Friday picks

Posted on November 14, 2008 by jestevens

Newsecon: Newspapers better hope Nick Denton’s wrong on advertising in ’09 — Zachary Seward infriday NiemanJournalismLab. The best part is his review of Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker’s analysis of where online advertising’s going.

A Gavin O’Malley article in Online Media Daily about research by tech firm Attributor: Nearly 60% of views of publishers’ content takes place off their destination sites.

Nichification: HealthCentral Expands Potential Partner List, an Online Media Daily news brief, notable because HealthCentral shows the continuing trend of nichification and networking as it buys TheBody.com, an HIV/AIDS resource/news/info site, and partners with others to develop an ad network.

Social networking: Gannett bought Ripple6, which powers the social networking engine of the Moms sites. RIpple6 also provides social networking for General Mills and Proctor & Gamble, and will soon launch MixingBowl.com for Better Homes & Gardens.

Meebo’s partnering with Hearst Corp. to set up Meebo Rooms in the Stars Style 2008 section of Seventeen.com. This is interesting because the chat rooms are surrounded by videos and other content, part of the continuing move to integrate elements (stories, data, resources, social networking) into one page. A little klutzy, because some of the content takes you to a new page, away from the chat. Also, not much activity in there yet.

Everybody’s getting into social networking, even the Financial Times. They’re setting up a spot on the Alphaville blog for market professionals to discuss the day’s news, says Portfolio.com’s blogger Jeff Berkovici. But how to keep out rumor-mongers? The editors of FT.com will approve the people who want to participate.

Noncitizen journalism: Okay, this is a week old, but that’s my modus operandi these days…catching up. In interviews with NowPublic founders Leonard Brody and Michael Tippitt, Seattle Post Intelligencer’s Brian Chin discovered that they really don’t like the term “citizen journalist”. On NowPublic, they practice “participatory journalism”.

Brody, in fact, is famously quoted in Jeff Howe’s book “Crowdsourcing” as saying that “Citizen journalism makes about as much sense as citizen dentistry.”

“I think that the term ‘citizen journalism’ sounds like you’re a nut or something,” Brody explained. “It’s not particularly engaging. It sounds like work.” It’s also a barrier to participation, he said, “because it doesn’t mean anything. This is about people’s experiences and sharing those.”

NowPublic is a combo — aggregation, commenting, and original news — from folks all over the world. But, to continue the mantra…..Citizen dentistry. Citizen plumbing. Citizen surgery. Citizen pilot. Citizen construction worker. Citizen flight attendant. Yep. I agree.

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How Might Ads Work in WebWorld? A Hint…

Posted on October 7, 2008 by jestevens

At the American Magazine Conference in San Francisco yesterday, Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg (who used to work at Google) said these interesting words about advertising, according to a report by Eric Sass in Media Daily News:

“….magazine Web sites and other online publications are in a different line of business from search, Sandberg acknowledged–one that has yet to be effectively monetized. “Where online has been successful is the monetization of search: people know what they’re looking for, they look, they buy, and you can trace what everyone does from that first click to the last. That’s demand fulfillment. What hasn’t been figured out is demand generation.”

Social network sites and magazine sites are ideal candidates for demand generation, Sandberg said, but success depends entirely on the advertising model: “I’m excited about a lot of the content online, because where people spend their time online is the logical place to advertise. The way we’re thinking about monetization is–we’ll look at what people do on our site, and have advertising that is part of the experience.” Here she warned that “interruptive advertising is hard. A better model is advertising that’s integrated into the experience.”

Another way of thinking about this is that advertisers are part of a news/information/social network’s  community, and their information is integrated into the content that the community shares. Often, their information is more valuable than traditional journalism. Depends on what the beholder needs at the moment, eh?

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Not fast, not radical enough

Posted on August 29, 2008 by jestevens

I don’t wanna say it’s hopeless, but these folks just aren’t moving fast enough. In this SPECIAL REPORT: Facing Cuts, Editors ‘Relax the Rules’ to Make Swift Changes in Editor & Publisher, the “swift changes” are paper umbrellas in a hurricane.

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meanwhile over in TV land….

Posted on August 28, 2008 by jestevens

…things are becoming positively minority-reportish with addressable TV advertising.  Here’s a good overview by Eric Sass at Media Daily News. Why’s it important for reJurnos to know about this? What do you think pays for our soy milk lattes and mojo backpacks?

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Jumping to Web: PCH makes it look easy

Posted on August 28, 2008 by jestevens

Take a gander at Publishers Clearing House. They’re jumping into those rushing Webwaters with both feet, with PCHvideo of surprising their prizewinners.

PCHtv is the latest addition to Publishers Clearing House’s growing network of online properties, which include PCHSearchandwin.com, a search engine that rewards users with gift cards, movie tickets and other prizes, and PCHGames.com, a casual games site where players compete for tokens. Viewers will find behind-the-scenes clips, past commercials and previously unseen winner reactions.

Next, they plan on letting people upload their own videos of how they’d react if they won. Really. Wait…didn’t they start out more or less as newspapers did, as print being delivered by a person that dogs like to chase?

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Tumblrman

Posted on August 28, 2008 by jestevens

If you haven’t tried out a tumblelog, it’s fab. If blogging is what you do while you’re doing something else, tumblelogging is what you do while you’re blogging. And Tumblr is to blogging as telepathy is to talking. I tumbloged a road trip across 2/3 of the U.S. this month. MediaBistro’s Sammy Davis did a nice story about the East Coast roots of Tumblr, and the man behind it. So What Do You Do, David Karp, Founder of Tumblr?

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Old v. new at Dem convention

Posted on August 28, 2008 by jestevens

Today’s pic: John Koblin, New York Observer Tropic Blunder: Convention Pits Texting vs. Press

The headline doesn’t do the story justice. The second-biggest story in Denver is new media v. old. And it’s a doozy.

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New ChiTrib look?

Posted on August 27, 2008 by jestevens
Mo' bettah?

Mo' bettah?

Soooo much better. Hope they stick with it. The scoop from E&P: ‘Chicago Tribune’ Redesign Prototype Boasts ‘Trib’ Nickname — Here’s a Glimpse.

Which was subsequently quashed in Crain’s ChicagoBusiness.

Too bad. Methinks the secret to a news organization’s print product is big photos, graphics, judicious use of text blocks, very Webby visuals with news content.

Something that busy people feel they can spend 10 minutes with and get a lot out of.

Easy to scan. Easy to dive into. Easy to find more info via a Web refer. Oh, yeah — and relevant to their world.

Filed under: Daily picks, Tuesday picks | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Tuesday picks:

Posted on July 30, 2008 by jestevens

Buyers Want Newspapers to Reinvent Model, in Media Week. Here’s the first most interesting part of this article:

Buyers and industry observers stress that for newspapers to survive, they can’t do business as usual anymore. [rejurno: just think how different the journalism world would be if they'd embraced that notion about 10 years ago.] Anne Gordon, one-time managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and now a partner at Dubilier & Co., a private equity firm, said that the strategy of large regional papers to serve the whole of their sprawling markets with local news sections has been a bust. Instead, papers should leverage their depth of coverage by, for example, publishing e-newsletters on single topics like business or the arts. [rejurno: and violence prevention, schools, green living, work, outdoor, traffic, etc., and spin off those e-newsletters from Web shells that also generate mobile content.]

Industry watchers also call for publishers to be more aggressive online by partnering with or buying niche sites. “They may have to expect that innovation will take place outside their doors,” Gordon said.

The second most interesting part’s at the end:

The once-unimaginable scenario of newspapers moving exclusively online is now seen by some as a real possibility. Gordon said that if not this year, then perhaps by as soon as 2012, “it’s not shocking at all to imagine that.”

A Means for Publishers to Put a Newspaper in Your Pocket, in the New York Times. Traditional newsman makes good:

Verve Wireless believes it can save the dying local newspaper by making it mobile. It offers publishers the technology to create Web sites for cellphones. The company, based in Encinitas, Calif., already provides mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers, including Freedom Communications, the McClatchy Company and The New York Times Company’s Regional Media Group. The Associated Press, its biggest customer, is betting that Verve has the solution to the nagging problem of dwindling print readership. It led a $3 million round of financing in Verve, a rare investment for the news organization.

Social Marketing Limited By Advertiser Confusion, in Online Media Daily. Still trying to figure out how advertising works in social media.

Journal Register Risks Default, A.H. Belo Makes Big Cuts, in Media Daily News. More grim news, as all that debt continues to drag down news organizations. Can’t we all just get along with 10 percent profit margins?

Filed under: Daily picks, Tuesday picks | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

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