hankscott

The FT's Very Peculiar News Judgment

Sounds like the FT might have more newsprint (and staff) on its hands than it needs. What a bogus story!

Jeff Jarvis Presents Model for Saving Local News, But Can It Work?

What Jeff's model also ignores is that bloggers aren't journalists. A year ago I did a study for a client of the two leading national news blogs. Each of them contains nothing but, in essence, posts of content from newspapers with comments like: "I thought this story was funny. Melissa." The only really original blogger on one of the services was a penny stock tout. People who write for free write only about what interests them, and that tends to be things they have a biased view about.

Newspapers vs. Aggregators: Understanding the Economics of the Internet

Jeff:
Without offering a judgement on the question of regulating aggregation, I have to point out some inaccuracies in what you say. No proposed regulation or law regarding aggregators that I've heard about would bar any newspaper or website or radio or TV station from matching a newspaper's story. They just couldn't use that story. In other words, if the Plain Dealer reported that the governor had returned from a tryst in Argentina, any competitive news organization that could get the facts would be free to publish its own story. That's the way we did it in the days before the Internet. And smart reporters never just copied the work of the first paper to break the news. I remember well the day that I had an "exclusive" at a Raleigh, NC, afternoon newspaper. The competing morning paper ran essentially the same story under its reporter's byline. The problem was, I was wrong. While I was embarrassed to have made a mistake, the morning newspaper reporter was shown to be inaccurate and a plagiarist.

Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?

I find it interesting that both Chris Anderson and Jeff Jarvis argue that information wants to be free, but neither is willing to give his book away. What's that about?

A Note to Rupert Murdoch and the Newspaper Barons on Pricing

Interesting idea. But unfortunately the analogy to Macy's isn't apt. Newspapers have to get someone to try the product before committing to it. Macy's isn't likely to let you wear that shirt for a couple of weeks to decide if you like it. That's why there's an initial low price for a newspaper or magazine subscription. Decades of research has validated this approach.

What newspapers have done is offer various bonuses to subscribers who pay in full for the year or remain subscribers for a lengthy time. Some, for example, have plans that offer discounts at local restaurants and other establishments. Some offer invitations to newspaper events.

Jarvis vs. Mutter: What Newspapers Are Worth

It's what used to be called a newspaper or magazine. They had editors who picked and chose among the various issues and events of the day to select those most important and worthy of coverage. That way you didn't have to wade through all of the blather and noise that one is assaulted by from various interest groups, corner preachers, and PR firms.

I need the same product you describe. I'm tired of reading opinions about the media from kids who don't know anything about the business (see the blog post elsewhere on Seeking Alpha that analyzes the New York Times' annual cost in comparison to the median income of New Yorkers -- an irrelevant concern to The Times.)


On Mar 24 10:23 AM hankscott wrote:

> What I would pay for, in print or online (preferably delivered to
> my Kindle), is a daily briefing from an authoritative source of what's
> going on in the world of digital media. I find I'm too busy to read
> Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Silicon Alley Reporter, the musings of
> Newsosaur, etc., etc., etc.
>
> Any ideas?
>

The New York Times' Geffen Put

The relationship between a subscription to The Times and the median income of a New Yorker is irrelevant. It should be evident that the strategy of The Times, for at least twenty years now, has to become a national, demographically focused product. That provides the newspaper with substantial protection from the geographically focused strategy that other newspapers (except for the WSJ and USA Today) must pursue. The focus is on building an affluent, educated audience. The Times has done that.

Unfortunately, in this recession, even national publications such as The Times (and Vanity Fair, and the WSJ) are hurting. The Times is lucky in that it no longer depends on classified advertising for much of its revenue (that's the portion that has been lost to the web, and on which many local newspapers still count).

Jarvis vs. Mutter: What Newspapers Are Worth

What I would pay for, in print or online (preferably delivered to my Kindle), is a daily briefing from an authoritative source of what's going on in the world of digital media. I find I'm too busy to read Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Silicon Alley Reporter, the musings of Newsosaur, etc., etc., etc.

Any ideas?

Why Does WSJ.com Charge For Content?

Why does Dow Jones charge for access to WSJ.com? Because it can! Who wouldn't?

If you can offer distinctive content that people want / need (and by distinctive, I mean content that isn't readily available elsewhere) why not charge for it? The alternative is to spend lots of time and energy chasing fickle advertisers, or to give the content away and reduce its quality because you can't afford to generate it.

Tax-Supported Content Should Belong to Taxpayers

You are damned right. Have you tried to get info from the US Bankruptcy Court's office in Manhattan? You're forced to rely on one of three elderly Dell computers to search the court's database, which is maintained by a for-profit private company. If you want to print out anything from the computer, the cost is eight cents a page, payable to the for-profit company (whose name I forget). So not only do you have to pay for content collected by the government, but what you pay for is slow and crappy service.

Why Couldn't Mainstream Media Stick to Its Core Competency?

The core competency of newspapers isn't production or distribution. The core competency of media companies in modern times has been aggregating audiences for advertisers by providing those audiences with compelling and relevant news content. (In olden days, before the development of the advertising industry, newspapers got all of their revenue from circulation). Think of printing presses as the manufacturing equivalent of web servers. Think of newspaper carriers as the physical equivalent of ISPs.

So what happens when someone is able to more efficiently aggregate advertisers without providing news (e.g. Google)? That's the dilemma newspapers face today.

Can Anything Save Newspapers?

Indeed it is like the buggy whip situation. Buggy whip manufacturers went out of business because they didn't understand they business they were in. They weren't in the buggy whip business, they were in the acceleration business. If they'd understood that, they would have started making accelerators for the newest form of conveyance (the automobile), and probably they'd be sitting around waiting for Congress to bail them out, but that's another story.

Newspaper publishers aren't in the news business. I know that sounds radical. But they really are intermediators whose business is assembling an audience for advertisers. They assemble an affluent and well-educated (albeit declining) audience by providing daily news on print. The question today is what new methods can they develop to aggregate audiences that aren't interested in print, or aren't interested in daily news.

Newspaper companies have assets -- relationships with advertisers, skilled staffers, powerful brands. So they need to learn to use those assets to aggregate audiences other than those who want to read news daily on paper. Which is not to say they shouldn't address that audience as well -- it's still more attractive in many ways than the mindless hordes who get their news from blogs about "Gossip Girl" etc.


On Dec 11 10:45 AM notsosmart wrote:

> its like the buggywhip-no need for it anymore.whats the big deal.when
> something no longer serves a purpose or is needed it goes away.anybody
> miss the coal fired steam engine?hard rubber tires?etc.i haent bothered
> with the ny times since they endorsed castro in the eisenhower years.
> i managed ok.

Deep Read: 'New York' on the Future of the 'Times'

Would that more newspaper proprietors were like the Sulzbergers. This is a remarkably unassuming family that has put the institution first and, unlike another prominent publisher in the news these days, refused to use that institution to pursue a private agenda. If America continues to become as dumb as I suspect it will, we'll have Fox and its imitators to thank, and not The New York Times.

The New York Times' Challenge with Non-Local Newspaper Ads

What this analysis fails to take note of is The Times' positioning of itself over the past 20 years as a "national" newspaper. In fact, The Times' daily circulation in the five boroughs of NYC is something less than 250,000 copies, which ranks it No. 5 among the six English-language dailies publishing in NYC.

So the print newspaper isn't chasing just local advertising. The Times gets a bigger percentage of its ad revenue from national advertising than any other general interest daily except USA Today. The New York Times Magazine is one of the magazine industry's leaders in ad pages. That national focus is why The Times is trying to sell a print subscription to Scott Karp in Leesburg, Va., and why it has established or contracted for home delivery services in most major metropolitan areas in the US.

And advertisers presumably want to advertise on The Times' website because they want to attract the kinds of customers who read the material that The Times generates. Those customers tend to be well-educated, affluent, and influential. That can't be said for users of all website (Facebook comes to mind).

That said, you are correct about the essential issue newspapers face: Now to make the transition from a high CPM print-based advertising model to a low-CPM web-based ad model. And I agree that The Times ought to do a better job of explaining to you why a print subscription offers an advantage over reading the paper on the web.

Free the New York Times's Archives!

Now, why does Felix Salmon think the New York Times should make its invaluable archives free? Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people pay to download archival material from the Times every day. It is a significant revenue source. I'm constantly amazed at how illiterate most web-savvy people are when it comes to business. But then, maybe Salmon is on to something. I'm going to ask Mobil to make the gas at my local station free!