We were in Chicago over the weekend, and I saw a fascinating hedline in The Chicago Tribune. It wasn't on a news story -- it was on an ad distributed with the paper. Subscribe to The Trib for $1 a week.
We were in Chicago over the weekend, and I saw a fascinating hedline in The Chicago Tribune. It wasn't on a news story -- it was on an ad distributed with the paper. Subscribe to The Trib for $1 a week.
Posted at 07:10 PM in Business models | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Yes, I enjoy working with many AP staffers and I am fortunate to have a number of friends among the nearly 4,000 people at The Associated Press. The AP's best work, on Guantanamo inmates and on recipients of federal bank-bailout money, is terrific. But the AP vow that it will be diligent about protecting the intellectual property of newspapers makes my Spidey sense tingle.
One of the worst offenders is the AP itself. The bread and butter of an Associated Press report is not global or national enterprise reporting, it's quick rip and rewrite work that rebrands and distributes newspaper content. Sometimes, the name of the paper that did the work is part of the AP package. Often it is left out. Nothing Google does will destroy brand value as fast as repackaging original content and omitting all credit.
In a few minutes of searching just now, I stumbled on a typical situation. An Iowa paper, the Des Moines Register, ran an article about hospital budget cuts. A short while later, there was an AP story about hospital budget cuts from Iowa. In this case, the AP piece on the Chicago Tribune website actually credits the Des Moines paper. Often, too often, there is no such credit.
The AP is a collective and any AP member has a right to the locally generated news report of other members. Very occasionally, a story from one paper will run on a state wire as is -- with full credit to the paper where the story started. As every newspaper editor knows, the more common situation is content laundering -- the AP does a very light rewrite, strips away any credit, and allows any other paper to use the story.
Typically, this is a big portion of a state or regional wire report. When I worked in Pennsylvania, for example, where there is a talented and hard-working AP crew, it was common for the AP state wire to serve up stories to members that were essentially uncredited rewrites from local newspapers.
What if the AP simply distributed the original stories -- allowing content to be shared among members as it was published, without an AP reporter making a call to confirm information or rewriting the article. That would be a real content-sharing cooperative, similar to cooperatives springing up in Florida, Ohio, New York and New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Maine.
Is Google the enemy? Or is it a long-standing practice of rebranding and re-distributing content under the AP flag that is really hurting newspaper companies? If the AP wants to expand its search for content theft, a good place to start would be a long look in the mirror.
Posted at 07:35 PM in Business models | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The newspaper war in 2009 is not among competing newsrooms and it's not a squabble over scoops. It's a war against declining revenue.
Total ad sales reached almost $50 billion a year as recently as 2006. Last year the figure dropped to $38 billion. This year, with another 17 percent drop expected, at least one estimate forecasts total 2009 sales at $31 billion.
Total newspaper employment is down, but the drop is not keeping pace. New numbers, which should be available in April, are likely to show 5,000 fewer jobs for reporters, editors and other journalists -- for a new total of around 47,000 remaining news jobs at newspaper companies.
But with circulation declines and rising newsprint prices, the falling ad revenue means executives of newspaper companies will have to make more cost-cutting moves, and make them soon.
For several years, these top executives have made modest course corrections. For example, The New York Times, after spending $1 billion for a new printing plant in Edison, N.J., closed the plant last year. The photo above, though, shows the Times company has not had much luck getting a tenant. (Photo by Lauren Shay Lavin.)
In Philadelphia, the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News haven't sold the headquarters building in Center City. If they had done a sale-leaseback, the bankruptcy filing for the holding company might have been delayed.
Profits are so low, that a US Senator, Benjamin Cardin, has proposed legislation allowing publishers to reorganize as nonprofits. Any income they can earn would be free from taxes.
All the noise about the end of newspapers ignores one fact, though. With $30 billion in ad sales, it is possible to make a profit. It's not possible to make a profit while paying for big empty printing plants or offices, while continuing to employ 50,000 journalists, or while moving slowly to take other needed steps.
Some companies will move fast enough to find a cost structure that works at the new revenue levels. Some companies will move fast enough to innovate new product lines, on and off line. A very few companies will do both. Those will be the companies that will start to collect larger and larger shares of that $30 billion.
Posted at 08:10 PM in Business models | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Should you use Twitter? What can it do for your newsroom? Why are places like The Philadelphia Inquirer offering staff seminars about social media? (The Inquirer used Twitter to scoop competitors on a corruption trial.)
Some more pieces of evidence: The Chicago Tribune masthead emphasized Twitter addresses for one day. The New York Times has one main Twitter account @nytimes and it has more than 350,000 followers. A couple of dozen related NYTimes newsroom accounts have smaller audiences -- @NYTimesOpinion, for example, has 800 plus followers -- but the aggregate audience size is meaningful.
Newspapers as small as the News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill., find Twitter useful for distributing and gathering news. Meg Thilmony, a writer and innovation leader at the News-Gazette, wrote these Twitter tips for the newsroom, including two search tips:
Here's a direct link to the Twitter search page: http://search.twitter.com/search.
I recently sent a note to Forbes reporters about shortening url's:
One word of caution that I included:
A year from now, I'll examine the evidence again. It should be clear by March 2010 if this is a passing fad or an important tool.
Posted at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
One debate we don't need: should content be paid or free. One discussion we do need: how to defend and expand our ability to obtain and distribute quality content.
Newsrooms are full of people very skilled at obtaining information, distilling the essence of it, and distributing it to an audience hungry for meaning.
Some of it will always be available free, or at a very low price. Is the content paid for when subscribers pay to have a printed newspaper delivered? No, in most markets that subscription price just pays for the actual paper and delivery costs. Is all content free when there is no online pay wall? Try getting Tom Friedman to come to your group's next meeting to give a speech. You can read his work online without paying, but that in-person delivery method will cost you.
From global economic insight to high school sports, topics addressed by many newsrooms will find a passionate audience if the material is clear, insightful, relevant and presented with some urgency.
In Wisconsin, some officials are trying to make it difficult for local newsrooms to obtain and distribute the high school sports information. Are the matches entertainment that should result in a revenue stream for a private regulatory body or are they government-sanctioned events that are owned by the public in much the same way as other activities related to the public school system?
One account, WIAA suing Gannett Co. following webcast of high school football game, notes that Wisconsin is not the only state troubled by the issue:
Publishers need to protect a newsroom's ability to provide such coverage in order to make sure there is the type of content that will attract an audience. What parts should be paid and what parts free will continue to be an issue, but only after insuring that the content is there in the first place.
Posted at 04:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Paul Maidment and Bill Baldwin are the new co-editors of Forbes -- one flag, one newsroom, one mission. The newsroom integrates all the journalists from on and offline. Until this week, there were separate print and digital newsrooms, each fully staffed and each with a separate (but overlapping) mandate. Now, everyone is part of the same group and has the same goal. From the editors' mission statement:
Posted at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
There can't be many people left in newsrooms who still resist change, but newsroom leaders still seem to be grasping for the right words to describe the magnitude of the changes remaking the media landscape.
Barack Obama took a shot at it on Thursday. Yes, he was talking about the economy, not about the media revolution, but Obama's clarion call for change is worth repeating in newsrooms. It might help more journalists recognize just how much they will have to change their approach to their jobs.
Obama: "There have been some years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare. Then there are the years that come along once in a generation - the kind that mark a clean break from a troubled past, and set a new course."
If 2008 wasn't that kind of year in your newsroom, 2009 will be.
Posted at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Space isn't the issue and it takes only a few minutes to find the text and configure it for posting online. Wouldn't it be great if every news organization -- or at least every US news organization -- would post the Declaration of Independence? Once it is in the system, it shouldn't take much effort to give it some prominence every Fourth of July.
Posted at 03:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
How effective are those ads in the Yellow Pages?
Posted at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It is the season for the annual warning to newsrooms.
Here's a note I sent to reporters and editors:
Crain’s fell for a spoof.
The LA Times fell for a scam.
The silly season is upon us. Many publications will be running corrections on April 3 for items they fail to see as pranks on April 1. Don’t let that happen to you – or to your readers.
One editor reminded me about a 1998 prank announcement that fooled the FT:
Guinness brewery issued a press release announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to be the official beer sponsor of the Observatory's millennium celebration.
According to this agreement, Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. In addition, the famous observatory would refer to seconds as "pint drips."
The Financial Times, not realizing that the release was a joke, broke the news in an article in which it discussed how some companies were exploiting the millennium excitement in order to promote their own brand names.
There are sure to be more examples this year. Have you seen any? Comment below.
Posted at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)