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Tag Archives: Newspaper
Bill Wyman Tells Us Why Newspapers Are Dying
Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing – Bill Wyman via SpliceToday
Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of Salon.com and NPR. This is an in-depth article on the demise of the newspaper industry. Bill can now be found blogging at Hitsville.org.
Newspaper Association of America Abandons Its Members
NAA sent me a letter with this month’s Presstime magazine letting me know that this is the last print edition I will be receiving. They are moving online only. Truth be told, it was probably the last print edition I would be getting anyway you see I graduated from NYU in January and NAA wants proof that I still qualify for their student rate. I do, but you know what NAA, I’m not wasting my time to send you the appropriate paperwork.
Why is NAA, the NEWSPAPER Association of America, eliminating their print publication and moving online only? The reason they cite in the letter is “to adapt our organization to the realities of today’s newspaper business”. I’m calling bullshit on their reasoning. The real reason I suspect is because NAA is too big a coward to try something innovative and instead is hoping to just hang in there a little longer like everyone else and hope for the best.
According to NAA’s website, here is the association’s purpose:
Today, NAA serves the newspaper industry in strategic efforts to:
. Serve as a catalyst for industry growth
. Identify and disseminate examples of industry innovation
. Provide tools to exchange information and ideas
. Advocate and communicate industry views and interests to the Federal Government and to third-party standards and measurement bodies
. Communicate the vitality of newspaper media to external constituencies including the advertising community, Wall Street and the news media.
Did you read the first and last bullet points? What an awful message eliminating print sends to NAA’s advertisers, NAA’s members, and to the advertisers who spent roughly 34 Billion dollars in PRINT advertising last year. Continue reading
Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism
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.
El Universal Classified Page Redesign is a Breath of Fresh Air
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.
Wikipedia Founder To Newspapers, “Give Up”
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.
Hearst Foundation New Media Lecture with Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post
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
For a Guy Who Writes About Newspapers, Scoble sure is a Good Photographer
“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
How Scott Adams Saved Newspapers – I’ll Pretend I Didn’t Read This
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.
Interview With Loren Widrick | TownNews CMS
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
Newspaper Publishers – Disallow:/
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
2009 Print Quality Contest Winners | America East
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
Using Alexa and Wordle To Improve News Site Performance
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:
Top > News > Newspapers > Regional > United States > New Jersey
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
America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference Day1
This post will be continuously updated throughout the day. Check back often. Just arrived in God’s Country, Hershey PA for the
America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference
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
Jacek Utko: Can design save the newspaper? TED2009
Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? Should newspapers be Free? Tabloid? Local? Niche? Opinion? Breakfast fodder? “In the long run there is no practical reason for newspapers to survive” states Jacek. Regardless, he is working with newspapers to create entirely new workflows and embedding great marketing, via design, right into the products.
Newspaper designer Jacek Utko suggests that it’s time for a fresh, top-to-bottom rethink of the newspaper. (At this point, why not try it?) In his work, he’s proved that good design can help readers reconnect with newspapers. A former architect, Utko took on the job of redesigning several newspapers in former Soviet Bloc nations, starting from basic principles. He worked closely with newspaper executives to figure out the business goals of their papers, and then radically reformatted the product to fit those goals. (And he wasn’t afraid to break a few grids in the process.)
As the art director at Warsaw’s Puls Biznesu in 2004, he redesigned this small business-focused newspaper and immediately won the SND award for world’s best-designed newspaper. Readers responded, and circulation went up. He’s now art director for the Bonnier Business Press, overseeing papers in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and the work he oversees consistently wins major prizes (including another SND world’s-best in 2007 for Estonia’s Äripäev), despite their small teams and limited resources.
“Who knew that the world’s best designed newspapers are in Poland and Estonia?”
-June Cohen, TED
RELATED:
TED2009 Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses
TED2005 Sasa Vucinic: Why a free press is the best investment
Metaprinter to Report from America East Newspaper Operations & Technology Conference
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.
Post Digital Design? Newspapers Return!
Really Interesting Group is a multi disciplinary organisation working in post digital design. Partners work independently or collaboratively and share resources across the group. We collected some things from the internet we thought would work well on paper and we made it into a newspaper with a limited edition run of 1,000.
You can read more about the project and see some great photos via noisydecentgraphics blog.
Really Interesting Group from This Happened – London on Vimeo.
I stumbled upon this through http://www.thishappened.org/ which I normally would just tweet or bookmark on delicious and move on, but it was just too cool to skip. I love the design of their printed newspaper. The lines are so crisp and clean, “I wanted to avoid it looking like a newspaper that a designer had been let loose on. Graphics every-fucking-where. Something you might see from a bad brand”. Objective accomplished!
What about the font Robert? Well, “The brief was to be able to read it in bed without glasses on. So I wanted the type to be biggish and nice and clear”. Mission Accomplished! The American newspaper industry could have used these types of designs a while back. I know redesigns won’t save an entire industry, but maybe the few surviving newspapers will take some design cues from this project?!
Christian Science Monitor Final Print Edition
The Christian Science Monitor has published its final daily print edition, dated March 27, 2009.
Final Edition
CSM editor John Yemma, “The key words in that sentence are “daily print.” As of today, we are shedding print on a daily basis. But the Monitor itself – the century-old journalistic enterprise chronicling the world’s challenges and progress – is becoming more daily than ever. And with the launch of our new weekly print edition, the Monitor is becoming more vital than ever”… continue to CSM at above link.
Better yet, read my interview with John Yemma from December 2008, at the link below, about his plans for going online and how the paper plans to make money. The paper will continue to exist as a weekly for the cost of US: 1 year for $89.00 USD or Canada: 1 year for $99.75 CAN (includes 5% GST)
RELATED:
Metaprinter Interview With CSM Editor John Yemma Discussing Newspaper Business Models
Steve Greenberg’s Farewell to The Seattle P-I (final front page)
News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability – Interview with Don Carli
Interview with Don Carli Executive Vice President of SustainCommWorld LLC, and Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Communication.
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. Continue reading
Find us on Twitter – Chicago Tribune Masthead
Nice find from Joey Baker‘s blog
Newspaper and social media convergence. I have never seen any other newspaper put twitter addresses in their masthead, have you? To learn more read the following Q&A with Bill Adee, Chicago Tribune editor/digital media.
RI – Introduce yourself (name, title, specialty)
BA – Bill Adee, editor/digital media
RI – Does the masthead in the printed newspaper have the twitter addresses or is it just visible via the link above? What am I looking at? Where does this appear?
BA – That is the masthead as it appeared in last Thursday’s newspaper, on the Editorial page.
RI – Does the Chicago Tribune feel that twitter is better at contacting those in the masthead than email? Why use twitter?
BA – We wanted to make a statement about our digital efforts, but at a practical level it also is a great way to communicate with our readers and learn more about what they are reading and thinking. Continue reading
A Change in Media Economics 1991 letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway
Excerpt from 1991 letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1991.html
A Change in Media Economics and Some Valuation Math
In last year’s report, I stated my opinion that the decline in
the profitability of media companies reflected secular as well as
cyclical factors. The events of 1991 have fortified that case: The
economic strength of once-mighty media enterprises continues to
erode as retailing patterns change and advertising and
entertainment choices proliferate. In the business world,
unfortunately, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the
windshield: A few years back no one linked to the media business -
neither lenders, owners nor financial analysts – saw the economic
deterioration that was in store for the industry. (But give me a
few years and I’ll probably convince myself that I did.)
The fact is that newspaper, television, and magazine
properties have begun to resemble businesses more than franchises
in their economic behavior. Let’s take a quick look at the
characteristics separating these two classes of enterprise, keeping
in mind, however, that many operations fall in some middle ground
and can best be described as weak franchises or strong businesses. Continue reading
Society for News Design Announce World’s Best-Designed Newspapers
SND30: The 2008 World’s Best-Designed™ Newspapers from Society for News Design on Vimeo.
In its 30th annual “The Best of Newspaper Design™ Creative Competition,” the Society for News Design has named four newspapers from Europe and one from Mexico as “World’s Best-Designed Newspapers™.”
This year’s “World’s Best-Designed Newspapers™” are:
* Akzia, Moscow, Russia, biweekly, circulation 200,000
* Eleftheros Tipos, Athens, Greece, daily, circulation, 86,000
* Expresso, Paço de Arcos, Portugal, weekly, circulation 120,000
* The News, Mexico City, daily, circulation 10,000
* Welt am Sonntag, Berlin, weekly, 400,000
Here is a SlideShow of the Winning Papers:
Charlie Rose – The Future of Newspapers Panel Discussion
Description:
A conversation about the future of newspapers with Walter Isaacson former Editor of “Time Magazine”, Robert Thomson managing editor of “Wall Street Journal” and Mort Zuckerman owner and publisher of “The New York Daily News”.
Charlie “How bad is it?”
Walter “pretty bad”
At 9:20 Robert Thomson says, “Google devalues everything it touches” and I cannot help but think that he sounds like a local store owner complaining about WalMart. In the mean time everyone is shopping there and the company is single handedly responsible for most all innovation in store / product logistics. Rickles and Bamburgers went out of business for a reason, the free market spoke.
I can’t believe Mort Zuckerman didn’t mention at any point that his newspaper’s location in the commuting mecca of NY, NJ, CT is a competitive advantage that other newspapers around the nation do not enjoy. He seems blissfully aloof from the challenges of the new internet paradigm.
24:00 The panel seems to think applications and content will save their industry by creating value they can charge for. But they still haven’t told me what “need” they are filling. The value comes from filling unmet needs.
I would like Charlie Rose to ask at the next panel discussion the following questions:
1 – What unmet need is your newspaper now filling in the internet paradigm.
2 – What value can you expect to derive from filling that need?
3 – Is that value enough to make your business economically sustainable?
More Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers
The original post from October 2008 Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers touches on increasing sponsorships vs cpm, building experiences around your top draws, and improving navigation for better user engagement.
The economy has really shit the bed since my first post on advertising. With that in mind, this article will concern itself with bringing value to the businesses operating in your distribution area. This focus should bring in new business and reinforce the idea that your newspaper has its community’s best interest in mind. The only way this will work is if the publisher and sales manager green light this project. Change and leadership in this case must come from the top down and yes, they should be at the event, shaking hands, answering questions. Newspapers can no longer sit around waiting for money to come to them.
The purpose of business is to create a customer. -Peter Drucker
When? ASAP
What? I propose a marketing fair. Think of a job fair, except your entire sales staff will fill their niche booths to listen to their business owners’ (customers’) concerns.
Who? for any business in the community your newspaper serves.
Where? Rent out a big cheap place like a high school gymnasium or holiday inn. Set the event up in such a way that that people can ask your newspaper sales staff questions (all hands on deck) about your media kit, your readership, your services offered, costs, and then get real face to face answers (and hopefully ad buys on the spot).
Why? The purpose is to reconnect or stay connected with your community. Show them you care about their financial well being. Do Not Pitch your products to them. Have your sales force meet these business owners one on one. Listen to their problems, their concerns, their successes and failures. Let them do all the talking. Have your sales force take copious notes to find out what your businesses want from you.
As I have come to discover through the services I provide to my local chamber of commerce members, I think newspapers too will find out that most of your potential advertisers suffer from the same problems. Common concerns that I hear?
NEEDS:
1. Newspaper advertising is too expensive and complicated.
2. The cost structure / sizing in their media kits looks like the table of elements.
3. I only want to advertise next to relevant content.
4. I want to market my self, my own website.
5. I did it once and it was horrible, I lost money.
6. I wanted an ad on their website, but they could not tell me where exactly it would appear.
7. How can I use the internet to drive business to my company?
Now here comes your moment to shine Mr. Newspaper Publisher. Right these wrongs. Add value to your operation by filling the unmet needs of your business community.
FILLING THE NEEDS:
1-3. Innovate your advertising platform to make it easier for readers and small business owners to place ads online and offline. Models to ape? Craigslist & Google ( you know, the ones everyone uses).
4. They want websites? Build them websites! Offer the service using your in-house team. Don’t have an in-house team of developers? You can partner with a local shop or an Indian firm to crank out quality sites for $300 a pop, add 100% margin and you’re making big money! 95% of the small business clients I deal with need a new website. Their existing sites are usually real crap. Build them a site that gets customers in their door and everyone wins.
I can’t stress enough how important this is. This is a newspaper’s biggest potential new revenue stream.
5-6. SEE #1-3 above.
7. Some of the greatest kudos I’ve gotten while consulting have come from just sitting with a business owner and helping them list their business on all the free listing sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, YellowPages, etc…
REALIZING VALUE:
Your newspaper is now generating new value by filling an unmet need for your business community.
1. You will realize greater print and online sales.
2. You will get a better feel for the needs of your business community.
3. You will create new revenue streams outside of simple display advertising.
MORE REVENUE IDEAS:
1. That unused space on your website’s login form? It could now be generating $100 per month from sponsorship via your local Locksmith. Are you The Washington Post or The New York Times? That space should be going for $1000 per day to Sargent Locks or ADT.
2. Publish a twice annual town guide distributed to the local community college. In it you can find coupons and ads for every single eatery and club in your area.
3. Your newspaper now has 3 people on staff to work with business owners to design and develop business websites for them, list their businesses, and learn how online marketing works. You’re thinking of adding the service to readers to start their own blogs and sites.
4. The success of the #3 above has led to you launching a “SeekingAlpha” type platform for publishing original content. (seeking alpha pays nothing for the 175 posts they put up every day by the way).
I hope you’ve enjoyed this and it has helped. Here is the link to the original post from October 2008 Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers.
RELATED:
Alan Mutter Jumps The Shark – Getting Over Newspapers
This post is in response to Why newspapers can’t stop the presses from Newsosaur by Alan Mutter. It is a series and at the time of this writing he was on installment 3. Please help me explain why he thinks newspapers should focus on newspapers because I can’t make any sense of this.
Because newspapers on average derive approximately 90% of their sales from print advertising, the only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money. -Alan Mutter
So we have newspaper companies that are irreversibly losing money. These companies have discovered that in the internet paradigm, their value proposition is valueless or near valueless. Continue reading
What Newspaper Websites Can Learn from Darren Rowse and ProBlogger – First Impressions
It’s really getting frustrating reading about newspapers getting bailed out by questionable individuals, newspapers suing each other over… linking? really? Linking? uh… ok, and just the overall death of newspapers as the major source of news and investigative journalism. So lets focus on something positive like the title of this post: What Newspaper Websites Can Learn from Darren Rowse and ProBlogger – First Impressions.
If you don’t know Darren Rowse or ProBlogger and you run a news site or any blog really, it is imperative you start following his blog and take the time to dig through his archives. Ok, enough of that.
First, watch the video below from ProBlogger regarding the “first impressions” that a blog (or any site) makes on their visitors and what it means for engagement. Then we’ll go through some main points. Continue reading
1981 Primitive Internet Video Report – Newspapers on Computers
Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online … sort of. Steve Newman’s 1981 story was broadcast on KRON San Francisco.
Last line is funny. “the new tele-paper won’t be much competition for the 20cent street edition.” Oh sweet irony!
UK Newspaper For Sale, The Independent
Not long ago I wrote fondly of the Independent.co.uk’s move to incorporate Reddit into their website to allow multiple entry points to their content. The headline in the image I used could not have been more accurate.
In three months The Independent’s Debt caught up with it. It now needs $260 million by May of this year to pay off loans or go into default. Too excited indeed.
How’s the site doing? Not too bad actually. If the debt can be eliminated and costs from the print side controlled, maybe they’ll make it! But don’t get too excited. Continue reading
Recently Overheard, “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…”
There’s a pretty good Newspaper Thread going on right now at Ask.Metafilter.com see below.
As a back story, the quote “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…” came from one newspaper person after another newspaper person was gloating about how many newspapers they sold for the Obama Inauguration.
I don’t want to name names because in this case it would just be mean, you see I went and posed the statement on ask.metafilter.com as a question. Here is my post:
I’m looking for smart ways to refute the following illogical statement: “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…”
Lets pretend that scrapbooking is the lifeblood of newspapers. How are interactive products (i’m guessing the person means websites, social networks, blogs, etc.) now used for “scrapbooking”?
or… Deconstruct the original statement any way you think is better. Thanks!
Here are the responses, 37 at last count.
UPDATE: Jan. 21, 2009
“newspapers covering yesterday’s inauguration ceremony will fly off the shelves as readers seek out their trusted newspaper brand for comprehensive coverage of this historic event.” -John F. Sturm NAA President and CEO
Really John? Is that why they are being sold in “mint”, “unopened” condition on ebay by the pallet full? Because people wanted to read them? Dream on…
Starting Your Own Paper Blog… er Newspaper – The Ed Shamy Model
Ed Shamy is the lone employee of the County Courier newspaper in northern Vermont. Reading the description of what Ed Shamy does to operate a one man newspaper, it occurred to me that all he’s really doing is publishing a paper blog. Check it out:
He opens mail, stuffs envelopes, fields complaints and helps unload the advertising inserts from a tractor-trailer that pulls up once a week outside the brick building, sending all hands outside to lift the stacks of fliers off the trucks and carry them inside.
And he writes a column, of course – about the traffic bottleneck at the Swanton municipal complex, about Vermont’s penchant for elections, about the local guy who found a battered book of mysteries along a roadside and set out to find its owner.
What he doesn’t have yet is a paycheck, but that’s his own decision. continue reading at SFgate.com
Ed’s passion about newspapers and journalism runs deep. I can’t help but draw parallels between him and what the multitudes of bloggers out there are attempting every day.
He’s doing exactly what I talk about at the end of my podcast. Running a small paper, getting involved with his community and building his value around the needs of that community. This is what all the big papers are doing wrong.
I love his story and I wish him the best of luck.
Google Eliminates Newspaper Print Ads
Turning the page on Print Ads -from GoogleBlog
In the last few months, we’ve been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners. While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted. As a result, we will stop offering Print Ads on February 28. For advertisers who have campaigns already booked, we will place their ads through March 31.
I’ve said over and over again, Newspapers need to do some serious soul searching to figure out what their core competency is now in the internet paradigm. What Need are they filling and how can they monetize that need? Clearly no general interest newspaper has answered this question.
The Day The Newspaper Died – From The New Yorker
The day the newspaper died -from The New Yorker
James Franklin’s New-England Courant, launched in 1721 and its editorial policy:
“I hereby invite all Men, who have Leisure, Inclination and Ability, to speak their Minds with Freedom, Sense and Moderation, and their Pieces shall be welcome to a Place in my Paper.”
This sounds like the policy of any blog, no?
Newspapers Getting Ripped Apart On Reddit – Not Good
Dear Newspapers: Maybe if you hadn’t waited until the day before Bush left office to start calling him on everything he’s done in the past eight years, we wouldn’t be as screwed as we are now. -from Reddit
submitted 16 hours ago by kerbuffel
381 comments
Why Is Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, Worried About the Newspaper Industry?
Follow Up to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Interview With Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky This has all the background information on what is coming to be known as Google’ refusal to bail out the newspaper industry.
After a Twitter exchange with Jay Rosen he brought it to my attention that perhaps instead of me asking “why should Google help newspapers?”, I should I ask, “why is Schmidt worried”? Rosen is the man. He always gives me good jumping off points for further investigation.
So, why is Eric Schmidt worried about the failing newspaper industry? Here is the final question and response from the Fortune interview. Continue reading
The Future of Local Newspapers? It’s Shoved in My Mailbox…
I began receiving a free weekly newspaper jammed in my snail-mailbox about a year ago called Community Reporter. The newspaper is published by Gannett’s Asbury Park Press operating in New Jersey. The paper is thin, has 3 sections, and serves up content from 6 towns in my “area”. It also contains a classified section and usually has a couple inserts from Kmart and a grocery store.
The paper is completely useless to my family and I. There is nothing that the paper offers which I can not get online at my own convenience and without cluttering my mailbox. I never asked to be sent this junk mail, yet it comes… every week. I asked my postman if he can stop giving them to me, but he says he’s required to deliver it by law. He says the only way to stop is somehow get the newspaper to take me off their list. Continue reading
Hyperlocal Disaster – East Iowa Herald Closes After One Year
You can’t get more “hyperlocal” than a newspaper serving a population of 1000. This is the purest attempt at Hyperlocal that I’ve ever read about, a very small operation covering a very small population. It has been said before that hyperlocal fails because the advertising cannot support it. So what happened in this situation? Something new and unexpected? Nope, from publisher Mitch Traphagen, “It literally came to an end, the ad revenues,”.
The East Iowa Herald Closes After One Year -from AP/ Chicago Tribune.
It should be pretty obvious by now that advertising revenues cannot support general interest news operations by now. The Krugman Paradox and Publisher’s Dilemma spell this out pretty clearly.
What about donations? What about Spot.us? Barring a generous grant or donation, this model will also fail. Spot.us might be a nice niche alternative for the San Francisco Bay area, but I don’t see the model working for small-town USA. There just isn’t enough disposable income floating around for the model to work. Continue reading
Newspaper e-Editions, I don’t get it.
As part of their plan to move forward, the Detroit newspapers announced that their newspapers would be, “Providing subscribers daily access to electronic editions, exact copies of each day’s printed newspapers delivered to your email”.
I don’t get it.
Snuggling up with a good book is a wonderful way to spend quiet time, to become deeply engrossed in the story, to lose one’s self in it and even become a character. Reading a book is a solitary experience. This holds true with the e-book experience as well. What I don’t understand is the newspaper industry’s fascination with e-editions. For as many years as the Amazon Kindle has been around, newspaper have attempted to sell or give away e-editions as an important revenue stream. Websites like metafilter, digg, reddit, delicious, etc… exist because news articles are political in nature. We share those stories, rant, rave, email, tag, bookmark, blog… what value does an e-edition provide? Continue reading
MetaFilter Founder Matt Haughey Q&A – Including a Few Newspaper Answers
Q&A with MetaFilter.com founder Matt Haughey. As Wikipedia defines it, MetaFilter is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss interesting content that users have discovered on the web. From personal use I know that Ask.MetaFilter.com is one of the most useful sites anywhere for “querying the hive mind”. Enjoy!
RI -“MetaFilter is one of the oldest (1999) online social sites. What keeps it going where others fail? (Author’s note, I think of mefi a as social site but only in the broadest of terms. Or rather, it’s become more social over the years (the first few years, there wasn’t all that much discussion on the posts, now the most popular posts have hundreds of comments)…”
MH -It has consistently grown ever since early 2000, when I think it hit enough of a critical mass to be interesting. As to why it keeps going – it probably has something to do with it being what it is first and foremost. When I think of other online social sites that come and go, they’re largely offshoots of some other service that didn’t fit quite right. MetaFilter has always kind of been its own thing and has stayed interesting enough to attract interesting people that continue to contribute to it everyday. Continue reading
Brave News World – The Detroit Newspaper Experiment
As reported everywhere The Detroit Free Press (GCI) and The Detroit News are going paperless (somewhat) in their quest to remain a going enterprise. There is a thorough story about the specifics on MarketWatch.
Here is Dave Hunke, CEO of Detroit Media Partnership and Publisher of the Detroit Free Press:
“The dynamics of delivering information to audiences has changed forever due to technology. Today, consumers are more empowered than ever before. In order to serve them well, we must find ways to be more nimble. That means we have to change the way we deliver that news – not just in subtle ways, but in fundamental ways.”
I applaud the effort to innovate their business model. I have some serious reservations about their strategy however. Simply going online will not save the news business. Bragging that you’ve had “50 million pageviews” and “won Pulitzer Prizes”, while not being able to become economically sustainable should raise red flags about how inefficient newspaper websites are. Continue reading
Murdoch Investors Are Groaning… For No Reason
The recent BreakingViews.com article: Murdoch Investors Are Groaning suggested that Rupert Murdoch overpaid when News Corp. (NWS) acquired Dow Jones for $5.6 billion. Here’s what they said:
“Still, to be charitable, assume Dow Jones is worth half the $3 billion it traded at before Mr. Murdoch made his offer. On that basis, News Corporation shareholders forfeited $3.5 billion of value to the Bancrofts and their fellow shareholders.”
Tribune Not the Death of Newspapers!?
Despite the Tribune Company’s announcement Monday that it is voluntarily filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the rest of newspaper industry shouldn’t worry just yet. MU journalism professor Jacqui Banaszynski said,
“I think it’s not just a problem with the industry,” she said. “I think it’s a problem with our society.”
Sam Zell blames the economy… Really? REALLY?
1. Acknowledge that your “value” prior to the ubiquity of the Internet was your stranglehold on content delivery. You filled the needs of businesses and individuals seeking a platform to advertise their products and services to an audience within a geographic area.
2. To reiterate, your journalism was a nice plus, but the unmet need that your newspaper filled were things like the classifieds section, home sales, movie times, stock quotes, television listings, sports scores, betting lines, puzzles, and comics.
3. Did you just poopie in your pants a little bit? You should have because everything I listed is now being better served on the internet.
4. For god’s sake lets move forward as an industry by saying, the fundamentals of this business have changed. How can we make money in the new paradigm. That’s right I said money.
Milton Friedman says that a business has only one responsibility, “economic performance”.
Peter Drucker says that a business’s first responsibility is, “economic performance”.
Obama Wins! Newspapers Sold Out / Stolen by 8am
Did newspaper publishers not expect there to be a staggering demand for newspaper headlines this morning? If Obama lost, the headlines would have no doubt been filled with news of a stunning defeat and the news of the reaction from just under half the United States population. If he won, as he did, the headlines would have been as historical as the Moon Landing (and it is). Demand for newspapers will be HUGE.
Every major newspaper in metro New Jersey was sold out this by 8am. Being in the newspaper industry, I already had procured some great publications and even one Printing Plate! I drove around looking for more mementos and catchy headlines and was amused by what I found. Empty racks everywhere. The owner of my local bagel store asked me why everyone was looking for a New York Times. He said, “I get 9 every morning and every afternoon I have to send back 5 of them. Today one man came in and bought all 9!”. I explained to him that although some local newspapers remained on his rack, The New York Times is an Iconic paper and that’s why people snatched it up. I was most surprised by how few papers he received on a daily basis.
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Flexible Display Technology Will Not Generate Print Revenues
Newspapers charge advertisers hefty sums of money for advertising in their print products. A one-time full page advertisement in The New York Times can easily cost $160,000. How many people read it / saw it? Half a million? One million? One million times 2.5? who knows? That’s the beauty of paper. It cannot generate accurate advertising metrics. Unfortunately for newspapers, print circulation is falling like a… finish this phrase.
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100 Year Old Newspaper Abandons Print
NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) – The Christian Science Monitor, started in 1908, will abandon its weekday print edition next year, choosing instead to put daily news on its free website and print a paper just once a week. As of March 31, 2008, the Monday through Friday print circulation was 56,083 daily.
The Monitor gets a $10 million to $12 million annual subsidy from The Church of Christ Scientist that keeps it afloat. The news source wants to end the subsidy by supporting itself with advertising on its website. It also is exploring becoming a national and international news provider to local U.S news outlets.
ABC News Cancels Its Newspaper Subscription – FOREVER!
The New York Observer reported on October 24, 2008 that ABC News was canceling their magazine and newspaper subscriptions! ABC News president David Westin announced cuts in administrative expenditures to better align their budget with the tough economic climate. By saying the move was better for the environment, he pretty much put a nail in the coffin for never bringing the subscriptions back. Yikes! Here is an excerpt from his statement:
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Contrarian Newspaper Business Model – All The Wrong Moves
ENOUGH!!! Everyone stop doing what everyone else is doing. I present you today with the metaprinter contrarian business model, otherwise entitled ALL THE WRONG MOVES. As the name implies, the business model takes all the recent attempts to “save the newspaper industry” and flips them on their head. The model is based heavily on the quote below, but once you read the contrary ideas, they don’t sound so crazy.
Warren Buffett says
“Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful”
SO…
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Effect of Floating Roller on Reel Tension & Paster Failures – Newspaper Printing
Many paster failures (or splice failures as some say) are the result of trauma to the running web during the paste cycle. For an offset newspaper printing press the average paster failure, because of downtime and wasted consumables, costs ~$700 per incident. This can represent a staggering amount of wasted money to pressrooms incapable of resolving their paster failures. Conversely, this can represent a large cost savings if this article resolves your problem. Yay metaprinter!
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Part 2, Good Media Website Examples – News Blogs and News Aggregators
Part two of the best newspaper websites. I continue this post listing my selection for the best news blogs and news aggregators. Without further ado, I give you more good media website examples:
Click to visit site
POPURLS – From the site: “popurls is the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet. Popurls is considered as a gate to a highly selective collection of the most popular sites, presented in a usable way for every device & service.
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20 Page Tabloid in Texas Showing The Big Newspapers How To Do It
How can you keep people interested in your newspaper without the distractions of competing news sources? How do you run a profitable newspaper company? How do you operate your newspaper with, dare I say, GROWTH potential? I’ve always said that newspapers need to change their business model so that it better serves the public AND generates difficult to reproduce revenue streams.
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Newspaper Revenue Model Severely Jeopardized – Current Economy Reveals Massive Flaws
Last week Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm that funded Apple, Oracle, Cisco and Google, among others held a meeting and made a presentation to its portfolio companies about how to try to survive an economic downturn. The attached presentation is quite in-depth and technical however it does a good job of highlighting the implications on future spending habits.
The implications from the presentation for newspaper publishers are troublesome. We already know the print advertising model has been rapidly failing since the second quarter of 2006. Now, the increased exposure and reliance of newspapers on internet advertising and internet advertising growth can become a deadly problem.
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