Newspapers need to separate Print and Online (for the last time)

March 13, 2010 – 12:54 pm

C’mon Steve, your being coy. Please read Steve’s post for background on this debate. I’ve written extensively about this around the web and am tired of it. It’s not that I don’t think integrating online with the rest of the company COULD work, just that I think it WON’T at most companies. Also, I’m not talking about the NYT, but medium and small markets.

First off, I’d love my company to spin off Google. Anyone that wouldn’t is insane.

Regarding, “Nobody at the Bugville Daily Bugle was happy about that.” That’s because they failed. If they had succeeded, the new companies would have been thrilled and the the print folks angry. Just because they failed doesn’t mean it’s not the right path. Who was running them? What was their strategy? Why did it fail?

But this is all bull analysis. In the end, you only need to convince me of one thing and I’ll agree that news organizations shouldn’t spin off their online operations.

“Can existing staffs grok what needs to be done and execute it, or are companies willing to replace them with staffs that can?”

I don’t think the answer is yes in most cases. I’ll trust Steve is experiencing a different finding, but I worked for both corporate giants and locally owned independents for over ten years and have met only two or three people that really understood what was happening out of thousands. Maybe I’m setting too high standards.

For most it’s about not understanding the sociological and economic changes, not anything to do with technology. Just about how technology has changed the fact that the distribution channel is now wide open and where news companies fit into that value chain. It should have a profound effect on their strategy.

Google the publishers at a few hundred newspapers and see what percentage are actively involved on Twitter or Facebook, or regularly publish to a blog.

I think you’ll find the number very low and it all trickles down, no? If you don’t deeply understand Twitter, for example, how can you make a business decision about it. It leads to Board Room suggestions like, “Let’s add ads to our tweets!”

Yeah, we’re really  headed places with that out of the box thinking.

By @mterenzio | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Thirty five is weird (Newsday)

January 31, 2010 – 1:32 pm

Mark Potts says Neswsday’s strategy is working. Maybe. And he does point out that the comically low number is a warning to others.

But thirty five is weird. For a market that size, it’s really low if EVERYONE could get it for free.

Population of Long Island: 7,448,618

25% (don’t have cable or Newsday subscription): 1,862,154

Newsday online subscribers: 35

Percentage 1.8 million that subscribed: My calculator gave me an error

Newsday print circulation (weekday): 377,500

Thirty five is extremely low for this market, no matter what the circumstances. A lot of experiments are showing that 2-3% of the print circulation are willing to subscribe. I’ve seen similar numbers at publications I’ve worked at that had a paywall. (We also gave print subscribers free access)

So without the Cablevision deal we might expect 10,000 or so subscribers. So even if 75% of that potential pool were cable customers. Hell, let’s say it was 90%. We should still see a thousand or so subscribers.

How about 100 long-islanders now retired and living in Florida?

Thirty five is weird.

Added note. Here is some evidence that site usage might be down a little more than they are admitting. Newspapers tend to like to do that with their numbers. It’s part of the culture.

By @mterenzio | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Newsday.com is now a loss leader

January 28, 2010 – 2:30 pm

So Newsday.com (I actually built portions of the site under the Tribune ownership) is actually a loss leader for Cablevision.

Interesting, and it may even work in the short term.

But it’s understandable why the morale is so low in the news room. And when print revenue dries up, the sentiment will get even worse as the journalists will be totally reliant on their “sugar daddy.”

It’s not the picture I paint for the future of journalism because it’s still cut off from the public and I don’t think journalism created behind closed doors will be able to compete with what’s happening on the open web.

But if your pockets are deep enough, and Cablevision’s are, then it certainly is one way to fund investigative reporting.

By @mterenzio | Posted in journalism, paywalls, print | Tagged | Comments (0)

Geocoding for the programmer journalist

January 24, 2010 – 9:43 pm

For programmer journalists, geocoding has got to rank up there as one of the more essential tools to have under your belt.

Derek Willis, of  the New York Times has some interesting stuff for users of GeoDjango over on his blog, The Scoop.

I hadn’t heard of  GeoDjango, so I decided to take a look and it’s definitely looking pretty impressive.

Django continues to be a bright star among framework choices for journalist programmers.

By @mterenzio | Posted in journalism, programmer journalist, tech | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

More metered paywall junk

January 24, 2010 – 8:52 pm

Tom Foremski, like many others, is pointing out flaws in the NYT metered paywall plan. Many are doubting whether the company can keep people from cheating the system.

Well, that’s no revelation. Has anyone talked to the recording industry lately on their progress with DRM?

In fact, though it’s easy to steal music, many people do still pay for it, and that is probably what the NYT is counting on.

But that’s not what is bothering me. In his post, Foremski poses the idea that bloggers might agree to run NYT ads in return for permission to quote and link to the articles.

Listen to this quote from Foremski:

By agreeing to use adtribution, the New York Times essentially offers a license to the blog site to quote and link to its original story.

Uhhh, we don’t need permission to quote and link to the the New York Times, OR ANYONE!! How could any journalist not understand the concept of fair use or that fact that we have the right to report public events, including what other publications do.

This is old stuff.

In fairness, I’m pretty sure Foremski is suggesting that the NYT will allow unfettered access from links that come from ad-supported posts, but that type of thinking is just plain backwards.

It’s not valuable to us to have the NYT allow us to link to them, it’s valuable to them that we DO link to them. If they go behind a paywall, I don’t think the web will suddenly feel any shortage of items to link to.

Do you?

By @mterenzio | Posted in advertising, journalism, paywalls | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

It’s back! RSS itself is an advertising medium

January 23, 2010 – 3:41 pm

From politicsdaily.com,

Online advertising, including Google ad words and text links, are highly relevant and effective when targeted to behavioral intent – e.g. “pepperoni pizza delivered at midnight in Tribeca.” (It’s so effective, in fact, that it created the world’s largest media company, with $6.67 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter.) But this form of advertising doesn’t work to change opinion, to persuade, to communicate the breadth of support for a particular issue.

Not yet, really. No. But have a look at Dave Winer’s idea about  users paying to get their own posts along side the NYT articles.

Winer once said, “RSS itself is an advertising medium,” and that might be the case, in a much more literal way than I previously thought.

There is a business in here emerging somewhere. I think the key is that there must be quality controls. That won’t be the case in print (or to a much lesser degree), but users on the web will shun any service that tries to force garbage upon us. In fact, without quality control, the system self destructs on its own because the value of paying to be part of the conversation erodes to the point that it becomes worthless. It’s something like inflation’s effect on the value of money.

By @mterenzio | Posted in advertising, tech | Comments (1)

Is print or electronic more environmentally friendly? Who cares?

January 23, 2010 – 12:32 pm

Of course we care about the environment.

Mark Glaser from 5Across hosts an interesting talk about whether print or electronic delivery of a newspaper is more environmentally friendly. It’s certainly not as clear cut as many would believe.

But what’s the point?  I don’t get my news online because I don’t want to waste paper. I do it because the web has revolutionized the way we gather AND CREATE information.

Is the choice between paper and electronic? The materials involved are the least differentiating factor between a print product and an online news experience.

Does anyone actually think that a 100% green e-paper version of a print product will spell the extinction of news on the web in all its collaborative glory?

I hope not.

By @mterenzio | Posted in journalism, print, tech | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Freedom of the Internet . . . or what?

January 23, 2010 – 1:38 am

There has been some big talk lately in regards to censorship on the internet.

Google is staring down the country of China.  Hilary Clinton expounds upon the virtues of information freedom and its importance to democracy.

All good, right?

Well, not so fast, say some.

Dean Collins is an “Aussie geek” that has been living in New York since 2004 and he has a different perspective on the U.S. government’s policy toward freedom of the internet.

Collins asks, “Does Hillary Clinton also propose that the USA should stop blocking Antigua online gambling and accept the WTO ruling of 2007?”

While a ban on gambling could be defended, there is obviously some sentiment in the global community that the U.S. government likes to challenge foreign governments to adhere to its principles, while it ignores those principles that are in conflict with its own welfare and economic gain.

The ruling that Collins refers to claims that a U.S. clampdown on Internet gambling is illegal, according to the World Trade Organization.

Do we enjoy freedom from censorship that we demand from other countries or is it only a privilege we are granted when our government deems it convenient?

By @mterenzio | Posted in journalism | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)