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."
Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online » Nieman Journalism Lab April 29, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Langeveld does some estimates to get to this three percent figure and concludes:
"So whether you look at page views or time spent reading, only around 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online. I’ve made a few estimates along the way to reach that conclusion, but only a drastic and unwarranted change in my few guestimates would change that result signficantly.
Is it any wonder then, that online revenue is stuck at less than 10 percent of the print revenue? Given the online share of audience attention, 10 percent looks high, actually."
Jeff Jarvis: History in the making the LA Times's online ads hit target | Media | The Guardian January 12, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJeff Jarvis heralds the prospect of major papers going online-only as online revenue makes the grade:
” …the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, said the paper’s online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the Times’s entire editorial payroll, print and online. “Given where we were five years ago, I don’t think anyone thought that would ever happen,” he said in email. “But that day is here.” The same day has arrived for at least one more major US newspaper. What this tells me is that we are on the cusp of the moment when online revenue could sustain a substantial digital journalistic enterprise without the onerous cost of printing and distribution. Hallelujah.
There are caveats aplenty…”
Talking hyperlocal, ultralocal workshop at mashup* — Ultra Local Voice: communities, communicating November 5, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentHyperlocal publisher William Perrin on the paradoxes of local news, particularly the challenge — impossibility? — of making it pay, at least without drawing heavily on volunteers, UGC, citizen journalism etc:
“…it is hard to see how solo ultralocal or hyperlocal sites can support a paid member of staff (at the very lowest £25k inc overheads). So unless new sources of funding arise, a conventional paid for journalist model looks unlikely at an ultralocal level. The only way to gather hyperlocal news for an industrial era news model is by tapping into a volunteer base to write news for you.”
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."
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'. "
WAN: Traditional media has five years growth left – Press Gazette October 20, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentHave predictions of the death of traditional media been exaggerated? From the World Association of Newspapers conference:
"…Marcel Fenez [of PWC] said that although digital advertising will continue to soar over the next five years it will still only globally represent 10 per cent of total advertising for newspapers by 2012.
He forecast that global print advertising will grow 1.8 percent to $123.3 billion in 2012, while global digital advertising will grow 19.3 percent to $13.4 billion.
He said: "One of the things we need to get into context here is that traditional media isn't dead yet and won't be for the next five years."
"It's very important to think why. The over-50s are helping to sustain traditional media, and also in many of the emerging markets there is still plenty of room for traditional media. The death of traditional media is exaggerated, at least in a five-year context." "
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)."