Crystal Cox (right), a real estate agent and blogger from Eureka, Mont., set up a network of websites, including this one, that criticize the conduct of attorney Kevin Padrick in his role as trustee of the failed financial firm called Summit Accommodators, which collapsed in 2008 amid charges of fraud.

Among Cox’ accusations is that Padrick hired a hitman to kill her, a charge that Padrick vigorously denies. The attorney says that Cox’ allegations have so overwhelmed the search engines that his business is off more than 80% this year. “Google ‘Kevin Padrick’ and you’ll see the first 10 pages are from Crystal Cox,” Padrick told Oregon Live.

Cox, who sarcastically describes herself as an “Unhinged Blogger Exposing Corruption in the US Bankruptcy Courts,” fills her blog with accusations, obscenities and character assassination, tactics which are typical of hate bloggers. “‘Unhinged Blogger’ Crazy Crystal Cox Says that Jeff Manning of the Oregonian is Bought and Paid for AGAIN, oh and Jeff Manning, Oregonian, is an Asshole,” she titled one post. It’s filled with accusations about an investigative reporter for the Oregonian newspaper, none of which are backed by citations. The post is peppered with links to copies of the same article on other websites, most of which are presumably maintained by Cox, as well links to other hate sites that the author has created.

On the other hand, Cox has also assembled a substantial library of documents related to Kevin Padrick and the trust he administers. She presents most of these without comment, challenging her audience to do their own research. We demurred, but we admit that she appears to have done her homework.

In ruling that Cox was not entitled to the protections provided to mainstream news outlets, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez said the blogger “was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story,” according to the AP report.

So who’s right in this case? Much as we find Cox’ vendetta-fueled tactics repugnant, we’re more concerned about any efforts to inhibit free speech, even by someone who is clearly a little nuts. However, we are also concerned about attempts to create distinctions between traditional and new media. We’d rather see this case judged as a libel issue, where precedents are clearly established. Why is the distinction between blogger and media outlet even meaningful at a time when properties like Huffington Post and Mashable can go from sideline to superpower in a matter of a couple of years?

There is an intriguing dimension to this case that the court didn’t address: the impact of Cox’ activities on her target’s search engine performance. The case illustrates that a motivated and energetic blogger can significantly damage someone else’s reputation by surrounding their name with negative keywords in search results. Is that a form of libel? Could Google be compelled to change its search algorithm as a consequence of a First Amendment court decision? Do we even want to go there?

Romenesko is the prolific blogger who has attracted a large following with his almost obsessively updated newsfeed about the latest goings-on in media. His style for years has been to post short summaries or excerpts and one or two links to the source. Most media outlets consider it an honor to get a link from Romenesko, who has more than 40,000 Twitter followers and a huge mind share among media professionals.

However, Moos saw peril in the practice, and on Nov. 10 raised questions about Romenesko’s sourcing of third-party content, essentially accusing him of plagiarism. Using examples provided by a Columbia Journalism Review reporter, Moos demonstrated that Romenesko has republished rather lengthy passages without using quotation marks to cite  the source.

What Moos failed to do was consult others for their opinions or give Romenesko himself much more than a cursory heads-up that the post was going to appear. The reaction from readers – including several of the sources allegedly wronged by the sourcing practices – came down like a ton of bricks. As of this morning, Moos’ post had collected nearly 300 comments, most ranging from critical to hostile. Rather than taking umbrage at the Romenesko, most people said they were grateful for the service he provided and had no confusion whatsoever about where his information was coming from. And even if the sourcing wasn’t always rigorous, the outcome was: gushers of traffic to their websites. Which is a good thing.

Romenesko’s account on his new blog, JimRomenesko.com, fills in some of the background details. According to Romenesko, Moos’ blog post was preceded by months of negotiation over renewal of Romenesko’s contract, which expires on December 31. Two days before the post appeared, Moos expressed concern to Romenesko about his plans to sell ads on his new website, potentially cannibalizing Poynter’s business. Without explicitly accusing Moos of anything, Romenesko’s timeline portrays an increasingly panicked editor who is about to see her star columnist become a competitor. The sourcing accusations appear to be timed to cut off competition at the knees.

It’s unfortunate that this issue degraded into personal attacks, because the issues that Moos raised are legitimate. The old rules of attribution seem out of touch with the new age of copy-and-paste publishing. A decade ago, publishers sued each other over “deep links.” Today they beg for them. Erika Fry, the CJR  reporter who first raised the sourcing issue to Moos, published a calm and level-headed account of her concerns shortly after Romenesko quit. She was never out to get Romenesko, she says, but rather to understand how his own rules of sourcing work. Poynter could play a valuable role in facilitating a discussion over the new ethics of plagiarism. It’s unfortunate that one editor chose to use the issue for character assassination instead.

The irony of this kind of executive compensation for a company that has laid off nearly 40% of its workforce over the last six years isn’t lost on former New York Times columnist Peter Lewis, who posts a savage send-up of Gannett’s extravagance on his blog. Lewis is particularly brutal in contrasting Dubow’s performance to that of Steve Jobs, who died last week:

Annual base pay: Steve Jobs $1. Craig Dubow $1.2 million.

Stock price during CEO tenure: Apple, up 4,000+ percent. Gannett, down 85 percent.

Job creation during CEO tenure: Apple, plus 28,000. Gannett: minus 20,000.

Notable new products as CEO of Apple: Macintosh, iMac, MacBook, iPod, iTunes, Apple Stores, iPhone, iPad, etc., etc.

Notable new products as CEO of Gannett: ?

Executive pay has been out of control at US companies for decades now, but the practice is particularly offensive at companies in dying industries that are downsizing their way out of existence. Is it conceivable that a talented and motivated executive could be found to lead Gannett at a salary of less than $9 million? How does a company look its employees in the eye and ask them to accept yet another layoff or salary freeze when it nearly doubled the salary of the head of its US newspaper division?

We might just go occupy Wall Street over this.

Open Source Journalism

Nikki Usher and Seth C. Lewis dig into the application of open source software principles to journalism and find some parallels. “The news industry is one of the last great industrial hold-overs, akin to the car industry,” they write. “Newsrooms are top-heavy, and built on a factory-based model of production.” In contrast open source software and the so-called “maker” culture exemplified by Make magazine encourage collaboration, sharing and continuous experimentation.

Rethinking journalism requires time and open-mindedness that a lot of journalists might not have, but the power of the open source model can’t be denied. Usher and Lewis imagine a new role for journalists as creators of “the building blocks for the story. And while they write this code, it can be commented on, shared, fact-checked, or augmented with additional information such as photos, tweets, and the like.” Seems to work OK for Wikipedia. The Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership is working on ways to make this model viable. We hope they succeed.

Quality at 5¢ a Word

Demand Media, whose mission is to erase the distinction between journalism and typing, says it doesn’t need freelancers so much any more.  That’s because Google changed its search algorithm, and that means Demand’s editorial mission has shifted.

In case you’re not familiar, Demand Media employs freelance writers to churn out search-optimized content for posting on enormously popular websites like Cracked.com, LiveStrong.com and eHow.com. The company assigns stories based upon search popularity, meaning that it favors how-to and top-10 formats. A perfect Demand story would be “10 Ways to Remove Coffee Stains.”

Demand is noted for paying freelancers next to nothing while touting the benefits of brand-building and flexibility. “No matter where you end up, you have the potential to influence millions of people with your articles,” says its Writing Jobs page. Writers can make up to $25 an article, or even more! With so many journalists out of work, Demand has succeeded in a recruiting a large pool of contributors, despite its starvation wages.

But apparently not so much now. Google is on a campaign to remove the stuff that these content farms churn out, so the company is shifting to slide shows and videos. Demand says it has eliminated 300,000 low-quality articles from eHow and is focusing on going upscale. “It’s all about quality for us,” said Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford. At a nickel a word.

It’s Not a Paywall, It’s…

Paywalls continue to sprout like crabgrass, but publishers are beginning to show some creative thinking. The Day of New London, Conn. will now charge between $9.99 and $22.99 per month for access to its online content, archives and mobile versions, but subscribers will also become part of a brand loyalty program called The Day Passport, “which features rewards, events and giveaways to local businesses, entertainment venues and cultural institutions.” We were pushing this idea two years ago. Publishers need to expand their revenue base beyond advertising and subscription fees. Affinity programs for local businesses are a natural extension.

We also like what the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing: Instead of firewalling its content, it’s creating premium content packages such as this one on the Civil War sesquicentennial. The Civil War feature combines historic pages from the newspaper archive with original new material. Pricing begins at $1.99/month, though it’s not clear what other premium packages are planned. We like the concept the concept of charging for added value, and we’re particularly glad to have the chance to use the word “sesquicentennial” in a sentence.

The claims and statistics cited in this article are the author’s, and we don’t vouch for their validity. 

The local blog ThingsToDoInlandEmpire.com, focusing on arts, entertainment and events in southern California, recently surpassed well-established print media outlets in Riverside and San Bernardino on several well-known metrics.

The site now averages twice the traffic of the region’s most widely distributed weekly print publication and four times the traffic of the region’s most widely distributed monthly magazine, both of which cover the same arts and entertainment focus, According to third party traffic verification firm Quantcast. Those estimates are mirroredby well-known Internet ratings website Alexa.com.

The website also counts more Facebook likes than the region’s largest weekly or monthly print publications, as well as one of the region’s largest daily publications.

The site began with an idea from Adina Hemley, a non-profit director in the Inland Empire. “My fiance and I would search the Internet for fun events every weekend, and then it occurred to me, ‘I know I’m not the only looking for things to do in the Inland Empire,’” said Hemley.

Scott Talkov, a 30-year-old lawyer in Riverside and self-described techie, started the website with Hemley in early 2011 to aggregate their research on the hottest places to go in the Inland Empire. Since then, traffic has doubled every three months.

By working together with more than 20 authors, the site collects data and perspectives from dozens of cities throughout the inland Southern California region known as the Inland Empire. The region counts over four-million people and witnessed the fastest growth over the past decade among the nation’s top 25 metropolitan areas.

“While the economy and print media may be down, people are still having fun, they’re just turning to new sources to find out what to do,” said Kris Daams, a former newspaper reporter and author on the site.

Talkov says new technologies allow information to collected and distributed instantly at essentially no cost. The website is based on WordPress and communicates with followers through the social media tools Facebook and Twitter, all of which are free.

When asked what drives this site, author Nate Hutchinson insisted “We want to continue to prove people wrong who claim there is nothing to do in the Inland Empire.”

It’s a fun and inspiring read, and would be even better if it were true, but Muller makes an essential journalism error in not providing any factual evidence to support her “thriving” claim. In fact, weekly local newspapers have been taking it in the neck for years. We long ago stopped tracking news of local newsweekly closures because the volume was overwhelming. Back in 2009, Journal Register Co. closed scores of weekly holdings in one fell swoop, and Gannett and others have followed. Weeklies were some of the hardest-hit properties in Media News’ recent consolidation. Reports of other weekly shutdowns hit our Google Reader every couple of weeks. We’re frequently asked how many local weeklies have closed but we know of no one – not even the amazing Erica Smith – who keeps count.

Which isn’t to take anything away from the many dedicated journalists who put up with long hours and low wages to publish the thousands of small-town weeklies that still survive. Local publishing has never been a lucrative business to begin with, and the pressure is only getting worse as low-overhead online operations like Patch – not to mention bloggers and independent Web publishers – nibble away at their local advertising base. We admire the dedication of these publishers and are inspired by stories like that of M.E. Sprengelmeyer, a daily journalist who found fulfillment running a 2,000-circulation weekly in Santa Rosa, N.M. after losing his job in the Rocky Mountain News closure in 2009 (see video). Muller celebrates Sprengelmeyer in her op-ed, but also uses a word we hear a lot when discussing this topic: “exhausted.”

Small-town weekly publishing is a lot of things: rewarding, fulfilling, responsible, important and endangered. There’s one thing that it clearly isn’t, though: thriving.

Boston Globe Splits Web Presence

The Boston Globe has come up with a novel twist on the paywall concept: It’s launching a paid portal that “offers an innovative, inviting reading experience that is the only gateway to all of the Globe’s journalism.” BostonGlobe.com is the new online companion to the 139-year-old daily that provides the full contents of the print edition as well as bonus features. It will be free through the end of this month and $3.99/mo. thereafter. Home delivery subscribers get access for free. The website will be formatted for reading on a variety of desktop and mobile devices, although few details were provided.

Boston.com, the regional site that the Globe launched in partnership with several local media outlets in 1995, will remain free. It will focus on daily sports coverage, online features and lifestyle information, and also include five stories from the daily print edition and summaries of other content that can be read in full on BostonGlobe.com.

In positioning the bifurcated strategy, Globe Editor Martin Baron described Boston.com as a site for the common man with BostonGlobe.com as its more erudite sibling. “BostonGlobe.com is essentially purely journalistic, and Boston.com is more of a town square where you get news and information, but you can also buy tickets to events and exchange information and opinions with your neighbors,’’ he said. Boston.com will continue to be advertising-supported.

The Globe was actually an early innovator in hyperlocal journalism. When Boston.com was launched as a partnership between the Globe and several local print and broadcast outlets, it broke the then-emerging newspaper mold by focusing on regional coverage rather than delivering an electronic version of the print product. However, as partners dropped out of the venture over time, Boston.com increasingly became the online face of the Globe, eventually getting to the point that articles about Israel and Japan routinely led the home page. With the new strategy, the Globe appears to be returning Boston.com to its roots.

Miscellany

If you’re still on the fence about buying a tablet computer (we took the plunge last month and are enjoying the experience), you can get one at a really good price if you also buy a subscription to two Philadelphia newspapers and a website. The Philadelphia Media Network, which publishes the Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com, has teamed up with three local sponsors and the French electronics company Archos to sell Archos’ Arnova 10 G2 Android tablets preloaded with gobs of Philadelphia news for $285. The advertised price of the tablets themselves is as low as $99, or about half what they cost on eBay. The catch is that you have to buy a subscription to three news apps as part of the deal. We suppose there are enough Philadelphians, who can never get enough Eagles coverage, to sell out the 5,000 units being offered on Phillytablet.com.

We will not be charging to view the following content online: the front page, classifieds, all advertisements and advertising promotions, special sections, auctions, community calendar or customer service pages.

Webpages that will be charging for viewership – after 15 free views per month – are local, state, national and world news pages; local and regional sports; news accessed by Facebook and Twitter; opinion pages; obituaries; entertainment (except AP wire); health, outdoors, weddings, anniversaries; births, lottery; weather; archives; comments; photo galleries and videos.

A monthly online subscription is $4.99; if you have a print subscription, your online subscription is only $1.99 per month. An annual online subscription is $49.99 per year; or if you have a print subscription, it is only $19.99.

Got all that? Better keep a pen and paper handy, because once you get to those 15 views, get out the credit card. That is, unless you’re reading the front page or a “special section,” whatever that is. And forget about the kind of free pass from Twitter that The New York Times gives you. Social media referrals count toward the 15-ppm limit.

In Hawaii, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has joined the paywall parade. Here’s how PaidContent.org described its plan:

Existing print subscribers get free digital access. Non-print subscribers can either sign up for an “all-access” package for $19.95 per month, which includes digital access and a print subscription for one person, or purchase a digital-only subscription—the price of which varies based on location.  Oahu residents pay $9.99 per month or $50 per year; other Hawaii residents pay $4.95 per month or $25 per year, and those outside the state of Hawaii pay $1.95 per month or $10 per year. The site is also offering a $0.99 day pass, primarily aimed at tourists and former tourists who are interested in specific events.

Clear enough? If you really want to know what’s going on in Hawaii, you’re best off moving out of state. God forbid you’re unlucky enough to live in the newspaper’s home city.

One more example, from the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle:

Digital-only subscribers get unfettered access to our site for $6.95 per month. This subscription fee will include the iPad app as well. Current print subscribers pay a reduced rate of only $2.95 to add these services…Passers-by and casual readers still will have access to breaking news, video, photos and blogs. We also will allow all users access to 25 premium pages monthly as a sample.

With 46% of small newspapers already charging for some online content, and another 39% planning to do so, the online news world will soon be pockmarked with digital toll booths, each charging different fees. Even the major metros can’t agree on a plan. PaidContent.org assembled a comparison chart of what the big papers are doing earlier this year. If you can find any patterns there, let us  know.

We’re not saying variety is a bad thing – lots of businesses compete on price – but when the product is already perceived as a commodity, then confusion tends to drive customers away. Small publishers evidently don’t see it that way, given the large number that are settling in the paywall camp these days. But are they growing their businesses or just trying to protect what’s left of them?

Mathew Ingram said it well in a recent piece in BusinessWeek:

The biggest flaw in a paywall isn’t that the math is questionable, or even that a wall is inherently a backward-facing strategy, aimed at stacking sandbags around a paper’s content…The biggest flaw…is that walling up your content is an invitation to free competitors…to come and take away your readers.

One of the major reasons the newspaper industry is in such dire straits right now is because barrriers to entry have collapsed. Paywalls are an invitation to competitors to take away all but the most loyal (i.e., oldest) readers. AOL’s Patch has recently opened an outpost in our home town, and we admire the work its tiny staff is doing to bring us news from around the corner that our regional daily doesn’t cover. Despite allegations of sweatshop-like working conditions at Patch, we believe AOL will have no trouble finding journalists to staff its local offices. Between Patch, labor-of-love sites like this one and an assortment of listservs and Facebook pages, we’re more aware of what’s going on in our community than we ever were when we subscribed to a daily.

We believe that paywalls can work if they are simple, transparent and perceived by the customer to be reasonably priced. There is room in the market for services that could federate many small publishers under a single subscription plan, and we expect some cohesion to emerge from the current mess.

Ultimately, though, paywalls will only work if the publishers who deploy them can deliver value their readers can’t get anywhere else. Can the newspaper owners holding the sandbags today honestly say they are doing that?

Miscellany

We’ve noted before the irony that editors who are so committed to hacking through everyone else’s hype roll over when the spin doctor is their own employer. The Orange (TX) Leader upholds that proud tradition in an un-bylined story announcing a reduction in its publishing schedule and the end of home delivery by news carriers.

Combining the Saturday and Sunday editions isn’t a cutback in frequency, but a reader service, said publisher Eric Bauer. “It will be available in the Saturday mail, so people will have more time to enjoy it,” he said. And editor Gabriel Pruitt is almost giddy about cutting frequency to thrice-weekly: “I could not be more proud and excited about how we will better serve this community…Readers can expect more in-depth stories, insightful information, photos and videos.”

The words “reduction,” “cutback” or “cost-cutting” don’t appear anywhere in the story. In fact, there’s no indication that the changes are anything but a reader service. We suspect that if the announcement was coming from the local public works department, it would be handled quite differently.

Print stalwarts will be relieved to hear that at least one major professional group is still committed to the supremacy of ink on dead trees: America’s school administrators. A recent survey conducted by The Haselton Group found that administrators prefer print editions of top trade magazines rather than online editions or e-newsletters from the same publications. Administrators get 45% of their industry-related information from printed trade magazines, “far outweighing the combined total of next three greatest sources: blogs, national newspapers and local newspapers.”

Administrators are joined in their loyalty by the many college journalism programs that are still teaching inverted pyramid style and how their students can find their first job on a daily.

Publishers send us a lot of books to review, and we wish we could get to them all more quickly. It took us 18 months to finally read Ken Doctor’s Newsonomics, but we’re glad we did. Doctor’s perspectives on the future of news are as fresh today as they were in early 2010. We were surprised and encouraged by his optimism.

Many journalists view the economics of their profession as bitter medicine. Doctor makes it clear that survival in the new world will mean understanding the business, but those journalists who know how to package and market their work will thrive. And they won’t have to sell their souls or lower their standards to do it. Here’s our review on Amazon:

Journalists hate to talk about the economics of their profession, which is why this is such a valuable book. Doctor proceeds from the assumption that the newspaper industry as we have known it is an irreversible decline and that only a handful of national dailies will exist in a few years. There’s no reason to belabor that point, and he doesn’t.

Instead, he devotes the rest of the book to the much more important discussion of how journalism can be reinvented and deliver value in an economically sustainable model. His perspective is both optimistic and uplifting. Doctor sees the end of the vertically integrated news organization as creating opportunities for focused and nimble ventures to emerge that can indeed deliver quality journalism and pay their reporters a living wage. Competition will raise quality standards and ultimately deliver a better product. We have to go through an ugly deconstruction process in order to get there, but Doctor sees bright light at the end of the tunnel.

A lot of journalists are uncomfortable with Doctor’s views because they fear the loss of the comfortable salaries and modest output demands they have long enjoyed. Well, welcome to the new world. Jobs are going away and journalism is becoming a business of self-employed contractors. Journalists with initiative, innovation and skill will be able to make a better living working for multiple masters than they could have made working for media companies. News organizations will be under pressure to be more responsive to their readers’ demands, but Doctor does not believe this will result in the “dumbing down” of news. Tiered models will emerge that deliver high-quality journalism to those who are willing to pay a modest amount for it.

Newsonomics was published 18 months ago, but its lessons and predictions are just as valid today as they were then. This is a clear, concise and ultimately hopeful look at the economics of $45 billion industry in the middle of wholesale reinvention.

“In a dramatic turn to the scandal, former journalists at the Mirror group said they witnessed phone hacking at their newspapers and that the practice was ‘endemic’. So far, the allegations had clouded newspapers of the News International group, the largely affected being the now closed News of the World.

“In fresh developments, James Hipwell, a former journalist of the Daily Mirror told The Independent that he would be willing to testify in front of a public inquiry into the episode headed by Justice Brian Leveson.”

Leesville (La.) Daily Leader Moving To Three Days A Week For Print Edition

“The change [to three days a week from five] is to move the newspaper in a new direction, and will allow the news staff to produce an even stronger product on those three days — allowing more time and focus to cover the news you want to read.
‘This is an opportunity for all of us to strengthen our newspaper,’ Leader Publisher Beaux Victor said. ‘Times are changing all around us and we’re choosing to leap ahead progressively. Our editorial staff, as always, will dedicate their efforts in bringing the news to you. With extra time, the staff will be able to compose more in-depth stories and gather more local content.’”

Chicago Tribune To Print The Sun-Times And Seven Suburban Papers

“The Sun-Times, which has seen its circulation drop in step with the industry, will close its 12-year-old printing plant and lay off more than 400 employees, saving the company more than $10 million annually. The Chicago Tribune Media Group will print the Sun-Times and seven of its suburban dailies.”

BBC Social Media Policy Insists ‘Second Pair Of Eyes’ Review News Updates For Twitter Or Facebook

“The BBC’s new ‘social media guidance’ strictly requires a ‘second pair of eyes’ to review any staff social media updates related to news reporting. The policy is far more relaxed when it comes to staffers using personal social media accounts for personal things. For those cases, it simply lists some ‘considerations,’ which it summarizes as ‘don’t do anything stupid.’”

Newspaper Websites Post Consecutive Quarterly Traffic Increase (NAA Press Release)

“Newspaper publishers continue to grow their share of the Internet audience, attracting an average monthly audience of 110.8 million unique visitors age 18+ to their websites in the second quarter – nearly two-thirds (64.6 percent) of all adult Internet users. That quarterly average represents a 2 percent increase in visitors over the first quarter average. The analysis, performed by comScore for the Newspaper Association of America, indicates that this is the third consecutive quarter of increased traffic for newspaper websites since comScore began tracking web audience data for NAA, in the fourth quarter of 2010.”

Bancroft Family Members Express Regrets at Selling WSJ to Murdoch Because of Scandal

“A number of key members of the family which controlled The Wall Street Journal say they would not have agreed to sell the prestigious daily to Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of News International’s conduct in the phone-hacking scandal at the time of the deal.

“‘If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against’ the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family which controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of The Wall Street Journal.”

San Diego Union-Tribune Owner Explores Options for Newspaper

“Platinum Equity, which acquired the paper two years ago from the Copley family, hired Evercore Partners to ‘evaluate strategic alternatives,’ said Mark Barnhill, a principal at Platinum.” Such a move is usually seen as a precursor to a sale. Platinum acquired the U-T in May, 2009 and shortly thereafter hacked 30% of the workforce. The owners also sold off property they acquired in the sale, prompting analyst Ken Doctor to suggest that Platinum bought the paper primarily for the asset value.

The 168-year-old News of the World, which boasts a Sunday circulation of 2.5 million, will publish its last edition on July 10. The move comes as outrage in Britain reached a fever pitch over allegations that the tabloid had illegally accessed and even deleted voice mail messages on the phone of a 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped and later found murdered.

Allegations of phone hacking are nothing new for the tabloid. Reports of reportorial excess have swirled around News of the World for two years. However, public anger and advertiser boycotts grew this week amid allegations that as many as 4,000 people have been victimized by such tactics, including relatives of terrorist attack victims and soldiers killed in combat.

The tipping point came with reports this week that hired investigators had not only hacked into the phone of 13-year-old Milly Dowler (left) but also deleted some of the voicemails, giving her parents false hope that the girl was still alive. James Murdoch, the heir apparent to the Rupert Murdoch empire, issued a statement saying such a practice – if it occurred –  ”was inhuman and has no place in our company.”

Analysts speculated that the decision to shutter the News of the World and lay off 200 employees was made by the younger Murdoch and supported by his dad, although such drama has not been typical of the elder statesman. Skeptics saw more nefarious motives.

Specifically, they questioned why News Corp. didn’t demand the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International and editor of News of the World at the time the allegations first surfaced. Brooks is a Murdoch confidante, and critics suggested that the jobs of 200 people had been sacrificed to preserve hers.

The scandal also broke as News Corp. neared the final stages of its bid for BSkyB,  the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the United Kingdom, with over 10 million subscribers, according to Wikipedia. Critics suggested that the cloud created by the News of the World allegations could have jeopardized Murdoch’s bid.

Writing in the Telegraph¸ Harry Wallop quotes politicians and media commentators speculating that an even more cynical business objective was involved. News Corp. had already announced plans to move to a seven-day-a-week publishing schedule across its four UK titles: the Sun, News of the World, the Times and the Sunday Times. The expansion could  potentially create internal competition across the News Corp. properties. Eliminating one title may have little impact on revenues as advertisers simply migrate their business to other holdings within the portfolio.

Whatever the motives, the decision strikes us as a massive overreaction. Scandals like this are usually addressed by a few high-level resignations and some corporate self-flagellation. It could be that the timing was simply bad for News Corp., but depriving 200 people of their livelihoods – and a couple of million Brits of their weekly celebrity scandals – strikes us as a bit over the top.

How bad is it in the magazine world? Two years ago we bought a subscription to ESPN magazine after finding a promotional offer of 26 issues for just $2. We subscribed simply for the experience of getting a fortnightly magazine for less than the cost of postage.

But it turns out we were getting a lot more than just ESPN. Around the time our subscription expired, we started getting Golf magazine every month in the mail. Golf’s promotional price is $10 a year, but we never paid for or requested a subscription. Then, about three months ago, Sports Illustrated began showing up in our mailbox each week. We like that because we’ve actually paid for Sports Illustrated in the past. However, we aren’t paying for this one. It appears to be another side=benefit of our  $2 ESPN deal.

We’re not sure if this embarrassment of riches is at an end, but we do know that altogether we’re receiving about $70 worth of magazine subscriptions for $2. Why? Because the publishers are desperate. New Audit Bureau of Circulations rules have significantly relaxed the criteria for paid circulation. That means the publisher statements for Golf and Sports Illustrated now count us as subscribers despite the fact that we never requested or paid for either subscription. Any advertiser that thinks it’s getting an engaged audience through this accounting sleight-of-hand is fooling itself. Don’t get us wrong: We hope the SI subscription never runs out, but we are never, ever going to pay for it. Are we as valuable to an advertiser as a paying subscriber? Not so much. Is the print magazine industry in a crisis? We think so. BTW, we did not get the attractive tote bag that comes with  a paid subscription..

Gannett Pounds 700 Nails in Print’s Coffin

If you need any further evidence that print has no future, look no further than Gannett’s announcement of 700 layoffs this week, says Poynter’s Rick Edmonds. Revenues at Gannett’s 81 community newspapers were down 7% overall and nearly 10% in print, even as most mainstream media are experiencing a modest recovery right now. Not so in print. Publishing operating margins fells four times as fast as revenues, and it’s been a decade since Gannett bought any print properties at all. Meanwhile, the company has  reduced its stable of newspapers from 99 to 81. Its broadcast and online operations are actually doing just fine, but they’re not growing fast enough to make up for declines in print advertising.  That’s the problem across the industry. Online revenues are growing, but the volume and margins are a tiny fraction of print revenue.

Gannett, which traditionally dances to the tune of Wall Street, is sending a message in aggressively cutting back on its already lean print businesses. In that respect, it’s ahead of the market. Edmonds points out that, ironically, “Metro papers like the Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News that have adopted a high price/high quality circulation strategy know readers will not be satisfied with skinny papers that have little worth reading. So those newsrooms are protected and, in a few cases, growing.” For a while, that is. Those papers are milking an aging but still profitable population that will dwindle sharply over the next decade. When the tipping point is reached and paid subscribers no longer justify a printed product, the closures will happen en masse.

Nonprofits Figuring It Out

We wrote recently about California Watch, a nonprofit investigative news operation that is breaking even by syndicating its content at low cost to dozens of news outlets to customize as they wish. California Watch and others like it understand the economics of multiple revenue streams. Few newspapers can afford to support large investigative reporting staffs, but a bunch of smaller publishers can collectively contribute enough to make an independent investigative team viable.

California Watch isn’t the only outlet breaking new ground in this area. Writing on Nieman Journalism Lab, Justin Ellis tells the story of New England Center for Investigative Reporting, another nonprofit operation that is surviving on a combination of grants and revenue from paid training workshops for aspiring journalists. The group has only two full-time staff and a corps of freelancers. It delivers its investigative work via a subscription service and republishes them on its website. The Center recently reached a milestone by matching its grant funds with revenue generated from subscriptions and training, meaning it’s on the road to self-sufficiency.

Co-director and veteran New England TV reporter Joe Bergantino (left) says, “To be successful you have to walk through the door and immediately think about how to make money.” And what’s wrong with that? For the last 50 years or so, journalists have had the luxury of having the bills paid by people they don’t even know. Very few businesses operate that way, so Bergantino and his tiny team are simply functioning by the same rules that small businesses have lived with for years. Does that make the quality of their work less reputable?

Got HTML5?

The Financial Times’ new mobile app racked up 100,000 users in its first week. The twist is that the FT decided to develop the app in the new HTML5 format instead of coding it for the iPad or Android platform. If you don’t know what HTML5 is, here’s a tutorial. It’s an important new technology that could make Flash animation and other plug-in-based multimedia obsolete.

HTML5 works entirely within the browser and gives the publisher considerably more control over display, organization and animation than earlier HTML versions did. Information can be stored and read offline, as well as updated automatically without user intervention (No more Adobe updates; how cool is that?) The trick is that most browsers don’t fully support it yet, but that’s just a matter of time. Apple’s Safari is one of the best browsers for HTML5 apps. That’s not surprising, given that Steve Jobs has engaged in a bitter public dispute with Adobe over Flash. The downside for Apple is that HTML5 enables publishers to deliver apps themselves without using the iTunes store as an intermediary. That’s why the FT is updating its content directly, without going through the iTunes store. HTML5 will also make it easier for publishers like Playboy, whose content wouldn’t make it past the Apple censors, has also gone the HTML5 route.

Miscellany

If you’ve ever wondered whether the image you’re about to publish has been Photoshopped, try out this new service from Google. Upload or type the URL of an image and Google will now scan its database for images just like it – including the exact same image. We’re not sure what it will find if given a photo of one of Lady Gaga’s dresses, but for those beautiful sunset landscapes that come in from “citizen journalists,” it might be worth a try, just to be safe.

Meredith is closing the hip, do-it-yourself magazine ReadyMade and eliminating 75 positions. Apparently an audited circulation of 335,000 wasn’t enough to attract advertisers.

John Locke has become the first self-published author to sell over 1 million books on Kindle. The 60-year-old Louisville, KY resident has written nine novels, mostly thrillers, and charges only 99 cents for the Kindle versions. He says he has no intention of raising his prices. Having brought in about a million dollars this way, Locke is making a decent income for a novelist, especially since he doesn’t have to pay publisher and distributor costs that typically leave the author with only about 10% of a book’s cover price.

In deference to Huffington Post, The New York Times plans to intermingle news and opinion in its “Week in Review” section, saying, “We thought readers would find it more useful to have the stories, photographs and charts offered in an integrated way.” Back in the day, op-ed sections themselves were controversial. Now they will be indistinguishable, although the Times says it will clearly label opinionated content.

And Finally…

This one is almost too bizarre to be believed. A couple weeks ago, it was revealed that a popular Syrian lesbian blogger who went by the name of “A Gay Girl in Damascus” is actually a 40-year-old married dude from Scotland. Despite the fact that gay activists in Syria believe this guy put their safety at risk, he continues to blog under the pseudonym, although he did post a profuse apology for the ruse.

The very same week, a guy in Ohio named Bill Graber admitted that he is Paula Brooks, an executive editor for lesbian site LezGetReal.com. Graber used his wife’s name in the hoax and even posed as the father of the fictitious blogger for media interviews, claiming Paula is deaf. Graber got away with hoax for three years because he was so believable, according to LezGetReal’s managing editor.

It gets even weirder. Quoting the account in StinkyJournalism.org:

Months ago, Graber, posing as ”Paula Brooks,” reportedly encouraged “Amina Arraf” to start a blog, but neither Graber nor MacMaster knew the other was really a man posing as a lesbian woman online. According to the Washington Post, Arraf and Brooks “often flirted” with each other online as well.

This week, after both hoax identities unraveled, Graber described his interactions to the Washington Post with Arraf/MacMaster as a “major sock-puppet hoax crash into a major sock-puppet hoax.”

We can only hope neither sock puppet survived the collision.