If you work at a big city newspaper, you can see that there’s no light at the end of that career-choice tunnel. Circulation is dropping, and it’s going to drop ever faster. Most papers have little chance of replacing their traditional business with an online alternative.  As a result, every day at most papers is going to be just a little bit worse than the day before. Every day you stay is a bad strategic decision for your career because every day you get better at something that isn’t that useful-and you are another day behind others who are learning something more useful. The only reason to stay is the short-term pain associated with quitting.  Winners understand that taking that pain now prevents a lot more pain later.

I was reminded of the above passage while flying home after covering NAA’s mediaXchange in Las Vegas.  I won’t be back.  There were maybe 4 good speakers at the event.  Perhaps worse though was the crowd, a listless mob staring into a dark tunnel hoping to see the light at the end (but was there even a light to see?).  People weren’t asking good, tough questions, they were just kind of.. there.  The annual convention used to be a place where equipment manufacturers showcased their new products and where newspaper execs. came to make sweet deals.  That pretty much fell apart in 2008 because of cost cutting in the industry (and finally a realization that equipment doesn’t manufacture customers) and so this year the name was changed to something more EXTREME! like mediaXchange and a more digital spin was put on the entire proceedings.  They should have served Brawndo.

How the hell does NAA get away with scheduling Lee Abrams to talk about redesigns for the closing session?  And how the hell does no one in the audience ask him a tough question, like “why is a redesign so good if your papers are still failing”?  or “is it any bellwether that your only growing print product is the FREE METRO TABLOID, Redeye”? or “do you see a fundamental problem with the newspaper industry operating in an internet paradigm”?   Lee Abrams by the way is a retired old man/ radio executive who helped drive XM Radio into the ground and is now the Chief Innovation Officer for the Tribune Company.  Are you kidding me Tribune?  Employees and stakeholders in that company should be livid at his appointment.  Are you kidding me newspaper industry?  This is what you “gathered” everyone up for?  I wish I had the ability to print out Clay Shirky’s latest blog post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkableand stuff it in everyone’s free tote bag.  WTF?!

For all the time and money I spent on attending mediaXchange, I leaned a minimum amount of good, new information.  I hoped to see sessions on paradigm shifts and accepting new realities, but instead heard mostly product pitches.  Hell, I should have been there TALKING to these people.  I wanted to bum rush the stage at the closing session and say, “WAKE UP.  NEWSPAPER REDESIGNS ARE DEAD.  LETS TALK ABOUT NEW MEDIA”.  But the problem was that the audience seemed fine and even INTERESTED!!!! in hearing about redesigns from Lee Abrams.  Jeez!!!   As social media session speaker Kurt Greenbaum (one of the good speakers) followed up on his blog, “5.8% of NAA attendees cared about social media“.

I should have skipped mediaXchange, I should have quit, I should have went to SXSW.  That’s where the innovation is happening, and that’s where you’ll find me next year.  I hope to find news media execs. there too but I doubt it.  Godin says quit a loser, well I just quit mediaXchange.

RI: what is “a single media newsroom”?
TDP: The ability to produce content for all mediums from one location. We can be described as a content management system for newspapers, Solely for Newspapers.

RI: why are newspapers coming to you?
TDP: they are seeking to consolidate into a single newsroom. Financial pressures have forced the issue.

RI: What is the main product?
TDP: GN3 is the main product.

RI: With all the consolidation, is the business is booming?
TDP: Yes, we are doing well. Big jump in foreign interest especially in Latin American companies.

RI: do you deal with large chains like gannett or advance
TDP: Not so much as our foreign sales, but it’s changing.

RI: How do you sell?
TDP: Through resellers mostly.

RI: Who are your biggest competitors?
TDP: We like to think we are in a league of our own, but Saxotech is a competitor.
RI: innovation at Tera ?
TDP: GNportal (good news)
RI: What’s that?
TDP: Laura our project manager will tell you about that.

Laura Koval: GNportal is a central content store for getting content from remote places so it’s publish ready. It’s a direct user interface and works on any platform, any browser (regular contributors, connect upload enhance the metadata and then publish. There is also an “upload and publish mode”.

You can also connect via email (parses out attachments and performs validation on the pictures for example) or the website. Content in the form of stories, videos, pictures, etc… reside on the portal and remains there till someone chooses to publish it.

The portal archives are full text searchable and also return other related info like “how many are videos and stories, location, who the author is, related articles, etc…

RI: View this image to get a visual representation of how the portal works.  Click to see a larger version:

RI: Where can people find out more?
Laura: Visit our website to learn more about GNportal and our other products and services.  Or contact us directly for a demo. Thanks!

About Tera digital publishing:

Tera is a leading provider of integrated multi-media editorial solutions for the newspaper publishing. Dominant in many of our worldwide markets, we are best known for the quality of our engineering, our products’ ease-of-use and very low cost of ownership.

Tera’s product line includes multi-media editorial, archiving, advertising and prepress solutions. All our products deliver the highest performance, maximum reliability and low operating costs. Our solutions are installed quickly and easily, with the smallest impact on the organization.

In the US, we publish over 100 titles and are the dominant vendor to Spanish-language newspapers. We are the dominant vendor in Brazil and Croatia.

The high quality of our engineering contributes to the low cost of ownership of a Tera system. Tera has never released an upgrade that invalidated any customer’s data nor required the risk and expense of a so-called major upgrade. And yet our software is an engineering leader. Our installation times are measured in weeks, not months or years. The addition of new titles is a routine matter.

Final day at NAA mediaXchange 2009.  I’m liveblogging the Redefining Classified session  on twitter.com/metaprinter

UPDATE:

As an aside: Sesame Workshop cuts staff by 20% ‘Sesame Street’ producer announces layoffs

metaprinterI want someone to ask Lee, “how have you aligned these newspapers for success in in the internet paradigm” @NAA_Community #naamxc09
OK, I asked him after the session.  He says that he is making the newspaper sites more interactive, and linking out to news blogs and other credible sources more.  He’s also making the news sites become aggregators (through niche sites)  for all info in their area so someone searching for info about chicago x will wind up on a tribune site.

metaprinterLee says get away from the “electronic arm of the newspaper”  #naamxc09 it’s a totally different product.  What about “the medium is the message”?

metaprinter Barbara and Lee Abrams muddling through a discussion on “getting things done”.  #naamxc09

As an aside: ING Postpones 2009 Conference

metaprinterNo way in hell is a paper redesign going to save this industry. come on Barbara ask a tough question. #naamxc09

Final Session is EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY.  This picture was taken at 3:30 the start of the session.  by 3:50 more people have shown up.

The Tribune Company over the past 12 months has moved aggressively to transform their product strategies and remake the traditional newspapers, including re-designs, shifting the editorial/advertising ratio, re-thinking content focus/presentation, launching companion tabloid products, breaking news sites and other innovations. Lee Abrams, Tribune’s chief innovation officer, has been the provocateur for many of the changes. This “conversation with Lee” will provide a first-hand appraisal of the strategies to date and explore what’s on his mind for future innovations in print, online and broadcast.

Name Lee Abrams
Title SVP/Chief Innovation Officer
Company Name Tribune Company

Name Barbara G. Cohen
Title President
Company Name Kannon Consulting Inc.

What is the classified advertising outlook for 2009 and beyond? What are novel and innovative changes needed to evolve and meet today’s consumer demands? Attend this session to get these answers and more. You’ll hear directly from industry thought leaders as they share specific print and online classified redesign case studies, as well as new classified vertical strategies.

Name Chelle Bize
Title Recruitment Advertising Manager
Company Name Las Vegas Review- Journal

Name Tony Lee
Title Chief Alliance Officer & Publisher of CareerCast.com
Company Name Adicio

Name Bill Ostendorf
Title President
Company Name Creative Circle Media Consulting

Name Larry Shaw
Title Director of Client Research
Company Name Borrell Associates

I’ll do the same for the closing session at 3:30pm as well.

First, a little about the company:  Serra Media is a web technology company that’s taken a unique approach to web-based software for local publishers. We think it should be truly innovative, yet easy to use. It should be made for you and leverage the power of your brand in the local marketplace. And it should even be fun. It’s all about technology with style, plus world-class customer service. And it will help you grow audience and revenue, too.

Hyperlocal imagination. Hyperlocal innovation.

Newsgarden is our first product and it can revolutionize local news. It is a map-based web application that filters the location of recent news items, blog posts and other information available on the web down to the neighborhood level.

But it’s not just news on a map; it’s about building new communities online, with new content, in a way that integrates the journalism already being done. It allows a news publisher or local blogger to cover more news with less resources, creates a new market for advertising revenue and helps you move toward a future dominated by location-aware mobile devices

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With the above in mind, I wanted to learn more about Newsgarden so I met up with Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs.  Here’s what I found out.

RI - What is Newsgarden? It looks like a Google Maps Mashup.
MB - Newsgarden is our premier product offering and yes it can be described as a Google Maps mashup, however it is much more powerful than that.  Think of Newsgarden as a social mapping platform where geographically targeted content from news staff or readers is displayed in a familiar Google map.  The content can be in the form of stories, photos, links, video and really anything else where geographic context adds to the experience.

RI – Community engagement for news sites has historically been awful.  I can see how Newsgarden works toward building community participation, but how does a newspaper make money from it?
MB – There is an advertising network called MicromarketAds built into Newsgarden and the entire thing is a hosted application that just drops right into a news site’s existing website so they don’t have to worry about development.  Geotargeting allows advertisers to place ads beside appropriate locations and even content.  The MicromarketAds platform even

RI – Who is using it now?
MB –
Newsgarden implementations:
http://bellingham.serramedia.com
http://gateline.serramedia.com
http://theolympian.serramedia.com

Micromarketads.com example:
http://gateline.serramedia.com/neighborhood/134

College site:
http://pvcm.serramedia.com

RI – What’s next?
MB – We’ve just launched WhereToGo, a way to discover and share restaurants, cafes, bars, attractions, and much more.   We’re also launching TownLuxe  to let shoppers browse trends, find sales and share tips.  These will function like NewsGarden.

RI – Thank you Mark, tell everyone where they can learn more.
MB – Visit the Serra Media website or contact me directly via email at mark@serramedia.com

About Newsgarden:

About Serra Media:

Mark Briggs | Chief Executive | mark@serramedia.com
Mark will help connect our technology to the needs of the local news publisher.

Mark, who was named as one of Presstime magazine’s “20 under 40” in 2007, began managing online news operations in 2000 and projects he has led have won regional and national awards for innovation and interactivity. He served as assistant managing editor for interactive news at the The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. from 2004-2008 and new media director at The Herald in Everett, Wash. from 2000-2004.

He is also author of “Journalism 2.0: Survive and Thrive in the Digital Age” and a frequent speaker, trainer and consultant on the topic of new media and innovation for news operations.  Update: Mark is working on a new book to follow up Journalism 2.0 called Newspaper2.0  The book will be out this Fall and is being published by CQ Press.

Crazy day for metaprinter dot com.  At 11am I interviewed Matt Coen and Doug Villhard with Second Street, then I interviewed John Juliano and Laura Koval with Terra digital printing.  Both these interviews will be up soon.

Got sidetracked by the Reel Centric display on my way to a session.  Look at this thing.  They market their product as  “smart video advertising solutions”  so they are raffling off a Smart Car.  Did I enter the raffle?  They said I could, So I did.   All I had to do was watch a 5minute demo.  The person manning the booth said they have already made the money they spent on purchasing the Smart car 5x over.  So I am naming Reel Centric’s booth, best booth at mediaXchange 2009.

Hit the 2:45 session Link, Search, Play to learn mostly about contests and their revenue potential.  Especially as a follow up to my interview with SecondStreet. So there you have it.  Day two is in the books.

Above is a short video of the convention room floor on day one. Monday March 9, 2009. What’s the problem? Is it the economy? Is it the state of the media? A combination of both?

Monday Day One

UPDATE: 2:30pm

Monetizing All Things Digital Session

Pubmatic CEO Rajeev Goel speaking
Monetizing ideas

. Shift from high price, high volume direct ad sales to high volume low price indirect sales.
. Demographic Data & Behavioral Data sold to ad networks, data exchanges, and agency buying systems.
. He has lots of supporting data of current and past trends.
. Thinks the display ad price drop is leveling off.

Reel Centric Denise Berry director/media developement
Video advertising opportunities

. 67% of all internet users are viewing video ads at least once a month.
. Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments rising 45% in 2009 to $850million
. newspapers need to engage people already using television advertising like car dealerships.
. virtual home improvement project on Arizona Republic’s site (i can’t find it)

Cox Ohio Publishing Ray Marcano, internet general manager
Dayton Daily News Hot Topics box on front page of site being passed off as content, but really direct click ads.  The box itself is making almost $100,000 in year one.

That’s it.  Q&A is cut short, ran over time.  Too many powerpoints at the sessions.  Thank goodness Ray’s ppt. failed and he winged it for 6minutes.  Because of that it was short and to the point.  One of the better presentations so far.   The others spoke too long. I really heard nothing innovative being said about how to generate value based on filling community needs.  This statement from  audience, “what I’m not seeing is newspapers attempting to create rich media content for long term growth” #naamxc09 summed it up.

UPDATE:  2pm

Gearing up for an interview with Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs.  Here is a slideshow showcasing their premier product Newsgarden.  More on this when I get the interview.  Stay tuned.  It will be on the site as a new post ASAP.

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Metaprinter.com founder and senior writer Robert Ivan will be attending NAA’s mediaXchange this March, 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.  Use the #NAAmxc09 hash tag to follow us and others at the venue.

NAA expects executives in the business of delivering news and information on multiple platforms primarily located in North American markets, as well as those responsible for revenue, audience, content management and infrastructure to participate in this new annual gathering. The conference will help newspaper media executives make decisions and identify the products and services they need to maintain their newspaper’s position as the dominant local brand, while meeting revenue goals with digital properties, print content, niche products and more. March 9-11, 2009 Las Vegas.

Confirmed Appointments so far:

. Travidia
. Serra Media
. Tera Digital Publishing
. Stock-Trak Group

NAA Previews Inaugural mediaXchange Conference

Premier industry gathering focuses on future business models, multiplatform strategies

Arlington, Va. – Newspaper professionals from across the country will attend the Newspaper Association of America’s first annual mediaXchange Conference March 9-11 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. The conference marks an increased focus on emerging digital infrastructure, and will allow attendees to share audience and revenue development strategies that have generated growth in print and online.

“As newspapers reinvent their business models and focus on monetizing digital content, NAA’s inaugural mediaXchange event will allow attendees to share success stories and revenue-generating ideas that are effective now and well into the future,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “The opportunity for newspaper professionals to share audience and revenue development strategies, network with key newspaper advertising customers and listen to experts both inside and outside our industry will prove invaluable for those in attendance.”

This year’s show floor will feature 220 exhibitors that serve all facets of the industry – from production and digital platforms to advertising solutions. More than 40 of these companies will be exhibiting with NAA for the first time.

Conference Highlights:

March 9: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com
Under Tony Hsieh’s leadership, the online show store zappos.com has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6 million in 2000 to $840 million in 2007 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. Hsieh will share his experiences providing a culture that promotes excellence in customer service, a key component to this remarkable success story.

March 10: Future Business Models
In this session, Jim Chisholm, principal at iMedia Advisory Services, will share his findings and recommendations from a comprehensive analysis on newspaper financial models for the future. Afterwards, newspaper executives who are rethinking the traditional publishing model will share the strategies and results from product transformations at their own companies.

March 11: A Conversation with Lee Abrams
The Tribune Company over the past 12 months has moved aggressively to transform their product strategies and remake the traditional newspapers, including re-designs, shifting the editorial/advertising ratio, re-thinking content focus/presentation, launching companion tabloid products, breaking news sites and other innovations. Lee Abrams, Tribune’s chief innovation officer, has been the provocateur for many of the changes.

Full information on the conference, including programming and registration details, is available at mediaXchange.naa.org.

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