The Eyetrack survey studied 600 newspaper readers from six different newspapers using electronic eyetracking equipment on readers while they read broadsheets, tabloids, and online editions of newspapers.
Here’s what else they found:-Two-thirds of online readers, once they chose a particular story to read, read all of the content.
(Via Editors Weblog, Poynter.)
Mark Glaser: "How the Newspaper of the Future Will Operate Online" Including: "Reorganize newspaper sites into a series of micro-sites on niche topics."
(Source: PBS:MediaShift.)
"The reason The New York Times, USA Today and others have started combining what had been separate is because the Web is now mature enough to hold its own when put into the same petri dish with a demanding newsroom. "
(Source: Lucas Grindley.)
As readers and advertisers migrate to the Web, newspapers are increasingly looking to their online editions for solutions. In the next 10 years “the newspaper will be a by-product of the Web,” predicts Dallas Morning News staffer Chris Wilkins. “It is inevitable.”
Via US media/yahoo
Our sources in Australia and New Zealand are relaying the chilling news that the New Zealand Herald will be laying off the bulk of their designers and copy(sub) editors and outsourcing the work they do to another firm.
The New Zealand Herald, and a host of other newspapers, outsource up to 70 jobs in sub-editing and newspaper design to Pagemasters, a subsidiary of the news agency, Australian Associated Press.
Under the proposal, Pagemasters would set up a new operation in New Zealand.About 30 jobs are likely to be cut from the Herald alone.
It is understood that a meeting at The New Zealand Herald on Friday night determined that of 42 full-time equivalent jobs in sub-editing at the paper, just 12 would remain in-house under the proposal.
Read more details in the Nick Tabakoff story in The Australian.
Is it possible that the future of the content business is worse than being less profitable and worse even than not scaling anymore — is it possible that content creation will cease to be a business?
I was struck by this quote from a music business manager in the WSJ article about the complete collapse of CD sales:
Jeff Rabhan, who manages artists and music producers including Jermaine Dupri, Kelis and Elliott Yamin, says CDs have become little more than advertisements for more-lucrative goods like concert tickets and T-shirts. “Sales are so down and so off that, as a manager, I look at a CD as part of the marketing of an artist, more than as an income stream,” says Mr. Rabhan. “It’s the vehicle that drives the tour, the merchandise, building the brand, and that’s it. There’s no money.”
No money. The content that used to be at the center of the music industry has been reduced to a loss-leading marketing platform for the real business, which is live entertainment and related merchandise sales. Apple’s iTunes is not really a platform for selling music but rather for selling hardware.
It seems in recent years that as the music industry goes, so goes the rest of the media industry. Is there reason to believe that other forms of content will suffer the same fate as music? There’s one critical commonality to what the Internet and digitization has done to all content that would support this theory: disaggregation
All the focus on the digitization and online distribution of music — and now video — has been on piracy. But what if that’s just a red herring?
You could argue that the most striking consequence of digitizing media and distributing it online is that all content is now available in a discrete, granual form. Music file. Article page. Video clip. Podcast. Photo. There are very few places on the web that require you to buy a whole package in order to get one item.
This is a radical transformation of the content business. Think about it.
How many CDs have you bought for just one song? How many magazines have you bought just to read one article? How many cable channels do you subscribe to in order to watch just one channel? How many radio stations have you kept on in the car because you heard one song that you liked? How many newspapers have you bought just to read one section?
The media business has always been about selling you content that you don’t really want by stapling it (literally or figuratively) to the content that you do want. The digitization of media on the network has obliterated this model. What if music is just the canary in the coal mine?
There’s already one high-profile instance of this trend in the video content business. TV clips on YouTube. I’ve heard a thousand times the argument that media companies should embrace YouTube as a “free promotional channel.” Let users upload clips of your shows — don’t sue YouTube– it’s free promotion.
This argument has bothered me every time I’ve hear it, and now I know why — because it’s following the pattern of music sales in the quote I cited above. Can’t make money off the content in one channel? Use it to promote your other channel. BUT, that assumes that the other channel is not, in fact, being eaten alive by the channel you’ve written off as free promotion.
Henry Blodget posted a dialectic about whether Google is the “King of Media,” which was based on this assumption:
For the purposes of this debate, I’m going to assume that to be “King of All Media” one can’t just be a distributor.
I would assume just the opposite — that content distribution businesses, or more accurately in digital network terms, content platform and content aggregation businesses (think Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Digg) are the only real media businesses left.
Oh well. If Google has its way, maybe the content business can transform itself into a direct marketing business.
(Via Publishing 2.0.)
The president of Microsoft, Bill Gates, announced last week serious problems and risks for the future of printed press because of the digital revolution.
“50 years ago the printed press did not have any risks. Today, everybody has to innovate to become well adapted to the digital era”, said Gates at the “Inter American Society of Press” (SIP) meeting in Columbia. Gates predicted deep changes in the next decade. The digital revolution is a real fact and not a 3-year fad. The technological innovations are in the market and they will need more time to be effective and generalized in the society. The young people about 14 years old will be part of this information and digital revolution. “They will have a different way of thinking”. For this reason, information, education, commerce, and social life will be different and be importantly influenced by the internet and digital world. Video games won’t be the only things to be interactive. Conferences, advertising and business will be influenced by this new trend. Although at this moment the technological innovations are moving to improve the reading of digital newspapers, digital books, and more, Gates recognized that it is going to be difficult for digital products to match the experience of printed products. Source: eltiempo.com
11.45am: Newspapers are ‘in denial’ about the need to invest heavily online, The Guardian’s Kevin Anderson has warned.
(Via Press Gazette News.)
Advertisers gave most large US newspapers a financial thrashing in February, bringing shivers and chills to many boardrooms and on Wall Street. Publishers can’t do much more than pray that February is just part of the “cyclical” argument and everything will eventually get better. But what if February’s slump is not cyclical, but much worse – the formation of a new, much smaller, newspaper advertising landscape.
(Via FollowTheMedia.)
From the Bivings Report comes a list of several ideas for journalists who are scratching their heads about how to launch blogs that serve a purpose other than as another distribution channel for content.
Here’s the top three.
(1) Solicit ideas for coverage
Make readers/viewers/listeners feel a part of the editorial process; turn a show over to them. They can participate via a blog.
Examples: BBC’s World, Have Your Say and PRI’s Open Source(2) Request feedback on how to shape an editorial product
Does your news organization want to develop a new product? Ask the people who will use for input.
Examples: NPR’s Rough Cuts for new show development and The Economist Group’s Project Red Stripe for a new innovative web product(3) Host public blogs
Expand coverage by allowing normal folk to share news in their neighborhoods as well as their opinions, photos, analysis, and news.
Examples: Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, Utah’s Daily Herald, and Fox 13 in Salt Lake City
(Read the rest at The Bivings Report.)
As new media becomes more popular, the future of news, says Editor & Publisher’s Steve Outing, lies in news consumption of personalized content from a variety of sources throughout the day.
Outing offers advice for news organizations preparing for these advancements. First, newspapers working online should concentrate on the appearance on their content on other media services, looking closely at RSS feeds to be sure they are maximizing content and advertising.Further, he says that newspapers should not only tolerate their content’s appearance on photo and video sharing services like Flickr and YouTube, but encourage and embrace it. Among amateur photos and videos, professional work will stand out. Journalists should include the URL in the caption field, a watermark logo of their organization, and for videos an introduction saying who produced them.Finally, Outing says that news organizations should provide widgets, “portable chunks of code that others can insert into their webpages, and have your content show up (fed from your website or database).” Widgets can allow readers to access your content without leaving other websites, and with proper branding and links, bring these readers to your website.“The game isn’t always about luring people to your Web site or convincing them to pick up your newspaper,” Outing says. “The new game is also about getting your content published by countless others - individuals, bloggers, corporations, non-profit groups, other media - and reaching the audience through them.”Source: Editor & Publisher
As new media becomes more popular, the future of news, says Editor & Publisher’s Steve Outing, lies in news consumption of personalized content from a variety of sources throughout the day.
Outing offers advice for news organizations preparing for these advancements. First, newspapers working online should concentrate on the appearance on their content on other media services, looking closely at RSS feeds to be sure they are maximizing content and advertising.Further, he says that newspapers should not only tolerate their content’s appearance on photo and video sharing services like Flickr and YouTube, but encourage and embrace it. Among amateur photos and videos, professional work will stand out. Journalists should include the URL in the caption field, a watermark logo of their organization, and for videos an introduction saying who produced them.Finally, Outing says that news organizations should provide widgets, “portable chunks of code that others can insert into their webpages, and have your content show up (fed from your website or database).” Widgets can allow readers to access your content without leaving other websites, and with proper branding and links, bring these readers to your website.“The game isn’t always about luring people to your Web site or convincing them to pick up your newspaper,” Outing says. “The new game is also about getting your content published by countless others - individuals, bloggers, corporations, non-profit groups, other media - and reaching the audience through them.”Source: Editor & Publisher
Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its report, “The State of the News Media 2007,” and I'd really like to read it before commenting on it. Unfortunately I didn't make it past the first page of the 38-page executive summary before stumbling over this sentence:
For some, the new brand is what Wall Street calls “hyper localism” (consider the end of foreign bureaus at the Boston Globe or the narrowing of the coverage area at the Atlanta Journal Constitution).
No, no no! That's not hyperlocal. Not even close.
The Boston Globe doesn't do hyperlocal — not yet, anyway. (They've hired innovator Bob Kempf from hyperlocal competitor WickedLocal.com.)
And as for the AJC, all it did was stop delivering the paper to remote towns where almost nobody was reading the paper anyway. What does that have to do with hyperlocalism? If anything AJC is moving the opposite direction, reducing the numbers of locally zoned editions and enlarging the zones.
There's a lot of good material in this year's report, but not on this topic.
The Bakersfield Californian is looking for a multimedia producer to help lead our audio and video efforts …
The multimedia producer will be required to:
-Record and edit video, audio and slideshows for daily, weekend and enterprise use.
-Work with staff to improve their multimedia skills.
-Help manage multimedia reporter …
ETC.
(Via InTheCircle.)
Mark Potts looks at the US newspaper ad revenue figures: “if you look at the hard numbers, something very interesting emerges: The decline in print advertising is beginning to be made up by the increase in online revenue.”
(Via Recovering Journalist.)
Next stop, Boston.
In a matter of months, yet another free paper, to be called Boston Now, is set to launch, probably in late summer, just in time for back-to-school shopping. Boston Now is being funded by Dagsbrun Media, an Icelandic company that operates that country’s largest media company.
“We are putting it all together at the moment,” publisher Russel Pergament tells Media Life.
Via MediaLife
It’s really a simple marketing exercise – find out what people want and sell it to them. Trouble is when it comes to the newspaper business do we really know what the public wants? There is help on the way to figure that out, and if you’re an old-time editor who believes you know that without being told, you may want to think that one again.
(Via FollowTheMedia.)
XPRESS will come out once a week and will be distributed free throughout the UAE, Al Nisr Media announced in a statement.
The 72-page newspaper will cover local, international and sports news as well as entertainment and leisure. Al Nisr Media promised XPRESS would be a “community paper” that would raise issues of concern to readers.
The 72-page newspaper will cover local, international and sports news as well as entertainment and leisure.
They are online, too with a new Web site.
Editor and executive vice president of Long Island daily Newsday John Mancini sent his staff such a memo today.TO: The Staff
FROM: John Mancini
What’s Going On
Today I ask you to take on a dramatic assignment.Our world has been digitally re-mastered, transforming what readers expect of us. They want news and information delivered instantaneously, available continuously, via any means they choose. And they want to be a part of the conversation.
… … … …Now our task is to transform Newsday.
… … … …
Multimedia training for reporters, editors and artists will follow. The interactive staff will be key in all of these efforts.
… … … … Now every department, in every way, will have to begin reporting for the Web first.
… … … …That’s only an initial step.
(Via Gawker.)
RedEye, the free quick-read Chicago tabloid published five days a week is adding a Saturday weekend edition that will be home-delivered for free, its parent paper, the Chicago Tribune, announced Wednesday.
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