If you live in an EveryBlock city and have an iPhone you can now have more news access than you ever thought you needed.  The app is available for free at the App Store.

Here’s how Everyblock explains the features of the app:  The EveryBlock iPhone app lets you explore news that’s happened recently in your immediate area.  We publish dozens of different categories of local news, drawing from hundreds of sources. Much of it is updated every single day. Examples of the information we publish:

• Business licenses (new businesses in your neighborhood)
• Crime
• Fire alerts
• Foreclosures
• Local deals / coupons
• Locations in the media (places in your neighborhood that have been mentioned in the news and in blogs)
• Real estate listings
• Restaurant inspection results
• Get recent health inspection reports for restaurants nearby
• See which crimes have been reported on the street you’re walking down
• Find out what places in your neighborhood have been covered in the news
• Get a sense for property values in your area

Google Maps is becoming more and more powerful by the day as users learn how to manipulate the powerful mapping software.  Listing your business for free with Google Maps is a simple no brainer, Must-Do for business owners. That’s free advertising,  sorry newspapers.  And now Google maps are being used with increasing regularity as powerful news visualization tools.  Below is a dynamic Swine Flu map created by a computer scientist from the UK and helped by contributions from 45+ others around the world.  The data used is timely and cited, leaving little to no room to question the accuracy and veracity of the map’s utility.

View 2009 H1N1 Flu Outbreak Map in a larger map

What does this mean for established news media?

• It means that 17million people now have a free source of local news.  Don’t think they will use it?  The app store has recorded over 800Million Downloads!
• It means that in the 6 days since the swine flu map was created it has been viewed over 1,350,000 times.
• It means that influential people like Warren Buffett Wouldn’t Buy a Newspaper At Any Price!

Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeo.

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s (@arusbridger) sharing some thoughts.

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.

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How are you going to make money? By changing your relationship with your community -from OJR.org

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).

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.

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.

Printcast Your Blog from Dan Pacheco on Vimeo.

Step 2. Publish your blog and tweak the layout.

I had a problem with this part in that I wanted to use my Metaprinter logo in the header.  No problem with the upload but the Printcasting interface commands the blog Title and Tagline on, there’s no way to remove them from the header.  I got around this by resizing my header logo smaller and turning the text to white.  If you look closely though you can see the white type cutting into the bottom of the words “news media” in the screen capture below.  Not a huge deal but maybe in the future they will allow publishers to turn off the text in these locations.  Here’s a closeup of how the header looked before I tweaked it.

Step 3. Done!

When you are completely done a screen pops up giving you the option to email up to 100 people a link to your new Printcast and also gives you the embed codes for several different widgets like the one below.

How does the completed product look?  Pretty good except I didn’t expect the PDF to cut off my articles (I’m not that wordy am I?).  When they reach a certain word count (I guess), an automatically created tinyurl is placed at the end of the offending article and redirects the reader to the Printcasting site to complete reading the article.  Also all my hyperlinks in my articles are dropped which I can understand if the product is destined for print, but they’re dropped everywhere, the pdf version, the magazine view, and the quick read view.  Hyperlinks are a huge part of blogging, sometimes being unable to link out makes an article less usefull to the point of uselessness.    Here’s the PDF if you want to see how it turned out.

Step 4. Advertising

Just for kicks I started putting together an advertisement to see how easy it was and I am happy to report that the experience is pretty straightforward and intuitive.

What did I like?

• The entire process was straightforward and intuitive.
• I like the idea of being able to offer my readers a print version of my blog.
• Creating an advertisement was easy.
• I might be able to sell advertising on my printcast.

What didn’t I like?

• Not being able to turn off the Title and Tagline text in the header.
• My hyperlinks disappearing everywhere.
• My blog posts being cut off despite using only 5 pages in my pdf.
• Not being able to read the small text in  “magazine view” despite zooming in and viewing on a 24″ monitor.
• Not knowing what ads will appear in my printcast.

What I’m not sure about.

• #25 in the Terms of Use says Printcasting is for California Use Only.  um… can you explain this layman terms?  What am I, as an out of stater, opening my self up to here?
• Specifically, how is advertising revenue shared?
• How can I sell ad space on my printcast?

I hope to get someone from Printcasting or Bakersfield.com to respond in the comments section to clarify my issues.   What I’d like to see in the future is a paid feature where publishers can eliminate all ads from their printcast or select which ones appear / add their own.   If I can get the above problems corrected and gain control over the ad space or eliminate it altogether I might consider Printcasting as the print solution for Metaprinter.

UPDATE:

See Printcasting creator Dan Pacheco’s response below and check out his new post about revenue streams at MediaShift Idea Lab

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.

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.

Murdoch also predicted that the New York Times Co. (NYT) will have to charge online for access to its flagship newspaper.

“The inventory of display advertising on the web is doubling every year,” said Murdoch. “They’re never going to make money on an advertising model to replace what they’re losing.”

This is a paid article available only to subscribers, ironically, if you access this article through google news, you don’t have to sign in to access it.  I’m sure that will change too though.

I’m not sure why newspaper publishers are attempting to create their own eReaders though.  Can you imagine having a Hearst reader for their titles, a newscorp reader for their titles, a cell phone, and Ipod and a laptop to carry around?  Crazyness.

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News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability – Interview with Don Carli

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Don has been a leading researcher, author, educator and speaker addressing the sustainability of media supply chains for the last decade, and for over 25 years has been a respected media technology and marketing strategy consultant to major advertisers, agencies and publishers.

RI- Why are newspapers and other traditional publishers pushing the issue of eReaders as a communications medium when something like less than one third of one percent of the reading population of the United States owns these products? Is it a paper sustainability issue? Is it a cost issue? What’s the justification?

DC- Other than pushing the “cool” factor, one of the main selling points being made by marketers of eReaders is that they are greener than print. It is little surprise that the common view held by consumers who don’t know the backstory is that going digital means going green and saving trees. Many are in for a rude awakening. When subjected to “cradle-to-cradle ” Lifecycle Analysis eReading is not nearly as green as many naively assume it is.

There is no question that print media could do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener. Computers, eReaders and cell phones don’t grow on trees and their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable.

Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals including gold, silver and palladium as well as extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. To function, digital devices require a constant flow of electrons that predominately come from the combustion of coal, and at the end of their all-too-short useful lives electronics have become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man. Until recently there was little if any voluntary disclosure of the lifecycle “backstory” of digital media.

Sadly, print has come to be seen as a wasteful, inefficient and environmentally destructive medium, despite the fact that much of print media is based on comparatively benign and renewable materials. In addition, print has incredible potential to be a far more sustainable medium than it is today… and a truly digital medium as well. Despite its importance to business, government and society, print has been cast in the role of a dark old devil in decline. Digital media has been cast as the bright young savior on the rise.

Ironically the future of digital media and eBook readers is likely to be based on flexible polymer electronics manufactured using printing presses rather than silicon semiconductor fabrication technologies. In fact, the next generation of eReaders will most likely be digital AND be printed. For example, major components of the soon to be released PlasticLogic eReader are printed flexible polymer electronics.

RI- What is the demand for eReaders now though?

DC: Well it’s a category that has been “emerging” for over 15 years. What one can say is that eReaders are once again capturing media attention and there appears to be significant latent demand for gadgets that can replace printed media, but mainstream adoption still remains years away. E-reader device sales and eReader content revenues are still rounding error in relation to print media revenues. In a survey of attendees at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair 40% predicted digital book content sales would overtake traditional printed book sales by 2018, but over 30% said digital content would never surpass traditional books sales, and 66% said they expect traditional books to dominate the market for the next decade.

We’ll likely see many fits, starts and failures with different products, media formats and business models over the next five years to ten years until someone hits on the sweet spot and develops a business model that supports the profitable creation of content as well as a system of commercially practical devices and a sustainable supporting infrastructure. One of the major problems is that people tend to be fixated on the announcements of cool new devices rather than on the development of business models and sustainable supply chain business ecologies.

For an example of what I mean, consider why Edison was successful. Edison didn’t invent the first electric light bulb, but he did develop the first commercially practical incandescent lighting system. It encompassed every aspect of the lighting lifecycle including not just the bulb but also a business model for a successful electric energy generation and distribution system.

I think a comparable challenge exists for eReaders. People focus on the eReader devices, but it’s not the invention of the coolest e-reader that matters most, it’s the availability of a sustainable business ecology that matters most. I don’t think traditional publishers or device manufacturers have yet identified that sweet-spot combination of content, medium and business model that’s required for e-readers to become mainstream.

Unfortunately many of the business models that drive media companies still have both the content and production/distribution aspects of the business intertwined. They are struggling to find ways to uncouple them and remain profitable. We saw companies like Kodak face the same challenge in trying to decouple the business of capturing and preserving memories from the business of selling analog film photography and photofinishing systems. They are still struggling with a profitable transition to the use of digital imaging technologies. Newspapers are likely to face similar problems trying to decouple newsgathering, journalism, creative and advertising from production and delivery in print to delivery via networked digital eReaders and handsets.

RI- What other examples of fundamental business model failure can you give me?

DC- Sure. One example is the failure to recognize the value of “waste” and the true cost of externalities like greenhouse gas emissions or water use. Print media value chains have become extremely complex and tend to cross-subsidize and institutionalize wasteful and inefficient flows of energy and materials. A case in point of institutionalized waste is the fact that more than 60% of magazines distributed to newsstands never get sold or read. Another example is the failure to consider the full lifecycle costs or carbon footprint of media. Newspaper publishers deliver newspapers but they don’t typically recover them and recycle them or use them as an energy source locally. Few if any know what the carbon footprint of their products are. Why is that?

Until recently, companies like Nine Dragons were shipping our waste paper half way around the world to make cardboard out of it, and then shipping it back to us as packaging which we were sending to landfills. Going forward, the carbon cost of print and digital media will no longer be swept under the rug. It will soon have to appear on the balance sheets of advertisers, publishers and retailers. It will also appear in the price tags of goods and services. The climate crisis is another market failure that is now coming to light.

Business models that fail to recognize full lifecycle cost and value will be unlikely to succeed going forward. As we exit the global recession we will simultaneously be transitioning to a low carbon global economy that will change the meaning and value of waste and inefficiency. As we do so, print will survive if it reconfigures its supply chains to use energy and materials more eco-efficiently and publishers will survive if they can decouple the message from the medium while meeting the requirement for “triple bottom” line results that are economically viable, environmentally restorative and socially constructive. The growing demand for sustainable business practices, lifecycle analysis and environmental product disclosure will impact eReader manufacturers and digital media companies as well.

I expect there will be new opportunities for sustainable digital printing and print on demand to compete with toxic eReaders and coal-powered digital media. I also think there will be exciting new opportunities for printed electronics to blur the categories of print and digital media. Ultimately both print and digital media will have to become more sustainable if either of them is to survive, and judgment of which is environmentally preferable or cost effective will increasingly be based on comparative lifecycle analysis, carbon footprints and environmental product declarations based on standards such as ISO 14040, PAS 2050 and ISO 14025. Sustainability science and the triple bottom line are becoming an increasingly important aspects of business and public policy decision-making. There is every reason to believe they will also become increasingly important in media business and policy decisions.

RI- What have you seen in other countries that sticks out in your mind?

DC- When you leave the Stockholm’s airport to get on the high-speed train to downtown Stockholm there are book vending machines! While some may choose to download content to a phone or eReader, for many a book, a magazine or a newspaper will continue to be preferred. One of the major challenges print needs to address is waste, and another is the customization of format and content. There is no technical barrier to replacing newsstands and vending machines with hard copy media output devices or “fabricators” that could produce customized or personalized books, magazines or other media objects on demand. That would be one of the ways print media could compete with the immediacy and customization potential of digital media while also eliminating newsstand distribution waste.

RI- Sounds to me like the future is looking digital.

DC- As I said earlier, the distinction between print and digital media will ultimately vanish. The media of the future will be digitally printed and printed digital devices.

RI- Will people still care where they get their news from?

DC- I don’t think people care so much about where their news comes from, but journalism… yes I believe they still care. Anyone can make news and anyone can report it, but journalism is different and that difference matters. For example, Twitter is fast becoming one the most important source of breaking news, but it isn’t journalism. I think a robust Fourth Estate capable of independent investigative journalism is essential. The first tenet of sustainability is having a political system that secures effective participation of its citizens in decision making. That is the role served by journalists and the media channels that deliver and store their content.

The capacity of our society to effectively participate in decision making is contingent upon our having sources of news, journalism and dialogue that represent a diversity of informed opinions as well as a diversity of textual, graphical and other content types. Likewise, the sustainability of our society is dependent upon the supply chains and media that carry that content being diverse and sustainable as well. While much of current media debate is about the future of journalism as the sea change shift to digital media is occurring, we need to recognize that our current digital media supply chains and media types are unsustainable before we kick print media to the curb and entrust our future to an ephemeral and uncertain digital media monoculture.

As publishers struggle to extricate themselves from the advertising business models that encumber them, we are likely to see them continue to trim editorial staffs and funding for investigative journalism. However we are likely to begin to see syndicates of content creators and journalists emerge who are independent of any particular distribution channel or media type. Spot.us is an example of how journalists may increasingly be directly supported by their audiences rather than by a publisher who is supported by advertising.

If the capital structure of traditional media cannot support the research and legal expenses that investigative journalism demands then those entrepreneurs will find other sources of funding for their efforts.

RI- So do you have to go to newspapers to get journalism?

DC- No, as I said, we’re already starting to see things like spot.us and syndicates, as well as entrepreneurial journalists operating outside of mainstream media advertising supported business models.

RI- Last question. What should I be asking you right now?

DC- The real question is “how can we encourage both advertisers and publishers to consider the sustainability of the media supply chains they depend on?” Whether they are print or digital, they consume energy, and neither are sustainable. Will they have to learn the way fish learn about the importance of water? Will they only be aware of it when it is gone?

Looking at Print media, we can basically agree that it is dependent on paper. The paper making industry in the United States is in tragic decline. We haven’t built a paper mill in the US for over 12 years and we’ve shut down hundreds of paper making machines. We’ve exported more waste paper than any other product. In fact waste paper is this country’s single largest export! The paper has gone primarily to China where it is recycled into cardboard and shipped back to us as containers and then ultimately devoted to landfill.

We’ve effectively put ourselves in a situation where in short order we may be as dependent on imported paper as we are dependent on imported oil. If we don’t address the strategic importance of an intact infrastructure for papermaking in the US we may not have print media in time because we won’t be able to afford the substrate to print it on. Hopefully the current administration’s focus on renewable energy holds promise for the reinvention of America’s papermaking industry.

Over the next 10 years we need to transition from making paper in outmoded papermills mills build by our grandparents to producing paper, fuels, energy and renewable chemical and pharmaceutical feedstocks in a new generation of integrated biorefineries.

Likewise we need to transition from printing methods that employ wasteful and inefficient mass production to those which employ leaner greener digital printing and printed electronics manufacturing that support mass customization and dematerialization.

Looking at digital media from the same perspective it is not economically or environmentally sustainable either. During 2006 energy consumption from data centers and servers consumed 61billion kilowatt hours of electricity. The consumption rate for data centers doubled from 2000-2006 and is set to double again in 2010. Additionally, e-waste now constitutes the most significant toxic waste stream in our landfills and it is the single largest toxic waste export. We are about to witness a veritable tsunami of toxic e-waste as people turn in their CRT TV’s and buy new HD digital sets to cope with the FCC’s analog to digital mandate.

RI- Ok, that wasn’t the last question. After you mentioned exporting toxic waste to other countries I’m wondering; what are the global implications of publishers switching to new media /new medium?

DC- Thinking that we can transition from books to ebooks, and satisfy the fundamental needs of all 6.7 billion people on the planet is a fallacy. We don’t have clean water in many countries, let alone 3G towers to feed our Kindle’s today’s newspaper news. 2 billion people don’t have clean water in the world. As publishers, advertisers, and consumers, we have to find ways to encourage development of both sustainable print and digital media supply chain management technologies. We need to reframe the issue. Today’s print vs. digital media debates are a zero sum game. Regardless of which media wins the war of words we all lose. The fact is we will need both print and digital media for many years to come and we need them to both become far more sustainable than they are today.

RI- Thank you for sharing your ideas with metaprinter regarding news media innovation, convergence and sustainability. When is your next upcoming conference and what can people learn there?

DC- SustainCommWorld’s next Green Media Conferences will be held on June 9, 2009 in Washington DC and on June 23 in Chicago. The Green Media Conference website has detailed program information on it and the Green Media Connect Social networking site is where attendees can network, blog and share information before during and after the events. In addition, I post news items and exchange tweets with the thousands of people who follow me on twitter each day. Thank you for taking time to speak with me about this important topic. I look forward to seeing you and your readers at the Green Media Conferences in June.

More about Don Carli’s work:

The Institute for Sustainable Communication was created to raise awareness of the issues and train the next generation of media and communication supply chain professionals. We do that through various non-profit education and outreach initiatives such as the Sustainable Advertising Partnership (www.SustainableAds.org) being developed in partnership with Ad-ID (www.Ad-ID.org) and our Students of Sustainability (www.SOSReach.org) programs. ISC also supports the SustainCommWorld LLC Green Media Conferences which were created to provide advertisers, media planners, media buyers, creative professionals, publishers and suppliers in the print and digital media supply chains with real world and virtual world forums where they can network, explore and forge sustainable print and digital media supply chains solutions. In addition, ISC is working with Fortune Custom Publishing to produce a special section to Fortune Magazine in the Fall of 2009 focusing on the ways in which sustainable print and digital media supply chains can be a powerful force in the effort to address our global economic recovery and the challenge of climate change.

Related Links:

http://www.greenmediaconference.com

http://www.greenmediaconnect.com/

http://www.twitter.com/dcarli

http://www.sustaincom.org

Word Cloud of this Interview click for big view