Shifting from mass media to individuated media October 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentVin Crosbie highlights the magnitude of the transition he envisages:
"We're now in the early years of this transition from mass media to individuated media, maybe 10 years into a process that will take a generation. The writing is on the wall, but most traditional media companies still think it's only graffiti. Yet the change will come and be sudden and sharp, not gradual. Just ask the newspaper industry, the first to be affected. The radio industry's and the TV industry's affiliate infrastructures will be next. There are pioneers who are ably leading the advertising and public relations industries through the change, but not everyone in those industries will make it to the Promised Land.
If you think you've seen changes in the past 10 to 15 years, you ain't seen nothing yet. […] However, the opportunities to profit and grow careers within individuated media, for those who know how to do it, will be extraordinary. Be one of those people."
Finding a niche: do papers need to focus better on what they do well? September 27, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJim Brady, web consultant to Guardian America: “You take most newspapers in the U.S., there are a couple things they’re really, really good at, better at probably than anybody else. And then there are a long list of things they’re just no better at—especially if you look at soft sections […]
I don’t think that producing a paper that’s great at 30 percent of the subjects it covers and OK at the other 70 percent really has much of a future on the Web, because it’s just too hard to compete. We’re in this social media world now where if I’m on Twitter or I’m on Facebook and someone sends me an article, three pieces of information come with that: what friend of mine sent me the article, what the headline says, and who produced the article. And I would argue that who produced the article is by far the least important of the three.”
BusinessWeek sinks $16m on social media project September 15, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSounds like a spectacularly large spend for a social networking site, even for a large publishing company. Makes me wonder if there's more to be told. From Brand Republic:
"As the bid deadline for ailing BusinessWeek magazine approaches the McGraw-Hill title is revealed to have spent $16m on creating its social networking site, which is generating little cash.
BusinessWeek launched its social networking venture Business Exchange in 2007. By 2008 it had spent $16m on the site, which is estimated by the New York Time to have generated just $600,000 in revenues."
How much will people pay for news? May 17, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJohn Naughton: "…as providers disappear (or, like Murdoch, decide to charge), the supply of free news will diminish and something more like a normal market will emerge. Only then will we find out what people are willing to pay for news."
Local newspapers will not recover from recession, says former Express editor | printweek.com | Business News and Jobs from the Business, Finance and Mergers and Acquisition Sector March 20, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSo says Richard Addis, former editor of the Daily Express, as reported in Print Week:
" He made the comment as regional newspaper groups sought government help to save further title closures and Kent media company KM Group announced plans to quit printing its own newspapers and concentrate on publishing.
Addis announced plans in 2007 to launch an "ultra-local newspaper" in London. However, he told PrintWeek that plans had changed and he is looking to launch a series of local news websites across the UK.
He said: "Print will never recover from this recession. And regional newspapers are the worst hit of all. Regional publishers are all looking at digital and how to improve their website. Over the next three years, we will see a huge failure of regional print businesses." "
Paid-for-free papers: the mirage of the hybrid models | Monday Note November 5, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMore than 56% of the IHT's circulation is free, says, Frédéric Filloux (Schibsted), analysing the free/hybrid model and some key questions it raises:
"How to reach a bigger chunk of high value audiences using the same technique? “Than can be summed up in one idea”, says Bruno Patino, former CEO of Le Monde Interactive, who likes to pitch the concept of paid-for-free newspapers: “The audience I do want, as a publisher, gets the paper for free; the rest have to pay for it”. […]
"The hybrid model bumps against two limits, though. The first one is the fit of the product to the target audience(s). […] The second limit is the social approach of the news business."
Bebo kids will value privacy when they see adults do too | Comment is free | The Guardian October 31, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentCory Doctorow says parents of the YouTube generation have not learned an important lesson:
"When we tell kids to safeguard their privacy from everyone except governments, merchants, advertisers, entertainment giants, schools, Transport for London and parents, we tell them that we're not really serious about this stuff. Worse, when we allow our own private information to be taken by all these parties, we tell them that privacy is the cheapest coin of all. When BT secretly installs spyware in our browsers and captures all our clicks in order to serve ads to us, our lack of outrage tells our kids everything they need to know about the value of privacy."
How the numbers (don’t) add up for newspapers if they axe print October 26, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, Newspapers, Online, USA , add a commentAlan Mutter (aka Newsosaur) picks up on a point from the ‘New Business Models for News’ summit at City University of New York, arguing that scrapping print isn’t a solution, given that 90% of US papers’ revenue comes from ads sold in the print product.
Assuming it would cut costs by 60%, scrapping the print paper would mean the following, he suggests, for a $100m-revenue publishing company with a 15% operating profit:
If the company abandoned print but were able to double its online sales to $20 million, it would lose $14 million in a year, for an operating margin of a negative 70%. To break even, the prototypical publication would have to more than triple its sales from the current levels. To make a profit of 15%, the company would have to quadruple it sales.
A particularly tough target, Mutter adds, because around two-thirds of online revenues typically come from add-on sales to advertisers who are buying space in the print edition.
But this kind of online-only operation is not a pipe-dream, maintains Tim Windsor. Responding in comments on Cory Bergman’s post, he says making it work would need a much smaller newsroom with one or two community managers to make the most of user-generated content, plus linked/licensed content. A core staff of 20 multimedia reporters, he suggests. (Those comments via Mark Hamilton.)
How will newspapers make money in future? Shopping? Travel? Sponsored editorial? October 24, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Moore catalogues some of the ways The Times is trying:
"Many of them [newspapers] are, and have been for some time, looking for ways to 'monetize' their reading public (i.e. milk readers for more cash).
You can get a pretty good idea of what this means by reading todays Times. I counted 21 ads for ways in which the paper could make additional revenue (not including encouraging people to buy the paper tomorrow or Saturday or one just promoting the brand). […]
And, one of the strangest, an ad for a weekly Times online 'streamlined' series with Tony Hawks – sponsored by VW Passat C (see 'A Life More Streamlined'). The remarkable thing about this is the deliberate melding of editorial and advertising – the tagline for the VW Passat is 'See the new streamlined coupe'. "
Martin Moore Blog: Newspaper closures October 20, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Moore offers some historical context to Emily Bell's scenario of potential newspaper closures:
"The last major period of contraction occurred between the two World Wars when, as the first Royal Commission on the Press found, just under 25% of daily and Sunday papers closed:
‘Between 31st December 1921, and 31st December 1948, the number of general daily and Sunday newspapers published in England, Wales, and Scotland fell from 169 to 128’ (1st Royal Commission on the Press, p.73).
The Commission decided this was not a serious cause for concern, nor was the 25% reduction in the national daily press. Only if it was part of a long term trend did they feel we should be worried:
‘We do not therefore see cause for alarm in the decrease of the number of national morning newspapers from 12 in 1921 to 9 in 1948 – [although any further decrease could be worrying]' (Royal Commission, p.88)."