In case anyone reading this is interested, the Newspaper Department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, seeks an experienced journalist with strong multimedia skills to join a department committed to preserving core journalistic competencies while teaching students to tell stories in online media. Work in the school's new Collaborative Media Room, and teach many of our 400 undergraduate and graduate students in the Newspaper and Magazine print majors to deliver content interactively and using multiple media.

Qualifications: At least 10 years of experience in the news environment, with a strong reporting and writing resume and facility with still and video capture and editing and/or interactive and database reporting. You must submit a portfolio that demonstrates your hands-on storytelling talent for multiple platforms. Master's or other advanced degree preferred. Tenure-track position at associate or assistant professor level. Previous teaching experience is not required, but you must show potential in the classroom.

Expect to teach traditional reporting and writing for print as well as for online delivery, and to also work with some of our broadcast professors and students. You should be able to play a significant role in our new visual storytelling class being prepared as a requirement for incoming freshmen in every one of our eight majors. The school is launching a content-managed, student-produced Web site in 2009, and it is a participant in the Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative.

This is a tenure-track, nine-month appointment, with a requirement to teach five classes per year and to pursue a research-creative agenda -- preferably related to manufacture and delivery of news and information online. The Newhouse School is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty and especially welcomes applicants from underrepresented groups. Syracuse University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

Review of applications begins November 2008. Start: August 2009.

How to Apply: Candidates should visit http:www.sujobopps.com to read the detailed faculty postings and apply electronically. All positions require a cover letter, CV or resume and a list of four professional references. If you have any questions about the opening please contact Steve Davis, chair, Newspaper Department, at jsdavi02@syr.edu.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Expert at estimating and forecasting the amount of unexpected chores my clients might face when completing tasks, I can woefully underestimate and overlook the unexpected when I'm trying to complete my own. I'm now more than two weeks past when I promised to post the third part of my four part essay Transforming American Newspapers. I didn't expect the reaction the first two parts received.

I expected negative reactions and disputes from newspaper executives and media academics. The contretemps I received instead were requests from American and European journals to write derivatives of the essay. I've written those articles (choosing to write for those trade journals that would pay for the work), but doing so had consumed almost all my free time during the past two weeks, when at Syracuse University I'd simultaneously begun teaching my graduate school class in New Media Business for news organizations, a full-time job in itself.

So, please pardon my delay. Part Three of the essay is written (most of it was written a year ago) and I hope to post it midweek, once I have time to review and edit it one last time. Meanwhile, I has class lectures, slides, and presentations to prepare by Wednesday, and that paid academic work takes precedence over providing free consulting advice online.

"I went back to school approximately this time last year. I'd hoped that news media academics might have the answers. What I found was that...the academics don't. In fact, most media academics are even further behind than the industry executives."

My criticism of media academics distills to this: In the fields of engineering, medicine, law, science, and computer science, the academics conceive the new theories and solutions, which those industries follow and adopt. But in the field of media, it is the academics who follow the industry. At this time when the media industry is lost and desperately needs new theories and solutions, where is the media academy?

I'm formulating a graduate school course next Spring about Using New Media to Circumvent Censorship. I'm hoping to draw upon case studies and experiences from the Media Development Loan Fund, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières), the World Press Freedom Committee>/a>, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Albert Einstein Institute, and other organizations devoted to the free press in repressive regimes. If you happen to know of a case worth study, please let me know.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm back! I'd taken a year off for reflection.

After concluding that no daily newspaper executive in North America knows where their industry is headed, I went back to school approximately this time last year. I'd hoped that news media academics might have the answers. What I found was that, with the exception of some folks at the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping International Business School in Sweden, the academics don't. In fact, most media academics are even further behind than the industry executives. (Except, of course, for academics who might be reading this.)

Meanwhile, the university to whose media school I was consulting, asked me to teach in its graduate school. I discovered that I like teaching, even thought I had to create the syllabus and course materials myself. During the Spring, I taught two classes: New Media Business (for news, advertising, and public relations practioners) and a Content Lab in experimental online media. During the Summer, I taught a post-graduate executive education course about Social Media for public relations practitioners. Starting Wednesday, I'll again be teaching New Media Business to graduate students, plus some upperclassmen this time. (I've also agreed to teach a shorter version of this course at a foreign university during Summer 2009.) Nevertheless, my teaching schedule is now only one day per week (down from three in the Spring). So, I now again will have time to write and blog, in addition to consult and teach.

Yesterday, I posted the first part of an essay I actually wrote last year at this time (I did update its data). I'd withheld publishing it then because I wanted to what the academia knew. I now know that I could have published it last year.

Iif you are in the news business and have heard about Moore's Law — the principle that approximately every two years the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles and the cost of that computer power halves — then it's time you also knew its antithesis, what I call Zell's Law:

Approximately every two years the staffing and budget levels halve and the difficulties of publishing daily a newspaper double.

My congratulations to three online news veterans who've new positions, Rob Curley, Chris Jennewein, and Jonathan Dube. Curley has been named president and executive editor and Jennewein named senior vice president and publisher of Greenspun Media Group's interactive division in Las Vegas (where the Las Vegas Sun is Greenspun's flagship publication).

Curley's move to Las Vegas has been no secret, but news that Jennewein was joining him was made public this week. Curley had been vice president of product development at WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive, director of new media and development at the Naples (Fla.) Daily News, chief of Interactive operations at the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World and the Topeka (Kans.) Capital-Journal. Jenneweinwas vice president of Internet operations at The San Diego Union-Tribune and has had a long career in online news operations at Cox Newspapers and Knight Ridder, including as part of the team that put the world's first newspaper onto the Web. I was amazed when earlier this year San Diego Union-Tribune Editor Karin Winner, not exactly a visionary, jettisoned Jennewein (and his interactive editor Ron James). I'm glad to see that he's wound up somewhere better.

Jon Dube has been named Vice President of ABCNEWS.com, where he worked before joining the CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as director of digital media and before joining MSNBC.com as a technology editor, senior producer, and managing producer. Dube is also president of the international Online News Association.

Congratulations to all three!

Editor & Publisher magazine reported yesterday that Nielsen figures indicate that the amount of time that the average user spend on nearly half of the Top 30 U.S. newspaper Web sites declined during July. What I find inexplicable about that isn't the declines but that the E&P doesn't mention that this is at least the fifth straight month those overall declines have occurred. None of E&P's stories during each of the past many months has reported the trend (for example); each monthly story has been about the declines during just the previous month. Doesn't E&P notice the trend? Are these stories' omissions of the trend intentional or is their oversight just lousy journalism?

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I had hugely underestimated the amount of my time I needed during the past seven weeks to:

• Acccept on short-notice at professorship at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.


• Close my Connecticut home and move to Syracuse.


• Close my Connecticut office and move it to Syracuse (though Its postal mailing address listed above is still valid)


• Quickly finish a number of long-term assignments for my full-time consulting clients so that I could make time for Syracuse University (now more than 60 percent of my time).


• Write syllabi for two university courses for undergraduate and graduate students. These courses are New Media Business and Experimental Media. There aren't any existing syllabi and textbooks on those subjects, so I've had to create these courses from scratch.


• Chair a faculty, staff, and student committee about integrating new media throughout the school's teaching of newspaper, magazines, broadcast, film, public relations, advertising, and public diplomacy curricula.

So, I apologize for my absence. I still owe several other consulting clients some work. Blogging here has been accordingly very low on my priorities....

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've for many years now wanted to take a sabbatical after 11 years of consulting full-time about new media to news organizations. My wish has come true, at least part-time.

Starting on Monday, I'll be in residence for the academic year as Adjunct Professor of Visual and Interactive Communications and Senior Consultant on Executive Education for New Media at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

On Wednesday, United States Chief Justice John Roberts will dedicate the Newhouse School's new $32 million, 74,000-square-foot (6,874-square-meter) Newhouse III building, a facility which will be largely devoted to new media. My work at the Newhouse School will be to help its curriculum adjust to new-media; to create a guest speakers series year-long about new media; and to organize an executive education program in new media. Next Spring, I'll also to teach courses there.

This opportunity to help a major school of journalism adapt to new media and best utilize its massive new facility for that purpose was too good for me to pass up.

(Forgive me but I'm also somewhat, perhaps perversely, proud about this appointment because I'm a high school graduate, without a college degree who has worked his way up the hard way. When in 1977 I started working in journalism, I was the high school kid amid few journeyman who hadn't college degrees and many graduates who had. Today, I'm perhaps the last of the journeyman. My appointment is a salute to those old guys who trained me. Although I recommend to anyone completing college, I'm reluctantly glad to have nonetheless achieved a professorship despite lacking a degree myself. If I've achieved a professorship solely upon my lifetime's experience, it is due to all the people I've worked with during my time. I wholeheartedly thank them.)

My arrangement with Syracuse University allows me to continue as managing partner of Digital Deliverance, although that will be the minority of my time. I've spent most of July and August finishing my consulting work for most of my clients (that's really the reason why I haven't often posted here or on Corante's Rebuilding Media or have finished a treatise I'm writing.) While at Newhouse, I'll continue to consult with my favorite clients and can accept a few new ones, although the majority of my work during these next 12 months will be for the university and the general good of new media journalism.—Vin Crosbie

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to ONA member Dirck Halstead, editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist, who the University of Missouri School of Journalism last week named as one of ten winners of its annual Missouri Honor Medals for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Here's what they wrote about him:

"Dirck Halstead is a pioneer in bringing photojournalism into the digital age. As editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist, a multimedia online magazine, Mr. Halstead illustrates the importance of multi-platform visual storytelling in today's media landscape. For the past eight years Mr. Halstead has conducted immersive Platypus workshops around the country to teach photojournalists the language of television documentary and convergence in the digital age. More than 250 newspaper and magazine photojournalists have graduated from these workshops and are now taking leadership roles in the industry. Mr. Halstead's career as a photojournalist spans half a century, highlighted by 29 years covering the White House for Time and a record 51 cover photographs for the magazine. His first professional assignment, at age 17, was as LIFE Magazine's combat photographer covering the Guatemalan Civil War. After attending Haverford (Pa.) College, he traveled the globe for United Press International. Now a senior fellow in photojournalism at the University of Texas' Center for American History, Mr. Halstead has won two National Press Photographers Association Picture of the Year awards, the Robert Capa Gold Medal and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for Magazine Photography. He is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the White House News Photographers Association and the industry's highest honor, the Joseph A. Sprague Award for lifetime achievement and service to photojournalism.

"In recognition of his creative spirit and his principled efforts to transform photojournalism for the digital age."

The other nine Medal of Honor winners were Dean Baquet (Washington bureau chief and assistant managing editor for The New York Times), Wayne M. Brasler (journalism chairman and adviser at the University of Chicago High School), Frances L. Lewine (former White House correspondent for The Associated Press and assignment editor and field producer for CNN), Paula Madison (executive vice president of diversity for NBC Universal), Russ Mitchell (anchor and correspondent for CBS News), Oh Yeon Ho (founder of citizen journalism Web site OhmyNews), Mary Beth Price (founder of Empower MediaMarketing), William C. Price (chairman/CEO of Empower MediaMarketing), and Ruth Reichl (editor in chief of Gourmet magazine).

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Adweek magazine today quotes USAToday Editor Ken Paulson, Publishing 2.0's Scott Karp, Forbes.com President and CEO Jim Spanfeller, me, and a few others about the rise of 'Web 2.0' practices in major newspaper and magazines. I like what Paulson said:

Paulson reports that on a given day, a story posted in the morning can generate as many as 1,000 reader comments by noon, influencing which stories get emphasized on the site. "It's a huge breakthrough in the way you relate to readers," the editor says (even though journalism purists might be alarmed).

My own take on the topic boils down to:

"The main thing is that the mission of a publication is to tell not only what's occurring in its community, but also what's being said," says Vin Crosbie, managing partner, Digital Deliverance, a new-media consultancy. "Web 2.0 facilitates the mission of publications."

For the perspective of a newspaper editor who is aware of the changes underway in his industry, if not yet where those changes are going, read the essay 'We're all doomed to be surprised' last month from Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.

Meanwhile, the Association of Online Publishers in the UK has released its short list of award winners in its website contest.

Danny Sanchez of the Orlando Sentinel has compiled a directory of interactive maps about crime.

Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal tries to get us to realize how large an amount is the $400 billion that the United States government has spent on invading Iraq.

A Syracuse University journalism graduate student who is American but of South Asian descent was detained and had several images from her digital camera deleted after she photographed the city's Veterans Administration Medical Center. Hospital security officers apparently became suspicious because she was wearing a head scarf.

Mariam Jukaku said she wanted to practice for her photography course and photographed the hospital while standing on a public sidewalk in front of the hospital, which is two blocks from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The hospital later apologized to her.

I'll be in Syracuse next week, and this story makes me want to try the same innocent thing she did, but perhaps while I'm dressed in a burnoose and pointed slippers. The incident makes me mad because beginning on Thursday, September 19, the Newhouse school will start its year-long celebration of the First Amendment. That part of the U.S. Constitution grants every American the rights of free speech, free assembly, free press, etc. John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United State Supreme Court, will be at the University on Sept. 19 to dedicate Newhouse III, the schools new $32 million, 72,000 square-foot facility (which will be primarily used for new-media).

Mariam Jukaku was well within her rights to photograph a public building from a public placea, as the Veterans hospital later admitted.

Speaking of paranoid governments, it's wonderful to hear that North Korea has its own top-level domain (.kp)? Some say the 'digital divide' is between rich and poor. I say it's between north and south. North and South Korea, that is. Now that it has its own top-level domain, can a communist dictatorship (actually a hereditary absolute monarchy) that has subsidized itself by selling weapons and illegal drugs and counterfeiting American money resist temptations to operate porn websites ('See Comrade Kim without her uniform'), '404' e-mail scams ('No, believe me, I ACTUALLY am this nation's Minister of Finance'), or online 'Vi*gra, Ci*lis, and Levitr*' pharmacies? My bet is theyll open a live webcam atop Pyongyang's 105-story Ryugyong Hotel, if they can find a technican willing to use its decaying elevators or staircases.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I began working full-time in the new medium on December 7, 1993, when I took a job at Delphi Internet Services Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That was 5,000 days ago.

On that day, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought tiny Delphi. He wanted to start a major online service, much as he had recently purchased television stations and started the Fox television network, and he needed a core of expertise about online to do this. On that December 7th, he used a tactic that old media company traditionally use whenever they don't understand something into which they want to venture: they purchase expertise outright and hope the knowledge and skills of that expertise will be absorbed by osmosis throughout their company. A corporate tactic that I call We Will Become What We Eat.

On that day, Delphi had approximately 37,000 subscribers. Yet this was in the early days of online, when CompuServe had 2 million subscribers; Prodigy 700,000; America Online 125,000; GEnie 100,000; Interchange less than ten thousand; and no more than a total of 6 million people worldwide had online access. Why didn't Murdoch purchase a larger online service than Delphi? The size of what he purchased didn't matter to him; after all, he'd formed the Fox Network from tiny UHF television stations. Furthermore, Delphi was his only choice because it was the only online service that wasn't already owned by a large corporation. H. & R. Block owned CompuServe, IBM and Sears owned Prodigy, General Electric owned GEnie, Ziff Communications and later AT&T owned Interchange, and Quantum Computer Services had renamed itself American Online and become a publicly-traded company in its own right.

Moreover, Delphi had a latent asset that we can only now appreciate in retrospect. On that day in 1993, only one other company worldwide was supplying Internet access to consumers: even smaller Worldnet, a few blocks away in Cambridge. These two tiny companies were the only consumer Internet Service Providers in the world. Knowing what we know today about the popularity of Internet access, do you think that News Corp.'s failure to utilize its ownership of what was then the world's largest ISP (one of only two ISPs in the world) is perhaps the greatest lost opportunity by a company in new-media? I certainly do.

But the world was different on that windy and partly overcast day on Porter Square, down from in Harvard Square in Cambridge. The world has changed a lot in 5,000 days. Yet there hasn't been a single day since on which I've regretted leaving old media. I can now confidently state that the new medium is replacing the old. Five thousand days after December 7, 1993, please allow me to say what I've seen and restate why I am in this business.

I've not seen the up and down phases of the Internet bust and boom that the popular and trade press are fond of seeing since 1993. What I've seen is a straight line continually rising. The ups and downs, booms and busts, and other gyrations were investors' and traditional media companies' helical movements rotating around that upward line. When in 2000 investors lost their shirts in the Internet bust and quite a few traditional media company executives were saying, 'I told you this online thing was just a fad,' consumers' use of that 'online thing' was rising as steadily as it had during the Internet boom, no matter if investors had lost shirts and wingtips.

Nonetheless, it's fun arbitrarily categorize things. I could categorize the skyrocket of online as having had four stages during the past 5,000 days.

• The first was the geek or computer aficianado stage, when you needed a bit of technological skill to use online. Too many people who work in new-media nowadays believe that online began with the Web; the 6 million consumers who were already using online belie that belief. Nevertheless, traditional media companies back then believed that online was a fringe version of home teletext or at best a text service that their audiotext staffs should examine for commercial opportunities. This stage began in the early 1980s and ended In 1994.That was the year in which Editor & Publisher magazine's annual audiotext conference became its annual online conference.


• The second stage began on October 13, 1994, (5,058 days ago) with the release of Mosaic Netscape 0.9, Web browser software that could display graphics and photos. Though the World Wide Web had existed and been opened to the public since 1991, browser software had been capable of displaying only plain-text. (Delphi clients used Lynx browser software to access it). The release of Mosaic Netscape caused the popularity of the Web to skyrocket. This software destroyed online services that didn't permit it or full access to the Web (services such as CompuServe and Prodigy, plus Murdoch's Delphi due to executive missteps). Traditional media companies and their investors were caught unaware(a condition many still suffer). I remember asking a major newspaper's online director during the summer of 1994 what she planned to do about the Web. "Why should we worry about the Web when our surveys show that most people in our market use Prodigy?" she replied. But millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and then more than a billion consumers began gravitating onto the Web, and today even the flanks of garbage trucks feature URLs. It took a few years for major media companies and their investors to awaken and begin chasing those consumers. Few of those companies really understood why the consumers gravitated online.

Continue reading "5,000 Days in the New Medium" »

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recommend watching the video of Bill Moyers' speech to the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communications (AEJMC) conference last week.

Meanwhile, a story in InsideHigherEd.com notes how little has changed in journalism education despite the rise of new-media. During a speech at the AEJMC conference, Associate Professor of Journalism David Wendelken of James Madison University quoted a ten year-old article in Quill, a publication of the Society of Professional Journalists, which deemed the ability to "deal with new media such as electronic newspapers or World Wide Web pages" as "nice, but not necessary." Many panelists and audience members at this year's AEJMC conference still cited resistance from some faculty who lack multimedia skills themselves or otherwise don't see the need to instruct undergraduates in the digital media, according InsideHigherEd.com.

Moreover, many cited resistance from journalism students themselves. "A lot of college students select their medium in high school. When they come onto campus, they're already a TV person or a radio person or a newspaper person," said Wendelken. "I'm a print journalist," he continued, imitating the attitude of many aspiring journalists. "Why do I need to learn video?"

In the lectures I've given at journalism schools, I've noticed that, too. It's as if many journalism students have pre-decided to emulate old media journalists. You might think that the youngest people in journalism would be the most amenable to new-media, but that's not true. I've found that journalists in their twenties have the best grasp and affinity for new-media journalism.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to Elan Lohmann, publisher of News24.com in South Africa, and Meredith Artley, Executive Editor of LATimes.com, who will co-chair Ifra's 15th World Digital Publishing Conference, 8 - 9 November in Dublin. Annelies Van Den Belt and I co-chaired last year's conference, which was held in Vienna. That's where I met Elan and learned about the work he's done advancing new-media in Africa..

Bob Cauthorn, Vin Crosbie, Sal Kurdi-Serafi, Rob Curley, and Elan Lohmann at the Gastwirtschaft zu den 3 Hacken, Vienna, November 11, 2006. (photo by Colin Daniels)

We're amid the 'dog days' of the Northern Hemisphere's summer. Traffic to newspaper web sites has slowed.

And on the topic of declining use, but this time for print, a story in Folio, the trade journal of the American magazine industry, reports that more than 80 percent of people who visit the Web sites of major monthly U.S. magazines say they don't subscribe or purchase the print edition, according to a survey by Nielsen//NetRatings. The survey, which looked at 23 high-circulation monthly magazines and the traffic to their Web sites, found also that male visitors (90 percent) were slightly more likely than women (83 percent) to read a magazine's content only online. Among the individual titles studied, the amount of web-only users ranged between 65 and 83 percent. I know that the percentage of daily newspaper site users who don't read printed editions is only about half those percentages.

Further on the topic of declining use: research by the media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, reported in Mediapost.com, indicates that American consumers last year used media less than in previous years. The firm says it's the first first time in recent memory that the amount of time consumers spend with media has declined. The average American consumer spent 3,530 hours with media in 2006--down 0.5% from 2005. The drop follows a period of decelerating growth that the VSS report attributes to the increased efficiency of utilizing digital media.

I'm always amazed by the number of publishers and broadcasters—all busy shoveling their content online—who not only believe that consumers will spend as much time using new-media as they did old media but believe that consumers will also pay them as much for it. If new-media is more efficient than old media, consumers will logically spend less time and money using it.

The lead story in The New York Times' business section (free registration required) today is about the National Broadcasting Corporation's attempt to use iVillage.com as a mass medium after NBC last year purchased the site for USD600 million. Among the missteps were efforts to increase traffic by 'synergyzing' it with a syndicated television program, iVillage Live, which instead resulted in reduced traffic and low TV ratings for the program. The story focuses on "the snags that can arise when trying to bolt a new media operation onto an old one." I think the problem instead was simply what happens when a company mistakenly tries to use a new medium as a mass medium.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyone who's learned another language that uses the Latin alphabet knows that there can be confusing nuances in how to use different ABCs. The same can be true in the newspaper industry despite a common language.

ABC in the newspaper industry refers to Audit Bureau of Circulations. The confusing nuances are between how the American one and the British one deal with online traffic.

Last month, the American ABC announced that in November it would begin publishing reports that combine the print newspaper circulation and the online traffic for those newspapers' web sites. The British ABC told MediaGuardian.co.uk that it has no such plans. The MediaGuardian described the American ABC as having "a reputation for being more experimental with its rules and metrics around circulation figures." Well, if what the American ABC is doing is experimental, it's best labelled alchemy.

The American ABC is desperately searching for some way to make gold despite American magazines' and newspapers' declining readerships and circulations. A decade ago, it permitted publications to prop up circulation figures by combining actual paid circulations and the unsolicited 'bulk circulation' of unsolicited editions slipped under hotel doors or 'donated' to schools. Or at least it did until the prop broke in the circulation number scandals earlier this decade. It now wants to combine daily print circulation and weekly or monthly online traffic numbers. I've frequently written (for example) about such temporal sleight-of-hand.

Because the American ABC won't actually publish these new reports until November, I can't actually condemn a practice that hasn't yet happened. However, if the prototype report the American ABC released as an example is any example, the sleight-of-hand resembles Three Card Monte.

The prototype report is for a imaginary daily of 31,514 weekday circulation somewhere in Illinois. The ABC also imagines that this small newspaper also delivers an electronic edition (i.e., digital replica edition) that sells 125 copies daily—which is about how many the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper ten times large, actually would. But it's the prototype's arithmetic about this imaginary newspaper's website that bothers me. It shows a website that generates 700,000 monthly page-views from 279,764 monthly users. I know that several years of surveys of American newspapers' websites by Belden Associates have shown that the actual number of online users is generally averages about half of this size newspaper's print circulation total. So, this 31,514 circulation daily must have a phenomenal site it can generate almost nine times more readers than the print edition, nearly 18 times what the Belden Surveys would say!

Moreover, 700K page-views generated monthly by 279,764 unique users indicates that the average user sees at most five pages monthly on the site. Is that good for a daily?

The prototype report then reports that the newspaper's online readership during the past 30 days within its 'Newspaper Designated Market' (a geographic area selected by the newspaper itself and encompassing at least 75 percent of the newspaper's total paid print circulation) numbered 40,597 people and within its even wider 'Designated Market Area' ( a standardized television viewing market as defined by Nielsen) included 45,108 people. I wonder where the other 234,658 monthly unique users came from? Neighboring states? Foreign usership? Mars? The 83 percent of the web traffic to this small newspaper in Illinois apparently comes from outside its own market.

If the American ABC cannot publish a prototype report that has internal consistency, will it be able to publish actual reports that do. We'll have to wait until November to find out.

Another Reason For Journalists To Work Online
A recent survey by the recruitment firm PFJ of 4,299 media workers in the UK found that online journalists there currently earn more money than their print counterparts. For example, the survey found that online staffers with two years experience earned around £20,000 per year but that print reporters earn £18,000 with the same amount of experience. The gap widened with even more experience. Online journalists with three to five years experienced earned approximately jumped £35,000 per year, while their print compatriots earned between £24,000 and £30,000. After 10 years of experience, the divide continued to widen, with local journalists reporting salaries of £40,000 and both online and consumer journalists reporting £60,000.

I haven't yet seen an equivalent US survey.

Laudable Victory, But Also An Example of A Changing Battlefield
Because I've been working in online publishing long enough (part-time since 1990 and full-time since 1993) to know where bodies were buried, I often see things that publishing companies today herald as an innovative successes to be instead examples of long-term loss. Battles they've lately won in a war they're very much losing.

Sometimes I hear about these battles a bit late. An example is how Conde Nasté Interactive is using YouTube.com. Conde has created 'branded channels' on YouTube for the British editions of Vogue, Glamour, em>GQ,and Brides magazines.

That's laudable. Yet it's also more examples of how publications are having to adapt to no longer drawing as much traffic as 'pure-play' portals such as YouTube.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My desk is awash with quarterly financial reports from newspaper companies. Almost all try to emphasize anything positive that could distract from the larger negatives. For example, 'Digital Revenues Rose 50 percent, Despite Print Revenues Declining 30 Percent' is the type of sleight-of-hand that newspaper companies' investor relations departments use to distract attention from the fact that the good news of the digital operations' gains doesn't compensate for the print operations' larger losses.

The only number I care about is one these financial reports don't state, but which I've invented and call the Dead Tree Digital Replacement Index.

The DTDR takes the change in the net income (i.e., gross revenue minus gross expenses) of a newspaper company's digital operations and divides it by the change in the net income (i.e., gross revenue minus gross expenses) of that newspaper company's print edition operations. Note that DTDR calculations include no special charges (such one-time gains from the sale of an operating division) and is calculated before taxes or depreciation.

If a newspaper company has a DTDR greater than 1, then the growth in its digital operations revenue gains are more than compensating for the company's print operations' losses. In other words, it's a company with a healthy core. But if a newspaper company's DTDR is less than 1, that means the company's print operations are losing money far more quickly than its digital operations can compensate. In other words, it's a newspaper company whose core operations are unhealthy.

Now, before some of you quibble that a newspaper company can have a DTDR of less than 1.0 but be still financially healthy because it also owns non-newspaper businesses that compensate for any losses by the print operations (companies such as Scripps Howard with its cable television networks or The New York Times Company with About.com), remember that I'm formulating an index that examines newspaper companies' core business of newspapers and nothing else.

I also don't calculate DTDR indexes for newspaper companies whose print operations had net gains or digital operations had net losses, but there are precious few such companies today. The DTDR is short-hand mathematics, and I'll leave it to any mathematicians out there to help me fine-tune it. The bottom line in the DTDR is that newspapers' digital operations had better be more than replaciing any revenues that printed editions are losing.

Let's calculate some examples of the Dead Tree Digital Replacement Index.

The Tribune Company's says its digital revenues increased 17 percent to $66 million last quarter. Although the company's press releases don't mention the digital operation's expenses, let's just say for simplification that this 17 percent increase of $ 11.22 million was the overall change in Tribune's digital operations' net income. The press releases do mention that the company's Publishing division revenues declined 9 percent or $95 million and that this division's expenses increased by 1 percent or $7 million. So, the change in its Publishing division's net income was a loss of $102 million ($95M + $7M). The Tribune Company's DTDR would thus be 0.11 (11.22 divided by 102), which is woefully unhealthy. If you calculate the reciprocal of the DTDR, you'll see it indicates that the Tribune Company's print operations are losing money nine times quicker than that the growth of company's digital operations can compensate.

The New York Times Company's say its digital revenues grew 23.4 percent or $15.3 million last quarter, but that print revenues fell 4.5 percent or $36 million. Its press releases don't include expenses, but a simple calculation would nevertheless shows a DTDR of 0.425, which is better than Tribune Company but still unhealthy.

The Washington Post Company reported that its digital operations earned 2.9 million more this quarter but that the company's print operations lost $17.7 million more. The DTDR here is only 0.164. Not good.

Are all newspaper companies' DTDR indexes below 1?

Yes, outside of Scandinavia, the Baltic Countries, and a few companies in the Netherlands, most newspaper companies's print losses are larger than digital gains.

It will be interesting to see if newspaper companies' DTDR indexes move closer to 1 during the next few years. However, history indicates you should bet against that happening: The gap is growing. Newspaper companies print losses are outpacing digital gains.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guardian Unlimited today offers MoveOn.org's parody (PDF) of what Rupert Murdoch will do to The Wall Street Journal. It fills the WSJ's front-page format with pro-Republic, anti-Democratic party headlines and excerpts from the Murdoch's "Fair and Balanced" Fox TV News Network.

Speaking of parodies, the story that United Press International is cutting 11 staffers in its Washington, D.C., bureau, including its lone White House correspondent, hit me with all the impact of another story last week: that Pan Am will stop flying to there from New Haven, Connecticut. Who are these companies fooling but themselves.

There is a Pan Am airlines. Or, at least, there are some folks who bought the Pan American Airlines name and logotype years ago and have started a very small airline that mainly flies between the a former air force base north of Boston to Trenton, New Jersey; Elmira, New York; and nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's certainly in no way connected or related to the legendary Pan American Airlines, the dominant U.S. international airline that went bankrupt in 1991. But it wants people to think so.

There is a United Press International. Or, at least, there is the Reverend Sun Yung-Moon's Unification Church, which operates a very small news service employing perhaps a dozen people who appear to work mainly from their homes (the Unification Church also owns the Washington Times newspaper, which at least has a building). This UPI can perhaps claim some distant relation to the legendary United Press International news service that employed 1,200 reporters in 184 news bureaus worldwide. The legendary UPI was sold during 1982 to two Kentucky entrepreneurs who bankrupted it three years later. The bankruptcy court sold it to a Mexican publisher whose manuevers bankrupted it again in 1985, when the bankruptcy court this time sold it to the owner of the Financial News Network. That owner sold it to some Saudi investors, shortly before he went to federal prison on a felony conviction for securities fraud. And the Saudis later sold it to the Moonies. So, I guess you could say the company currently called UPI is related to the legendary old UPI through two bankruptcies, a felony conviction, and at least consecutive five sets of owners. The new company would like you to think it's the same company.

I wish the current entity called Pan Am would ground its airplanes, remove the legendary logotype and name from those planes, and rename the company and its aircraft something else. At least the current entity called UPI is doing something similar by closing most of its last known office and leaving the White House (now if we can only get what's left of the compay to change names). [Disclaimer: I worked for the old UPI from 1983-89, when it still had some air beneath its wings.]

I yesterday mentioned that the Boston Herald, rather than using its own presses, is negotiating with Dow Jones to print it. Today comes news that the Boston Globe will print two newspaper that compete with it, The Patriot Ledger and The Enterprise, two Gatehouse Media dailies in towns near Boston.

When a news company gets funding, does that validate it's business plan or purpose? Not necessarily, but many journalists mistake so. Too many journalists confuse finance and business.

The aim of business people is to generate profits from the operations of businesses. The aim of financiers is to generate a profit by buying or selling businesses. Those are different aims. There is also a third class of people called entrepreneurs who start businesses they hope will generate a profit or be bought by financiers (or by the public if the comnpany's equity becomes sold on the stock markets). Entreprenuers very often sell part of their nascent businesses to financiers to get enough funding to fund the business until it's profitable, likely to be profitable, or otherwise becomes attractive enough for the majority of its stock to purchased by financers or the public.

Most financiers aren't dumb, but few have expertise in new-media, particularly new concepts in new-media. They sometimes invest in new businesses founded on unsound plans, even when the newest new-media concept underlying those plans may be solid. 'If the concept isn't sound, then why would those companies be funded by tens or hundreds of millions of dollars?' goes the circular logic. Remember the huge funding given to 'Push' technologies during the mid-1990s or to the cuecat scanner technology at the turn of the millennium, etc.? Many trade journals heralded that funding as proof that those technologies and business plans were sound.

I hope that the $10 million funding that Associated Content received this week and the $10.6 million that NowPublic received last week is spent wisely. I hope they're more of a 'slam-dunk' than Backfence was.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how online journalists now comprise the second largest category of journalists who are killed, wounded, or imprisoned each year, fewer of them print journalists, but more than broadcast journalists. So, I'm sad to hear that Abel Mutsakani, editor of ZimOnline, an independent Zimbabwean news service based in South Africa, was shot last weekend. He is in serious condition with a ruptured lung and a bullet lodged near his heart. The Guardian reported that Mutsakani was parking his car near his home when three men attacked him. Nothing was stolen in the assault. Mutsakani was once managing editor of Zimbabwe's Daily News newspaper, which was banned in 2003 by the government. He moved to Johannesburg and set up ZimOnline, providing coverage of the social and economic strife back home

Video letters-to-the-editor are an interesting experiement at the Sacremento Bee. Back when I worked in daily newspapers (1977-83) we'd receive but not publish some real rabid printed letters-to-the editors. I can only imagine the video equivalents: Hand gestures instead of four-letter words. But it's great to see a newspaper publish (broadcast?) the rational ones.

Kudos to the Associated Press, Agence France Presse and l'Equipe last week for helping Reuters at the Tour de France last month. Photo District News reports:

Reuters photogs seem to be having a lot of bad luck these days. Four Reuters photogs went to shoot the Tour de France and were dealt a series of mishaps, ranging from photog Eric Gaillard's brand new Canon Mark III and lens being stolen to photog Vincent Kessler having to undergo tests for suspected coronary irregularity. And then, Mal Langsdon got an Instant Message from Reuters' student-assistant (and Mal's son) Ian Langsdon saying, "S--t, S--t, we're on fire!" referring to the Renault the team was driving. But, even in the photo world, the race must go on. So many outlets published the Reuters' photogs' pix of their burning car, and the Associated Press, Agence France Presse and l'Equipe shared their production until Reuters could resume coverage.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is World Press Freedom Day, although you'd hardly find evidence of that in the United States. Last year, 49 journalists were killed in the Middle East, 27 in Asia, 5 in Africa, 4 in Europe and Central Asia, and 25 in the Americas. Worldwide, 134 journalists were in prison last year. Fourteen years ago, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed each May 3rd to be World Press Freedom Day to prevent such killings and imprisonments from happening.

The theme of the 2007 World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) is the many ways in which widespread tightening of security and surveillance measures to prevent terrorism are also preventing journalists from reporting the truth. As World Association of Newspapers CEO Timothy Balding said:

The objective of these measures is laudable and compelling - the protection of citizens against threats to life and property. There is, however, a legitimate and growing concern that in too many instances such measures, whether old or newly introduced, are being used to stifle debate and the free flow of information about political decisions, or that they are being implemented with too little concern for the overriding necessity to protect individual liberties and, notably, freedom of the press.

Anti-terrorism and official secrets laws, criminalisation of speech judged to justify terrorism, criminal prosecution of journalists for disclosing classified information, surveillance of communications without judicial authorisation, restrictions on access to government data and stricter security classifications, all these measures can severely erode the capacity of journalists to investigate and report accurately and critically, and thus the ability of the press to inform.

Newspapers and broadcasters outside the U.S. are commemorating World Press marking this day and calling for greater protection of journalists and the free press. The Himalayan Times in Nepal reported journalists rallying on the streets of Katmandu. In Zimbabwe however police banned 10 marches that the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists had planned through cities of that nation, the first time that police has refused ceremonial marches by Zimbabwean journalists. The Interfax news agency reported that the Russian parliament plans to develop a system of criteria for assessing the level of press freedom in the regions and in Russia as a whole. The Associated Press reported that the murder of Russia's Anna Politkovskaya and the kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston were at the heart of World Press Freedom Day commemorations in Europe.

Yet how many journalists within the United States even know today is the UN sanctioned World Press Freedom Day? Though the White House issued a proclaimation commemorating the day, but you'll find hardly any coverage of it or about WPFD itself. (Kudos though to Editor & Publisher magazine's Mark Fitzgerald for writing about WPFD).

For the past 14 years, the World Association of Newspapers has provided newspapers with publishable case studies, articles, photos, and videos about slain, wounded, kidnapped, or imprisoned journalists. Those materials get widepread use by newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States.

However, most American newspapers and broadcasts seem either too oblivious or unconcerned to commemorate WPFD. You'd think that after the murder of The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, Fox News' Osama Qadeer, CBS News' Paul Douglas and James Brolan, or the wounding of NBC News Bob Woodruff might waken the U.S. media in recent years to WPFD. Unlike their brethren elsewhere in the world, perhaps newspapers and broadcasters within the U.S. feel that commemorating WPFD is somehow unseemly self-congratulative? I don't know the reason why WPFD isn't commemorated within the U.S.

For several years now, I've been calling upon U.S. news media who work online to commemorate WPFD. No longer electronic stepchildren of newspapers or broadcasters, U.S. online media wants to participate at the 'big table.' But like it's elders, U.S. news media online seems even more oblivious or unconcerned about WPFD. Do they know that 49 of the 134 journalists being imprisoned work for online news media? I bet they don't know that Internet journalists now constitute the second largest category of imprisoned journalists.

Last last year, World Association of Newspapers Communications Director Larry Kilman and I happened to meet at La Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles annual meeting in Léon, Spain, and talked about ways that WAN and online media (notably the Online News Association) could work together to get online news media to commemorate WPFD. (I put Larry in touch with ONA's management but saw no results). I'll try again next year, by which time even more journalists will be killed, wounded, kidnapped, or imprisoned.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The more business we do, the less time we have to post our views. That's one of three reasons for the scarcity of recent postings to the business blog section of this website.

The second reason is that I'm drafting a long article about the root of why American newspaper circulation has declined during the past 30 years, why that industry's efforts to transplant its existing business from print to online won't save it, what should have been done, and what might still be done in the ruins. I intend this article to go beyond What Newspapers and Their Websites Must Do to Survive, my essay published three years ago this month in Online Journalism Review. I think almost everyone has overlooked the major cause of why newspapers have lost circulation and readership during the past 20 years (which is also a major the reason why most newspapers' websites after ten years are still read by fewer people and less frequently than the printed editions).

What's the major cause? Sorry, but I'll spotlight that in my article, which I hope to publish either late this month or early next month. As food for thought, meanwhile, allow me to list what the major problem is not:

• The major problem isn't ownership of newspapers by publicly traded corporations. Wall Street isn't the problem. Newspaper readership has been steadily declining since the 1960s, well before most American newspapers were became owned by publicly traded companies. The layoffs and cutbacks that such companies are now making wouldn't be made if readership and circulation were increasing. In other words, the layoffs and cutbacks are in reaction to the problem, not the cause of the problem. Yes, cutting newsroom staff doesn't help increase readership and circulation, but it isn't the cause of the decreases in readership and circulation.


• The major problem isn't lack of 'Citizen Journalism.' It is true that most American newspapers lost touch with their readers and many also 'talk down' to the readers who remain. There are many worthwhile 'citizen journalism' experiments underway at some American newspapers, and the tools those use can be widely applied throughout the industry. However, American newspapers thrived for centuries without 'citizen journalism' and advocates of it should why and what changed.


• The major problem isn't print's lack of interactivity or multimedia. American newspapers thrived for centuries without interactivity or multimedia. Why and what changed?


• Nor is the major problem newsprint itself. People today aren't forsaking paper, just what newspaper companies print on it.

Finally, the third reason for the scarcity of recent postings here is that any time my business partner or I blog is unpaid time for us. Unlike many other bloggers elsewhere, neither of us has had a paycheck or salary during the past ten years. We live solely from the net profits of our companies. An hour or so blogging is an hour or so of lost income to us, which can be a costly distraction.

Nevertheless, many people have asked us to continue blogging. So, we'll continue to try whenever spare moments between business and other writing permits. Here's what caught our attention online today:

National Journal magazine columnist William Powers believes that, "What the newspaper industry needs right now is a good publicist. Not a 'vice president for public relations' or a 'spokesperson' who puts out press releases and waits for phone calls. I mean a hard-core, hard-charging publicist like the ones celebrities employ to craft the image and keep the 'brand' humming." Yes, that's what he thinks it needs. He apparently thinks readership and circulation has been declining because newspapers don't get enough publicity and need brands that 'hum' more. I'm glad he didn't suggest Tupperware parties, too.

Jack Klunder, the circulation chief of the Los Angeles Times has sent a memo to the newspapers' employees, "The fact remains there are too many of us with too many reasons for not subscribing. Is it because you don't care? Is it because you get it at the office? Price? Latimes.com? Regardless of your lame excuse, all of us should be subscribing to our great paper. Why we don't escapes me." Perhaps, because they read it at the office?

The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that its advertising revenues slid ten percent last month, largely because of "weakness in technology, financial, general and classified advertising categories."

Meanwhile, the Tribune Company, which earlier this month sold its two smallest newspapers (the joint operation of The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time), announced that, " we have no current plans to sell additional newspapers." So said Scott Smith, president of the publishing division of the Chicago-based parent company, in a brief statement. Considering that nobody responded when Tribune put its other newspapers out to bid, Tribune's plan is no surprise.

I live in Greenwich and know some Greenwich Time staffers socially. They were happy that Tribune sold their newspaper to Gannett Company, which publishes neighboring newspapers. That is, they were happy until Gannett asked all Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate employees to apply for their own jobs. Apparently, Gannett bought the assets of those newspapers, not the company or its employment.

Just as Tribune was selling its smallest newspapers, the Washington Post reported what many of us who have published small newspapers know: "If there's any good news about the businesses of newspapering these days, it can be found at the industry's littlest papers, which are doing well even as their bigger brothers founder."

I may need to hike my consulting fees. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that it's hired one of my acquaintances, 36 year-old Eric Grilly, as the new president of Philly.com, that newspaper's online operation. Eric's departure from the MediaNews Group newspaper chain, where he recently was given a seat on the executive committee and where his father retired as chief operating officer eight months ago, has surprised a lot people in American online news publishing community. More surprising to people was his compensation at MediaNews Group, which Philly.com reported as $346,050 in salary and bonus during 2006.

eMarketer.com is predicting that American online advertisement revenues will increase only 18.9 percent this year, compared to increases of more than 30 percent during each of the past three years. eMarketer predicts it will rebound to 22.1 percent during 2008, but then begin shrinking to to 13 percent annual growth in 2011. MediaPost reports that five other analysis firms (Borrell, Forrester Research, JupiterResearch, Oppenheimer and PricewaterhouseCoopers) predict annual growth slipping into the single digits in the next couple of years, for the first time since the start of the commercial Internet. I keep that in mind whenever I read newspaper trade journal predictions that at the 'current rate of growth' online revenues will be able to save the declining print operations. What makes those journals think that the 30 percent growth will continue?

I would have liked to attend the UK Online Publishers Association meeting in London or the World Association of Newspaper's Digital Winners conference in Oslo this week, but was preparing for a business trip to Central America (which became postponed yesterday).

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(Storm Coming, Puerto de las Nieves, Canary Islands, Spain)

On November 22nd, a date which marked my 10th anniversary of consulting full-time about new-media to traditional media companies, after a speech at the Spanish Daily Newspaper Association's annual meeting, I took the liberty of staying in Spain for the rest of the year as an extended vacation in that country's Canary Islands. Forgive me, but this long vacation was long in coming.

I'm back at work now, and want to start 2007 with a suggestion to news websites:

If our new media is to succeed traditional printed and broadcast media, then it also must assume traditional media's responsibilities about press freedom around the world. The world is now in its second ten years of mass use of new media, and I think the time has now come for new-media journalists and editors to begin assuming the mantle of world press freedom in general.

In 1993, the United Nations declared every May 3rd to be World Press Freedom Day, a day to pay tribute to the journalists around the world who risk their lives by professional choice, in their effort to promote the free flow of information and assertion of press freedom on behalf of all members of society. World Press Freedom day also is commemorated by organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter American Press Association, International Federation of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, International Press Institute, Media Institute of Southern Africa, and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

WAN, for example, supplies newspapers with press freedom case study stories, public service advertisements, and even videos, to publish on May 3rds. According to WAN, as of November at least 109 journalists had been killed during 2006 and many more have been imprisoned. WAN is even holding a conference about 'New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension' in Paris on 15-16 February 2007.

On May 3rd, 2007, I think news websites should each devote a story and at least one home page banner ad (even if in rotation) to World Press Freedom. If newspapers can promote it, why can't our sites? Heaven knows, we should be able to do even better than traditional media. And our commitment is only one story and one banner ad on one day a year. Wouldn't it be great to see nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, guardian.co.uk, dw-world.de, oglobo.com.br, and smaller sites reminding what journalists risk on users' behalf.

As a publishing consultant and former journalist, I'm asking my clients to promote World Press Freedom Day online.

Sincerely yours,

Vin Crosbie

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Ce ne sont plus les start-up qui sont demandeuses d'un accès aux grands médias pour la diffusion de leurs contenus, c'est l'inverse." — 'Web 2.0 : le bon tuyau pour l'Internet', Libératiion (30 August 2006)

I'd of course known that Web 2.0 is defined by 'user generated content.' But I hadn't before seen the pithy observation that Libératiion's reporters Christophe Alix and Laurent Mauriac mentioned — that startup companies no longer seek access to major media to disseminate their content; instead, the opposite is true.

Last week in León, Spain, the CEO of a major newspaper trade association asked me how companies such as YouTube.com can grow so big so quickly. The answer is simply that startups no longer need major media companies for promotion, marketing, and advertising. Indeed major media companies increasingly need to deal with (or buy) the successful Web 2.0 startups, for promotion, marketing, and advertising.

Neat! Major media are now your father's Oldsmobiles.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On this day when eMarketer estimates that Google is well on the way to capturing 25 percent of all U.S. online advertisement spending and almost twice the amount of Yahoo!'s revenues, with which Google's revenues only 18 months ago were on par, here are some other issues that my business partner and I are examining:

° What will be the future role of news agents and newsstands? Although they don't play a sizeable role in distribution of American, Canadian, German, and Japanese newspaper (only about seven percent of circulation in those countries), local newsstands and news agent play a most significant role in most other major countries' newspaper ecology. Plus they play significant roles in magazine distribution in every country.

In most of the world's countries, newspapers and their hired wholesalers distributed daily copies to the news agents and newsstands, who then distribute them to you. when you subscribe to home delivery of a daily newspaper, you make your subscription with your neighborhood newsstand or news agent (not directly with the newspaper as is the situation here in the U.S.) The news agents or newsstand has the relationships with the subscribers; the newspapers themselves don't know who subscribes, just that the wholesalers reports how many copies were sold to the retail newsstand and news agents.

Some digerati simply expect newsstands and news agents to go out of business if newspapers and magazines someday switch entirely to online publication. But that would create a major disruption in countries such as the United Kingdom, where 47 percent of the daily newspapers' gross revenues came from newsstands and news agents. Must the newspapers forge direct subscription relationships with consumers? Will physical newsstands and kiosks cease to exist? (Do remember that browsing a physical newsstands if much easily than one online.) Or will they be replaced by physical versions of some sort of electronic kiosk?

° More immediately on that topic, we've today been helping a U.S. investment client ascertain what the U.K. Office of Fair Trade's provisional decision-making about news agent competition means for major newspaper and magazine distribution wholesalers such as W.H.Smith, Menzies, or Dawson News.

In the U.K. wholesalers grant news agents and newsstands exclusive rights to distribute certain titles in specific geographical areas (a rural town, a one block radius in London, etc.). Since 2004, the OFT has been investigating whether such exclusivity is anti-competitive and disserves consumers. It last year issued a provisional finding that these exclusivities weren't anti-competitive with newspapers but were with magazines. Several months ago, it however changed its findings to say the exclusivities are anti-competitive for newspapers, too. It's still investigating, and will issue new findings in the spring.

° Would the regional press be better served using virtual newsrooms? We know several reporters at various regional newspapers who've gotten into trouble by not being at their newsroom desks five days and 40-hours per week. They've defended themselves by pointing out that news doesn't occur in newsrooms. That's all too true. The successful newsroom was an empty one 25 years ago because all its reporters who expending shoe leather, but too many corporations now consider an emply desk or cubicle in a newsroom to mean that the reporter isn't doing her job.

Today's technologies allow reporters to work from anywhere. So, why should they be physically anchored to their newsroom for most of the work day? Newsrooms are a great place for reporters and editors to have story conferences, but with instant messaging, SMS, person-to-person webcasting and voicecasting, mobile devices, etc., the reporter should be able to work from his car, home, local coffee shop, or the news scene. Why chain them to an Atex or SII mainframe six or eight hours each day?

Many journalism schools teach how to report using multimedia and new technologies, but none teach editors how to use those technologies to replace the newsroom itself. It's time that was done.

° Open archives. How much are newspapers really making by charging for online access to stories that might be more than a week old? Do they earn more that way than the online advertising revenues from opening up their entire archives to consumers and search engines? Are publishers being foolishly doctrinaire by charging for archives?

° Regarding paid online content, Netimperative has a B2B case study about how Macmillian's onestopenglih.com, a site for English-language teachers, successfully converted from free to paid access.

° American business publications in print took a revenue bath last month. The Society of American Business Editors and Writers' Talking Biz News reports Magazine Publishers Association data showing large drops in advertising pages and revenues.

Though Barron's, The Economist and Inc magazines showed increases in ad revenue,
Forbes 4.2 percent, Smart Money 5.4 percent, Money 6.6 percent, em>Business 2.0 fell 7.4, BusinessWeek 8.9 percent, Kiplinger 19 percent, and Fortune 28.1 percent (after that magazine had already declined 12 percent in August). It's odd that business magazines would have less advertising once the summer vacation season ended.

° The Financial Times and the weekly New York Sun published 'think' articles about the future of the American newspaper industry, and both make the same point about profit margin versus product development.

The FT story contrasts the Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times. The former is owned by the publicly-traded Tribune Company and the latter owned by a not-for-profit trust. The FT's reporter suggests that Wall Street demanding too much profit ("trying to push profit margins beyond 20 per cent") comes at the expense of keeping newspapers viable.

The Sun's story looks at The Los Angeles Times and the now defunct Knight Ridder Inc., and is a bit more blunt:

It seems its [Knight Ridder] 32 daily newspapers had been able to record "only" a 20% return on investment in recent years.

Cut back on the quality of a newspaper in order to show an impressive short-term return for the market's sake, and the slide toward disaster has begun. Readers will notice and begin drifting away, and advertisers will soon follow. It won't be long before the vultures are circling.

° Last but not least, the online news pioneer Milverton Wallace, who'd organized the European NetMedia conference during the new-media industry's first decade, looks at the long-term changes underway, in an essay he's written for the Club of Amsterdam.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll be traveling during most of November, and I look forward to seeing friends and business acquaintances on these date and cities:

• Vienna, November 8-12, where I'll be co-chairing & co-moderating Ifra's 14th annual Beyond the Printed Word world electronic publishing conference


• London, November 13.


• León, Spain, November 14-17, where I'm speaking at the Spanish Daily Newspaper Association's conference


• London, November 18-19


• New York City, November 20-22


• Montréal, November 24, where I"ll be speaking at seminar at Le Centre d'études sur les médias de l'Université Laval


• New York City, November 27-December 7, where on December 6 I'll be moderating a panel at the Strategic Research Institute's e-Marketing Evolution 2006: Financial Services Strategies for Effective Marketing in a Brave New Internet World conference

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Singapore River   – © Vin Crosbie

During a BloggerCon conference a few years ago at Harvard University, Jeff Jarvis was lecturing about why businesses should blog. Knowing that this site had been blogging, he picked me out of the audience and asked if blogging had improved my site's traffic. I answered the question accurately. Yes, I said, it had tripled my site's traffic. What I didn't say was that almost all of the new traffic was from people who aren't likely to be prospective clients because they're not in positions to approve hiring consultants.

In fact, a consultant who blogs is giving away some, if not a lot, of the information and expertise he sells. It's counterproductive for me to blog; I know that from six years' experience blogging. Blogging is time taken away from productive (i.e., paid) work. It's also can be pain to do.

Nonetheless, I'm not only going to continue blogging, but plan to do it more often. I've blogged here less and less during the past year. There are more than enough blogs elsewhere about digital publishing, most of which are used reportorially — to point to some development that the author feels is significant. So, I'd felt that I'd use this one to comment only when I felt a story or event was extra significant.

However, I've now rethought all that. Many of the other blogs — as George Bernard Shaw once said about newspapers — can't seem to tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the apocalypse. I spend a lot of my business time telling clients which developments are significant and which are not. It's time I began doing that here again. Yes, it gives away some of my business, but then it's for the common good. Besides, about one-third of my client work since 1996 has been pro bono. Why not here, too?

I've just returned