Thursday, April 26, 2007
NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY IN CRISIS MODE (AND WE NEED TO LEARN FROM IT) (Terry)
We must not ignore these trends, because broadcasting faces a similar fate. We would be wise to view newspapers as a canary in the mineshaft of our bottom line.
Some observers argue that broadcasting’s collapse won’t necessarily follow newspapers, because, well, TV isn’t newspapers and vice-versa. This is a shallow interpretation of what’s taking place, because it isn’t newspapers OR television that’s being whacked by disruptive influences; it’s the model of mass marketing that’s the problem. Newspapers can blame the loss of classifieds' revenue all they want, but the story is deeper than that.
This is why I have been shouting for years that local media companies will never recoup losses to their legacy platforms’ business model by shifting that model online. This is because traditional ad methods follow the path of content scarcity, but abundance is the rule-of-thumb online.
A sentence from a PaidContent.org report today on the quarterly report of Scripps says it all, "The digital segments were up, but not enough to offset declines in the newspaper segments."
Mass marketing requires scarcity in order to create demand. Reduce the supply, increase the demand; it’s as old as the modern culture. But online, the demand side now plays a major role in creating its own supply -- and this is especially true of businesses supported by advertising, a.k.a. the media. Fragmentation, disintermediation, the ability to unbundle content from form, and the personal media revolution have all created an abundant, customer-in-charge world for media, one in which pure reach-frequency ad models won’t work like they do in the world of controlled scarcity.
This is also demonstrated in a Morton Research report noted by Reuters in what I think might be the most chilling story about the future of newspapers yet. The study indicates that online revenue growth for the industry is slowing.
The big question is when online revenue would make up for what they are losing in print.
This week’s results suggest that the transition "is going to be slower and perhaps less profitable than newspapers have anticipated," said John Morton, a longtime newspaper analyst and president of Morton Research Inc.
We cannot rely only on our brands and our content to pull us through this transition, because it is difficult, if not impossible, to scale content in an environment of abundance. Moreover, content is the wrong end of the information value chain online. The "right" end is the aggregation of content, which is the role Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL and the other internet pureplays possess. The longer we wait to aggregate the local web, the more we accelerate our own demise.
Let us in broadcasting not be fooled by the notion that video is different than text online. It is, but it isn’t. And where it isn’t is what matters. <Permalink>
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LEARNING FROM HALBERSTAM: PUTTING THE JOURNALISM BACK IN SPORTS JOURNALISM (Steve)
Halberstam, of course, made his name from his Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the Vietnam War while he worked at the New York Times. His book, "The Best and the Brightest" changed the minds of many who believed the war could be won. Ask a modern journalist who their idols are, and Halberstam's name will come up. (If it doesn't, leave the conversation immediately.)
Here's the thing - Halberstam could have made a successful career sticking with hard news reporting and writing non-fiction books about current affairs. He didn't. Starting with 1981's "The Breaks of the Game," he started writing about sports. That book was about the Celtics and this rookie of theirs - Larry Bird.
Halberstam had a thing for Boston sports, and we loved him for it. His 1989 book "The Summer of '49" captured the essence of the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry. 2003's "The Teammates" was about the enduring friendship of Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr. His 2005 book "Bill Belichick: The Education of a Coach" is a complex study of one of the most complex figures in football.
He wrote about Michael Jordan and Bobby Kennedy. He wrote about the Olympics and the missiles of October, 1964. He wrote about his local firehouse and what it did on 9/11. He has a book coming out this fall about the Korean War. According to his bio, he says his books "are about society, history and culture."
In other words - news.
We forget that, especially with sports journalism on TV. Right now, it's largely reduced to highlight reels and meaningless soundbites. It's true - there isn't time every day to produce a 500-page novel on The Meaning of Life and Sports. But there are great stories in the community that transcend the highlight reel. We need to find and report on those stories based in the sports world that reflect Halberstam's philosophy about "society, history and culture."
On TV, we have two or three minutes to tell the story. Online, it's unlimited space with unlimited possibilities. We can meet Halberstam's challenge and honor his memory by learning from him. David Halberstam would not be defined by a job description. He would not be categorized on a book shelf or in a newspaper. We shouldn't let our old notions stop us, either. <Permalink>
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CHECKBOXES: OFFERING USERS THEIR CHOICE OF NEWS (Terry)
Dave's always there with an opinion about how things can work better for users, and now he's trying to give his special guidance to the news industry, specifically MSNBC. We ought to pay attention, simply because it's coming from Dave.
He's put together a mock-up of what he thinks a news website ought to look like. The key to Dave's thinking is always customer choice, and this idea came while watching the relentless coverage from Blacksburg.
Then came breaking news that Boris Yeltsin had died. In my ideal news system, the screen would refresh and a checkbox entitled Yeltsin would be added, checked by default. If, after hearing the first report, I didn't want to hear more, I could uncheck it. No doubt a biography is coming, and testimonials, and interviews with Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. I am interested in this stuff, Yeltsin is history, but there may come a time when I'd prefer more news about Alberto Gonzales, and I definitely want to hear anything they have on the Internet or Macintosh, or the impeachment of President Bush.
And there are some longterm stories that I have an interest in, like Katrina, or topics that because of my past I want to stay tuned into, like NY Metro. I live in the Bay Area, so I want to be informed about news there, but mix it in with news of the world. As we head into baseball's post-season, I'll check Sports, but it's still early, and I'll look for the news of my teams on the net, myself.
Some will say this is already a part of the "build your own page" model, but I don't think so. Dave's ideas are always so simple, and that's probably why they work so well. Let's face it, a lot of people are simply intimidated by the technology that publishers offer for customizing their own experience through applications like AJAX. But how hard is it to click on a text box?
Guys like Dave Winer frustrate the Media 1.0 world, because his mind never stops coming up with ways to flip the model. The technology already exists to do this (and if it didn't, Dave would create it), and it's likely just a matter of time before Dave's check boxes appear in many places. <Permalink>
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30-SECOND PRE-ROLLS ON YOUTUBE? NOT A CHANCE. (Terry)
Walker said the ads will start appearing next year, and revenue will be shared between YouTube and the broadcaster. He added that broadcasters have been enthusiastic about creating the ads, and predicted that 2008 will see "real money coming in" from video advertising.
Don't believe any of this. First of all, Google didn't get where it is by being stupid, and 30-second pre-rolls are stupid. Microsoft did research two years ago revealing that 7-12 seconds was optimal for pre-rolls, because users would bail on anything longer than that. There is no way that Google will ever stick a finger in the eyeballs of web users.
And if it does turn out to be true, then it's simply a ploy to satisfy copyright holders, who Google doesn't give a ripple chip about in the first place. 30-second pre-rolls on copyrighted content simply means that that content is less likely to be viewed. Remember that the real value of YouTube isn't that it's a platform for copyrighted content; it's the millions of user-created clips that sit in the various long-tail channels that hold the most value to Google. <Permalink>
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MYSPACE TO LAUNCH A REALITY SHOW (Steve)
Steve Bryant at the Hollywood Reporter's ReelPopBlog brought this to our attention. Writes Bryant: "(Here) comes the ironically-titled 'Independent,' a reality show produced by Mark Burnett which will debut on MySpace (and possibly TV) next spring. The series pits would-be politicians in a competition for a $1 million prize, which must be either donated to a political cause or be used as seed money for the winner's own election campaign."
In this show, wannabe politicians put up MySpace pages and YouTube videos. The audience votes on the candidates. Young people will have a say in this political sideshow. Those who aren't interested in politics will suddenly feel the compulsion to vote on something as shallow as a candidate's opinion and stance on the issues?
Hang on...
This is starting to sound like a good idea.
In fact, it's an idea that local media outlets can copy. And why not? Why can't the next big politician come from out of nowhere and win an election via the web? Do more than just giving space to the candidates. Dedicate space to anyone who wants to be a candidate, no matter what their budget is. Have the audience vote. Someone will rise to the top.
Right now, the system is rigged and everyone knows it. To win the presidential campaign, you need a ton of money. Being smart and qualified isn't enough. (In fact, being too smart counts against you - smart people are dismissed as "intellectuals," as though that's not something you'd want in a Leader Of The Free World.)
But an online face-off among unknowns, based upon their own merits, which gets young people involved in the process just may turn up something better than a "viable candidate": it may result in a worthy leader who listens to his or her constituency. (At least, until they get to Washington.) <Permalink>
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CLASSIFYING PARTICIPANTS IN PARTICIPATORY (SOCIAL) MEDIA (Terry)
The author of the study, Charlene Li, explains her own classifications:
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HONOR A DIGITAL MEDIA "RISING STAR"
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2007 is turning out to be a bloodbath of a year for the newspaper industry. In just the past week, several major dailies announced deep personnel cuts in their newsrooms, and first-quarter earnings by McClatchy Co. fell 67.5% to $9 million from $27.7 million a year ago. The Tribune is repurchasing shares of its stock in order to go private (something we've been predicting will happen with increasing frequency for other media companies, too), New York Times investors withheld 42% of their votes for Class A directors (up from 30% a year ago), and 
Just before the Red Sox - Blue Jays game on Tuesday night at Fenway Park, there was a moment of silence for David Halberstam. This is a decidedly unusual tribute for a journalist, especially for one not traditionally associated with conventional, day-to-day sports writing. But Halberstam was far from conventional, and his books about sports leave us an important lesson: sports journalism should be, at its heart, about the journalism.
At the leading edge of the leading edge of the leading edge of new media lives a fellow named Dave Winer. A pugnacious defender of everyday people, Dave is an extraordinarily creative and gifted man. He's either single-handedly created or been at the forefront of nearly every media innovation beneficial to users in recent years, including blogging, RSS, podcasting, OPML, rivers of news, and a host of other technologies. More than any one individual, Dave Winer is the source of much of the disruption that faces traditional media today.
Think of the genius of this pitch: "MySpace Reality Show." Sure, it sounds shallow - but you have to admire the ease of understanding of the pitch. It's almost as though someone scrambled a bunch of new media words and pulled out three. Still, it worked. We will soon see a MySpace reality show. And don't underestimate the idea.
