic community sites; which are essentially general interest newspapers recreated on a website. I agree and have been pushing the idea here on metaprinter for quite some time as well.
Because of their inherent targeting, community-of-interest news sites have high reader engagement, more vibrant communities, and are better venues for targeted advertising. Just look at techcrunch or Kotaku.
USA Today launched MMA Fighting Stances, a mixed martial arts community site today. This is the newest in a string of community sites that Gannett is launching (Open Road, Hotel Check-In, Game Hunters, The Oval, and Faith & Reason).
What do I like? Continue reading
Media Leaders Form Journalism Online, LLC
Company Will Be Global Platform for Easy Payment Option Enabling New Revenue Models For News In Time of Crisis
‘Strong interest’ already expressed by major newspaper, magazine companies
NEW YORK, April 14, 2009 – Citing “the urgent need” for a comprehensive, immediate plan to address the downward spiral in the business of publishing original, quality journalism, experienced journalism and media industry executives Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery today announced the formation of Journalism Online, a company that will quickly facilitate the ability of newspaper, magazine and online publishers to realize revenue from the digital distribution of the original journalism they produce …continue reading Media Leaders Form Journalism Online, LLC
Here is what the above press release boils down to:
“…there is an urgent need for a business model that allows quality journalism to be the beneficiary of the Internet’s efficient delivery mechanism rather than its victim,” said co-founder Steven Brill Continue reading
Dilbert creator Scott Adams writes a blog post, How I Saved Newspapers.
Normally I like Dilbert comics. They are witty and fun and relevant and I imagine the creator of those comics sometimes has a window into my world. When I read Scott Adams blog post about saving newspaper though I couldn’t help but think that Bottleneck Bill or some other minor character wrote the piece. Adams solution for a failing newspaper industry is called “super-local news” and relies on volunteers submitting content to newspapers… “the super-local news has to have lots of content about classrooms, Cub Scout meetings, local movies listings rated less then R, and that sort of thing.” Sounds like the internet only useless.
Adams states that this new newspaper will of course feature Dilbert comics. *sigh* I’ll just pretend I didn’t read this Scott.
A popular blog hires some old media guys who’ve been laid off. Featuring Winston Noel, Brian Barrett, Gil Ozeri, Nate Shelkey, Saj Pothiawala, Mike Schroeder, Jared Neumark and Jen Statsky. Written by LandlineTV.com.
Day 3. Follow along as metaprinter.com founder and senior writer Robert Ivan builds a community news blog for Aberdeen Township New Jersey at NJcircles.com/AberdeenTownship.
Today I added pages for Services and Township Stats to help emphasize my focus on Aberdeen Township. The services page lists and links to things like the police dept., municipal court, tax collector, planning, etc… The township stats page aggregate information about the township in one location and links out for greater detail.
The idea is to get search engines associating targeted content to the site. I published two posts for this very reason and to start seeing what people are interested in. Ideally I should be posting 5 quality post per day to build traffic and see what works. Continue reading
This interview took place between TweenTribune‘s managing editor Alan Jacobson and I at this year’s America East Newspaper Operations and Technology conference. If Alan’s name sounds familiar it is because he is the president of BrassTacksDesign, which has provided editorial, advertising and technical support to newspapers from New England to New Zealand for almost 20 years.
RI- What is TweenTribune and how did your idea for it come about?
AJ- Lets go all the way back to 1996 when I wrote an article for Brass Tacks Design entitled Online newspapers: Where’s the revenue? In that article I emphasize the importance for websites to build on a “community of interest” rather than a geographic community such as newspapers have traditionally served. The points being, advertisers would be eager to advertise beside niche content rather than generic news on a website AND the internet is better suited at targeting “communities of interest” than printed newspapers. Newspapers should have 1000 niche sites, not 1 mammoth site attempting to do everything.
I am the father of two tweens and being familiar with the Newspapers In Education (NIE) program it was clear to me that something better needed to be created for all parties involved. The current NIE setup is a disaster. The print product they are pushing not only costs publishers millions of dollars, it is attempting to get kids interested in a product that is going away and filled with adult content. Their online solutions are equally bad. Those sites are not designed with the kid’s best interests in mind. The sites are poorly designed and have wacky logos and colors… I actually did design testing with my kids and their friends, and my friends kids… you know what they like? A well laid out, clean site just like the rest of us! Continue reading
‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers -from NYTimes.com
“They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear,” said Steve Outing
“In many cities, the local blog scene is so rich and deep that even if a newspaper goes away, there would be still be plenty of stuff for us to publish,” said Adrian Holovaty
In a brief twitter exchange with @steveouting he revealed that the single quote in the NYT article is out of context of a long conversation he had with the NYT reporter. So there is no battle between the two. Having read his blog and articles for a long time, I believe him, but the NYT set up his quote and the entire article as a battle of old versus new.
In my interview with Montclair, New Jersey news blog Baristanet.com, cofounder Liz George sees no problem blogging without newspapers. See the excerpt below. Continue reading
At the America East Newspaper and Technology Conference I learned that the Press of Atlantic City will be replacing their current website with a new one built on the TownNews BLOX CMS. The new site will launch on April 13, 2009 April 21, 2009 and it can’t come soon enough. Would you believe that this is how the navigation “works” right now on the old site?
Advertising and AP add-ons throughout the site pages as well as link mazes make the existing Press of Atlantic City site user-unfriendly. I sat down with TownNews regional manager Loren Widrick at the TownNews booth to learn more about how they were going to help the PressofAtlanticCity.com improve their site. Continue reading
ROBERT C. TAPELLA, PUBLIC PRINTER OF THE UNITED STATES, TO KEYNOTE
THE GREEN MEDIA CONFERENCE JUNE 9 IN WASHINGTON, DC
Tapella to Address the Government Printing Office’s Efforts Towards Green, Sustainable Media
Highlights:
1. The impact of the GPO’s efforts – and their 2000 affiliate printers – will set a new agenda for the printing industry.
2. Government agencies & independent printers will report their carbon footprint of their business and their products
3. Tapella will outline GPO’s plans in his keynote address at The Green Media Conference, June 9 in Washington, DC.
MERCER ISLAND, WA – April 9, 2009 – Lisa Wellman, CEO of SustainCommWorld announced today that Robert C. Tapella, Public Printer of the United States, will keynote their event, The Green Media Conference, June 9 in Washington, DC at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Mr. Tapella will be discussing the role of the Government Printing Office (GPO) in greening the communications of the federal government, both print and digital. The keynote speaker for the June 23 Chicago conference will be announced shortly. Continue reading
Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It
Let me help you with that, Rupert. I’m going to save you all those potential legal fees plus needing to even speak further about the evil of the Big G with two simple lines. Get your tech person to change your robots.txt file to say this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Done. Do that, you’re outta Google. All your pages will be removed, and you needn’t worry about Google listing the Wall St. Journal at all.
User-agent: *
The asterisk (*) or wildcard represents a special value and means any robot.
Disallow:
The Disallow: line without a / (forward slash) tells the robots that they can index the entire site. Continue reading
Nicholas Lemann, Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, cordially invites you to the annual Hearst Foundation New Media Lecture
Thursday, April 23, 2008 (6:30-9 pm)
Columbia Journalism School
116th St & Broadway (#1 train to 116th St)
Join COLUMBIA J-SCHOOL to hear Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post deliver an important lecture about the media industry:
“How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here”
6:30-7:00 pm – reception – drinks and light food
7-9 pm – lecture + Q&A (dessert will be available after the Q&A) Continue reading
Kodak, one of the major online photo repositories, will soon start charging user fees at the risk of photo deletion. Are Web fees for formerly free sites becoming the norm? Renita Jablonski talks to LA Times business columnist David Lazarus.
As far as revenue streams go, I would be willing to sponsor this one particular podcast and have my logo appear beneath it on the American Public Radio site and on all embeds, but no one offers thi$. Maybe in the future?
2009 Print Quality Contest Winners
Circulation Under 25,000:
First place – The Coast Star, Manasquan NJ | owned by starnewsgroup
Second Place – The Ocean Star, Manasquan NJ | owned by starnewsgroup
Third Place – The News-Item, Shamokin PA | owned by timesshamrockcommunications
Circulation 25,000-50,000:
First place – The Village Daily Sun, Villages FL | owned by The Villages Media Group
Second Place – The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre PA | owned by The Wilkes-Barre Publishing Company
Third Place – Muskegon Chronicle, Muskegon MI | owned by Advance Publications
Circulation 50,000-100,000:
First place – The Kalamazoo Gazette, Kalamazoo MI | owned by Advance Publications
Second Place – The Times-Tribune, Scranton PA | owned by Times-Shamrock Communications
Third Place – Rockford Register Star, Rockford IL | owned by GateHouse Media, Inc.
Circulation Over 100,000:
First place – The Record, Rockaway NJ | owned by North Jersey Media Group
Second Place – The Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, MI | owned by Advance Publications
Third Place – The Wall Street Journal, South Brunswick NJ | owned by News Corp.
Best of Show:
The Kalamazoo Gazette, Kalamazoo MI | owned by Advance Publications
I’m proud to announce that Metaprinter has been named a media partner reporting SustainCommWorld’s Green Media Conference on June 9th in Washington DC. Metaprinter founder and senior writer Robert Ivan (hey, that’s me) will be on location, live blogging via twitter and updating daily at this blog. Email Robert to set up an interview or to showcase your innovative new product or service. Readers are also encouraged to send me questions, comments, and suggestions: Robert at metaprinter dot com OR twitter.com/metaprinter. Follow the #GreenMedia hashtag for event updates on Twitter.
Learn…
How Sustainability can save you money. What Sustainable products and services are available now. Why Sustainability gets you new business and helps retain current customers. Check out Conference Program and Pre-Conference Workshop. Continue reading
Is your newspaper doing what you think it’s doing? Lets say you operate in New Jersey and run NJ.com. That site pans itself as “everything NJ”. Does this hold up looking at the data?
ALEXA:
I did the breakdown for you below. Click the field you want to change for your publication. We’re using my home state of NJ so we’re using the following:
We find out that there are 44 newspaper websites in this category and they are listed by popularity below. I show the first 5 as an example. Clicking the title goes to the Alexa data, clicking the url goes to the site. Continue reading
Has anyone else noticed the membership wall that the Washington Post website Washingtonpost.com has erected? Visit the site, click ANY headline or navigation link and you are redirected to the page below. It wasn’t always like this and I don’t like it at all. Every time I just click off, and visit NYTimes.com or some other news site where the info is still free.
If I really want to see a particular article I can back into it by copying and pasting the article title into Google news and then clicking through the search result. This works for WSJ paid content too which makes me wonder if these large publisher have an agreement with Google, but at the same time are angry about it.
What has been your experience on their site? I remember being able to read national headlines without logging in. So while others are going to paywalls, The Washington Post is moving to a membership wall? Maybe just for the time being. I’m hoping this is an experiment that will transform into something better. I will never create an account and then log in to any newspaper’s website just to read one article and I suspect that others will not either.
UPDATED ON APRIL 9-2009
Why are they doing this? When newspaper websites do what the washingtonpost site is doing, they are looking for ways to behaviorally target their readers and charge higher CPM’s to their advertisers. Continue reading
Roughly 565 registered attendees at this point. This post will be continuously updated throughout the day. Check back often. Just arrived in God’s Country, Hershey PA for the
First Session (that I attended)
Pitching Your Media Company
Jane Hungarter -VP Marketing and Communications, Pennsyvlania Newspaper Association Continue reading
Stay Tuned to this post for continuous updates for all 3 days
There are 99 exhibitors at the 2009 America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference down from roughly 120 last year. The intimate atmosphere makes it feel more buzzy than mediaXchange though.
This post will be continuously updated throughout the day. Check back often. Just arrived in God’s Country, Hershey PA for the
I’m not sure if the wireless connection will be available in all rooms but I’ll try and update frequently here and at twitter.com/metaprinter. Follow the #AE hashtag for event updates on Twitter.
2009 America East Newspaper & Technology Conference Exhibit Hall from robert ivan on Vimeo.
Also, the conference has it’s own twitter feed at twitter.com/ameast Continue reading
Web-only newspapers
Newspapers that have stopped publishing a print edition and have moved to the web
This map and project was inspired by Metaprinter — let Erica know if you have an idea for a project.
How did this turn into a project?
Metaprinter reader Eric Cox director of national sales for PNG Laboratories LLC was looking for a list of related information. I started the list, then started a google maps mashup, realized it would look and act much like the one Erica Smith already has on her papercuts blog. I contacted her about collaborating on the project and she was all for it!
The result is a dynamic map which will provide information about newspapers who have switched to online only publication. Hover over the markers to find detailed info about the newspaper.
This is how Social Media really works -from aWholeLottaNothing
Metafilter founder Matt Haughey has a recent blog post about ditching “social media marketing gurus” and focusing on creating quality stuff people will write and talk about.
…there are thousands of people all over twitter and blogs that think throwing thousands of dollars at people that describe themselves as a “marketing guru” is the way to increase their company sales. I’m here to say I think that may very well be a waste of money, time, and energy.
I agree with him almost entirely but would say that there are cetain products and services that cannot wait for the “long tail” to promote, like a bank’s yield on their CD’s. By the time a blogger wrote about it and it got to the masses who would benefit, the yeild might have changed. Overall great article though.
Metaprinter.com founder and senior writer Robert Ivan will be reporting the America East Newspaper Operations & Technology Conference, live blogging via twitter and updating daily at this blog. Email robert to set up an interview or to showcase your innovative new product or service. Readers are also encouraged to send Robert questions, comments, and suggestions: robert at metaprinter dot com OR twitter.com/metaprinter. Follow the #AE2009 hashtag for event updates on Twitter.
April 6-8, 2009
Find out more and Register
We’re much more than a production show. All of our educational sessions – whether online, production, advertising or editorial – will be integrated into three information-packed days. In 2009, we are expanding our show hours to include Monday afternoon following our keynote luncheon that day. All of our receptions will be held on the exhibit floor during show hours as will some of our sessions and roundtables.
Follow the #AE2009 hashtag for event updates on Twitter. Look for videos on vimeo.
I’m looking forward to catching up with:
Alan Jacobson - Tween Tribuine booth 47
Ray Marcano – Transformation in Ad Sales | April 6, 1:30pm session
Still messing around with the design and layout especially adding page navigation to the header. Working with Movable Type is not as intuitive as WordPress I’ve decided, but some great features are built right in and updating and changing styles is a snap.
I’ve also added a “schools” page which i’ll build on to give parents a reason to visit. Like emergency phone numbers and places to find school closing info.
Microsoft To Shutter Encarta, Read All About It On Wikipedia -TechCrunch
Goodbye, Encarta. A cautionary tale for newspapers? -John Yemma CSM
The death of Wikipedia May 24, 2006 -Nick Carr roughtype
Encarta, R.I.P (cont.): A Reply from Tom Corddry -Britannica Blog
Wikipedia is dead! Long Live Wikipedia!
Xconomy’s first-ever Forum on the Future of Mobile Innovation in New England will be held Tuesday April 7, 2009.
One can’t-miss highlight of the forum will be a “fireside” chat with Rich Miner, who brought the Android platform to Google and was recently named general manager of the new Google Ventures, and Sandy Pentland, the MIT Media Lab luminary who leads the Next Billion Network for mobile entrepreneurs and has been using mobile digital sensors to study social signaling between people. (Pentland just published a book on that subject, Honest Signals).
This looks like a great event for anyone in the Boston area on Tuesday. Especially considering Mit’s Next Billion Network states, “Within the next three years, another billion people will begin to make regular use of cell phones, continuing the fastest adoption of a new technology in history”.
Follow along as metaprinter.com founder and senior writer Robert Ivan builds a community news blog for Aberdeen Township New Jersey at NJcircles.com/AberdeenTownship.
I figure this could be a huge help for many of my readers who are either interested in starting their own community site (some call this BeatBlogging). To my main stream media readers who come here to stay on top of news media trends, this entire exercise could be a real lesson in the new realities of online publishing.
The site is called NJcircles (because I already had the domain from a previous project) and is located at NJcircles.com/AberdeenTownship and built using Movable Type. I selected MT because the metaprinter site is built on WordPress and I’ve got those skills down pretty good, so I want to learn Movable Type CMS and share that experience as well. It doesn’t hurt that MT is used by power bloggers like Jason Kottke, media companies like National Geographic, and community news sites like Baristanet.
Here are the first steps. I’m going to assume you know how to do certain things so please let me know if you need help and we’ll work through this together. Continue reading