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Tag Archives: Print Media
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
Newspapers do not need to get into the memorabilia business.
I figured it would only take a matter of time for some “authoritative” voice to validate the NEED for traditional printed newspapers by citing the DEMAND from November 5th. In this recent article from Alan Mutter’s newspaper industry blog the argument is made that November 5th proved “that newspapers still matter”.
Platform Agnostic
The article goes on with an emotional plea for newspapers to focus on news stories that “touch the hearts and minds” of their readers, just like what happened on November 5th and September 11th.
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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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The Wall Street Journal debuted its WSJ magazine in this morning’s newspaper
The magazine is targeted to extremely rich people, but us poor folk like to look at the content and ads as well. Hell, I even went to the Vertu website to find out how much a Vertu Ascent Ti. cell phone costs ($6999.99), pretty amazing. Although I’ll never buy one, perhaps my wife would like that Smythson raspberry croc print leather continental purse for Christmas?
The overall build quality of the magazine is good but not great. The Magazine is perfect bound and suffers from a coversheet that is too thin (for the glue and ink coverage). As you can see from the picture below the cover is wrinkled at the spine.
Another problem I found was on page 94 with ink lay-down resulting in streaking. Again, seen below.
Innovation? YES! Why innovation? Continue reading
Nobody came to Nexpo 2008
Editor & Publisher referred to the event as “The Big Empty”. This type of morbid humor is usually one of the indicators of flagging hope in one’s profession.
Newspapers & Technology conducted a survey asking members whether they would be attending Nexpo. They reported in March 2008 that for the first time in their history, more people said they were NOT going than going.
Philip M. Stone reporting on FollowTheMedia.com says, “Vendors seemingly were standing around talking to one another more than they were to prospects”. The number of attendees is estimated here at 450.
Columbia Journalism Review puts the registered attendees at 609 however they mention that they “would be surprised if even that many had shown up on the floor”.
Previous NEXPO Attendance figures are ridiculously hard to get, but here’s what I found. Submit corrections with a cited source please.
Year__Attendance__Location