Amazon.com is finally addressing complaints about licensing fees for its Kindle reader. Starting next month, the online retailing giant will give newspapers 70% of revenue from digital versions of their publications sold in Amazon’s Kindle Store. That’s what Apple and Google give developers for their iPhone, iPad and Android devices, so Amazon is merely playing catch-up.
Amazon also introduced Kindle Publishing for Periodicals, a program that’s intended “to speed up the process of producing a version of the newspaper for the many platforms where Kindle software can be downloaded,” according to CNN
Amazon has been criticized for being greedy in the royalties it extracts from news publishing clients. The change in royalty payments brings it in line with industry standards, and the new publishing platform is said to make it relatively painless for clients to get their content on Kindle-compatible devices, including the iPhone, iPad and Android. The move also appears to be aimed at the scarcity of iPhone-savvy coders, which is somewhat limiting the growth of that platform. ” Apple has sold more than 125 million gadgets — iPhones, iPods and the iPad — that run its mobile operating system. But finding developers capable of coding software for the system can be difficult and expensive,” CNN said.

Take Two Tablets and Call Me…

How big is the tablet market going to be? Really, really big, says Gartner, which sees nearly half a billion tablets selling in 2013 alone. The sudden explosion of this market seems curious in light of the fact that tablet – or “slate” – computers have been around for more than a decade. Gartner casts some interesting light on this phenomenon.

Early table computers were mainly Windows machines, meaning that they differed from PCs only in form.  Gartner points out that, in contrast, the usage model of the new breed of tablets “is closer to what consumers do with a smartphone…It is about running applications, playing games, watching video content, reading books and magazines…If you can do all of this without having to take five minutes to boot up, without having to look for a power outlet after a couple of hours… and with a user interface that allows you to easily get to what you need, why would you not buy a media tablet?” Makes sense.
We were at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, which ordinarily would have been lousy with laptop computers. However, we estimate that about one third of the attendees were toting iPads. Part of this trend is Silicon Valley chic, no doubt, but there’s no question that one appeal of the iPad is that it takes about 10 seconds to boot and the battery doesn’t die after 90 minutes. We found ourselves staring lovingly at the iPads being hoisted by others in our row as our laptop battery drained to zero.
Early tablet-makers obsessed over features like handwriting recognition and supporting an 800 X 600 screen. Apple chose instead to reinvent the experience around user need. Gartner sees the cost of tablets quickly dropping to under $300 as competition increases. Meanwhile, publishers are being careful not to screw up this market opportunity like they did the Web.

WaPo Gets Hyperlocal

The Washington Post is floating ideas about its next foray into online news and it looks like it’s going hyperlocal with a vengeance. TBD, itself a recent D.C.-area startup, reads the tea leaves from a recent Post survey and deduces that the newspaper is planning a major mobile thrust with a social networking flavor. TBD also quotes an anonymous source saying the plans include “this new crop of sites would be even more hyperlocal than AOL’s Patch.com sites that are now spreading around the region. The mission of the Patch sites is to dig deep on municipal news, including school board meetings, high school sports, trash collection and the like.
The new Post initiative, says a source, would “carve things up even more micro” than the Patch sites, as in subdivision by subdivision. It’s unclear how the Post would fund such an initiative or find the volunteer citizen sources to do the reporting, but it’s breaking with the pack in making such a strong commitment to local coverage. Few publishers have the cash – or the cajones – to disrupt their traditional model to that degree.
Speaking of the Post, it just released a new iPad app that aggregates “social media conversations, videos, photos and user engagement through Twitter and Facebook about the top three to five issues of the day,” according to a press release picked up by Editor & Publisher. It’s free here for now, $3.99/mo. beginning in February.

Miscellany

US News & World Report, the former newsweekly that has been monthly for the last couple of years, will stop publishing its monthly magazine in 2011. The magazine, which is famous for its annual rankings of the best colleges, hospitals, personal finance and other businesses, will continue to publish the rankings in print along with four special topic issues. Everything else will go online.
US News has long been the weakest competitor in a three-horse race dominated by Time with Newsweek a distant second. The whole newsweekly sector has been devastated by online competition, forcing the Washington Post Co. to sell Newsweek this summer. Its circulation has plunged more than 25% in the last year.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is turning the tables on the traditional model of selling a printed newspaper and giving away electrons for free. The struggling daily, which was bought by private investment firm Platinum Equity last year, is offering readers a free copy of the  print edition when they use their mobile phones to check in on Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook. All a checked-in member has to do is show a mobile device to workers at kiosks around the city. We’re sure the U-T’s newsdealers are just thrilled about this idea.

The Oregonian just got a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation via the American University’s J-Lab, and it’s going to spend the money on hyperlocal journalism. Read Editor Peter Bhatia’s passionate and persuasive argument for the need to adopt a “big tent” strategy and partner with localized news outlets of all shapes and sizes in order to “offer a level of local and neighborhood detail our staff…cannot get to.” It’s nice to see a newspaper editor embracing amateur journalism instead of dismissing it. “In the digital media world there really aren’t any limits on who can gather news and distribute it. Anyone with a laptop can create journalism,” he writes. The usual assortment of nut-nut commentators weighs in with their spew about how Bhatia is ruining the newspaper. He responds with admirable restraint.

Gannett Blog estimates that USA Today has five reporters covering Congress and 27 covering entertainment. We have no idea if those numbers are true, but if they are, we are going back to bed and putting a pillow over our head.

We find ourselves, once again, completely in Jeff Jarvis’ camp on the issue of tearing down the advertising/editorial wall. Jarvis makes his case here in response a thoughtful but retro post by the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade. The ad/edit wall that has existed in newspapers for the last three generations is a luxury that media institutions can no longer afford and also an insult to the journalists within them. Are reporters children who are so incapable of safeguarding their own integrity that they need to be shielded from the business? Are advertisers such a corrupting force that they must be prohibited from any contact with the people who create the product they support with their ad dollars?

Jarvis notes that nearly everyone who’s starting a media operation these days has to wear both editorial and sales hats. And guess what? Many of them still manage to deliver fine products. In fact, we’d argue that the informal standards that top bloggers apply to their work are at least as good as the written standards put forth by various news organizations. That’s because integrity is one of the few assets media people have, and they know that bartering it away undermines their future. Readers are also smart enough to figure out when they’re being taken for a ride.

We’d go one step further and suggest that one reason that the American public has been blindsided by affairs like the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the S&L meltdown is that the quality of business journalism in this country is so terrible. At most newspapers, the business desk is either Siberia or a necessary labor one must complete on the track to a glamor job in the State House. How can a company like Enron build a financial house of cards that ultimately collapses and throws 20,000 people out of work without someone at the Houston Chronicle noticing if something was fishy (BTW, did you know Enron had a code of ethics?)

Probably because newspaper reporters have traditionally been told that business is evil, ad-buyers are a corrupting influence and you’re best off staying as far away as possible. That’s not really an option any more, and maybe the new breed of online publishers will prove that journalists don’t have to be treated like 10-year-olds in order to do their jobs effectively.

Miscellany

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorialist Leonard Pitts, Jr. has kicked off quite a ruckus at the Miami Herald over his skewering of citizen journalism.  His target is James O’Keefe III, the political activist whose hidden-camera wizardry is credited with bringing down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). It turns out O’Keefe’s videos exhibited questionable editing practices that caused prosecutors to decline to file charges. What’s more, O’Keefe has been in a raft of trouble since then. “It is a mark of the low regard in which journalism is held that that load of bull pucky ever passed as wisdom,” Pitts writes. “If some woman flashed a toy badge, would you call her a citizen police officer? Would you trust your health to a citizen doctor just because he produced a syringe?” No, but the contexts there are somewhat different. We agree that the O’Keefe case is an example of citizen journalism gone wrong, but we think trashing the whole concept over a few bad examples is no more responsible than dismissing traditional journalism because of Jayson Blair. About 80 commenters weigh with their views.

Let’s keep this death watch thing in perspective. World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers CEO Christoph Riess told the World Editor’s Forum in Hamburg last week, “Whatever form the newspaper takes, it will remain the dominant media force in the world.” He cited the 61% growth in print newspaper circulation in 185 countries over the last year as evidence, and noted that print newspapers “reach more audience than the Internet.”Riess is right that newspaper circulation is growing dramatically in many developing countries. However, whether that trend holds up for long is questionable. As these economies mature, it’s likely that more-prosperous citizens will leap directly to online outlets and bypass the 15-year learning curve that the U.S. went through.

Which may not be such a bad thing. Scarborough Research reports that the 9 million people who use e-readers are also avid news consumers. “E-Reader households are 11% more likely to read a newspaper regularly than an average adult,” writes Editor & Publisher. What’s more, e-reader households are nearly 50% more likely than average consumers to visit a newspaper website. You can find the press release here.

And Finally…

From The Onion:

Citing a desire to gain influence in Washington, the American people confirmed Friday that they have hired high-powered D.C. lobbyist Jack Weldon of the firm Patton Boggs to help advance their agenda in Congress.

Known among Beltway insiders for his ability to sway public policy on behalf of massive corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, and AT&T, Weldon, 53, is expected to use his vast network of political connections to give his new client a voice in the legislative process.

Read more…

So what are they thinking at The New York Times Co.? Having failed to sell its New England properties last year at an asking price that was reportedly 97% below what the Times Co paid for the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette in 1993, the company has now settled on splitting the Globe into two parts: one paid and the other free.

According to an account in Editor & Publisher:

Whereas Boston.com will continue to offer breaking news, sports, and weather from various sources, along with classified advertising, social networking, and information about travel, restaurants and entertainment, BostonGlobe.com will be designed to mirror the experience of reading the paper’s print edition. It will contain all the reports from the day’s paper as well as exclusive reports, in-depth news, analysis, commentary, photos and graphics, plus video and interactive features.

What does this mean? Will Boston.com become a My Yahoo-like text portal with wire feeds and little else? Will all of the material produced by the paper’s staff of reporters and photographers migrate to the paid edition but not be available to non-paying subscribers? How will those staffers feel about reaching a smaller audience? Will paid subscribers get anything more than an online version of the print edition? If so, why wouldn’t they just choose to receive the print edition in the first place and skip the whole online hoohah?

The answers to these questions will no doubt emerge in the nine months or so that the Globe has to consider its transition. Staffers will be watching the experience of their corporate parent as it imposes a pay wall at nytimes.com in January. BTW, we haven’t heard a whole lot about the plans for that experiment in recent months. We assume it’s still on.

We are on record as believing that paywalls will not work to salvage or grow the newspaper industry, but we also believe that the New York Times Co.’s strategy in this case is sound. Basically, management has recognized that trying to rejuvenate the print operation is futile, so it’s better to manage it into the ground as profitably as possible. This means raising subscription rates, erecting pay walls, holding the line on advertising prices for existing customers and generally trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the print operation that it can. It’s called milking the cash cow, and it’s a tried-and-true business strategy.

It is also a strategy of capitulation. The Boston Globe will never again see growth in its print edition,  so the best it can do is to wring profits out of the dwindling number of subscribers it has. Publishers are learning that over in London right now, where online readership of the Times fell 7.6% between July and August. Page views dipped 22% and time spent on site fell 16%. Some of this was no doubt due to the summer holiday, but the evidence is becoming abundant that pay walls significantly reduce traffic. The question is whether the incremental revenue offsets the corresponding declines in readership. No one has an answer yet, but it appears that newspaper publishers are increasingly willing to admit that print has no future and trying to get what they can out of a dying franchise. Believe it or not, than is healthy.

In the case of the Globe, The Times Co. will hopefully plow profits from paid subscriptions back into new properties that have the potential for growth, but it may choose to do something else instead. In the meantime, the message from the Globe’s move is that print is dead, resuscitation efforts are futile and those who still value print are going to pay for the privilege of receiving it. Not a bad strategy at all. At least it’s realistic.

Miscellany

Staffers at the Globe and elsewhere might want to look at the experience in Pittsburgh, where the Post-Gazette‘s PG+ is reportedly profitable and figuring out a sustainable business. The secret sauce in the publishing realm is sports, which motivates fans in the Steel City to fork over dollars in exchange for the latest information about local stars. However, a more important development may be the Web property’s shift into new areas of revenue such as sponsored events. “Those events have included a Post-Gazette “summer camp” featuring classes on fly fishing and cooking, as well as higher-brow discussions of the midterm elections,” writes Poynter’s Bill Mitchell. Hmmm… diversifying revenue. Where have we heard that before?

Did we really say that print is dead? Well The Wall Street Journal’s print advertising revenue jumped 21% in the just-completed quarter compared to the year-ago period, according to a memo from Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton. Online revenue was up, too. Those are impressive numbers, but one month does not a trend make.

Did we really say that print is dead? The Richmond (Mo.) News will reduce its print frequency from daily to twice weekly. Beginning Oct. 18, the 96-year-old News will be published on Monday and Thursday afternoons.

Slate’s Jack Shafer writes entertainingly about the history of the op-ed page, a 40-year-old invention often credited to The New York Times. Not surprisingly, the idea of portraying opposing viewpoints directly across from a newspaper’s editorial page has many fathers, given that it “has undoubtedly been one of the great newspaper innovations of the century,” in the words of John B. Oakes, a Times editorial board member who proposed the concept in the late 1950s. Oakes says the idea was his, but others who were at the Times dispute that, and other papers used similar vehicles as early as the 1920s. The Times‘ move to action was actually spurred by the death of the New York Herald Tribune in 1966, which removed a major conservative voice from the market. Editors realized there was an opportunity in dissent, and began openly soliciting prominent foes to write for their pages. This turned out to be a good business decision, since public figures write for cheap and the Times was able to realize an immediate advertising windfall. The concept was quickly picked up by other newspapers and  became a staple. It’s hard to believe that something we accept so easily today was the subject of so much controversy a few decades ago.

They’re on a bit of a roll over at Verve Wireless, which just raised $7 million for development and expansion of its local ad network and publisher platform. Among the investors are The Associated Press. Verve creates apps to deliver news to mobile devices. In addition to contracts with McClatchy, Belo Interactive and The AP. the company was selected earlier this year by the Audit Bureau of Circulations to measure the audience on mobile applications, mobile browsers and tablets. Verve Wireless claims that 750 publishers worldwide are using its apps.

And Finally…

Publishers could do worse than to rely upon the genius of their reporters. In Chicago, Sun-Times reporter Kara Spak won a “Jeopardy” quiz show to the tune of $24,001. In response to a question about an 1863 poem that mentions “the eighteenth of April in Seventy-Five,” Spak correctly identified the source as “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” We don’t believe her employer requires her to contribute her winnings to the company pension fund. Had she worked for Tribune Co., we’re not so sure that would have applied.

We continue to be amazed at the willingness of news organizations to employ the same tactics of obfuscation and doublespeak that their reporters spend their days combatting. Witness this press release from last week:

The Deseret News today announced a bold new direction to provide innovation and leadership at a time when daily newspapers throughout America are struggling to define a course for the future….New initiatives, includ[e] the creation of Deseret Connect, a broad and uniquely qualified group of story contributors, a new Editorial Advisory Board and the expansion of the news reporter base…These initiatives will increase the depth and quality of the Deseret News’ daily newspaper. As part of these changes, the organization also announced a reduction in workforce.

But this is no ordinary reduction in workforce. This is a 43% reduction in workforce, or 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees, according to Editor & Publisher. Among the victims are Editor Joe Cannon and Publisher Jim Wall. In the worst spinmeister fashion, the publisher doesn’t even touch upon the layoffs until 700 words deep in the release. That news is preceded by five bullet-pointed items peppered with words like “expansion,” “more,” “launch” and “new.” In other words, this is a major cutback spun as an expansion.

We actually see nothing wrong with what Deseret is doing. It’s combining editorial staffs with affiliated broadcast subsidiaries and shifting its focus toward digital delivery. Makes sense to us. It also makes sense that a large layoff may be needed to get costs in line with the new revenue reality. But why bury the lead so deep in the story? Why not come out and admit that tough times demand tough action?

In any case, other news outlets took care of asking the hard questions, including Huffington Post, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Salt Lake Tribune. Charles Apple says he hears the layoffs include the entire design staff.

Salty Words for USA Today Reorg

“It is odd that the best-read print newspaper in the country would walk away from that pre-eminence and embrace technologies in which it lags the field,” writes John K. Hartman, journalism educator and author of two books about USA Today, in an opinion piece in Editor & Publisher. He’s referring to the Gannett flagship’s bold announcement two weeks ago that it would restructure itself around online delivery to mobile devices, lay off 9% of its staff and de-emphasize print.

In a commentary bluntly titled “USA Today Setting Itself Up For Failure,” Hartman argues that not only is USA Today’s strength in print, but that is the only area in which it has innovated. He points to the decline in the national daily’s once market-leading sports coverage at the hands of ESPN and chides publisher David Hunke for betting on online delivery when USA Today isn’t even in the top 10 news sites in the world (It’s actually #21, according to Alexa, placing it behind such competitors as Drudge Report and the Times of India). In the professor’s view, a media company with such little online visibility is crazy to place such a big bet on a digital strategy.

He’s right, but what else is USA Today going to do? It’s already an also-ran on the Web and its print business is declining like everybody else’s. Mobile seems to be an open field at this point, so Gannett is making a play for the only opportunity it has to establish market leadership. There’s also a possibility that a genuine reader-funded subscription model could evolve in the mobile category. That has failed to happen online. USA Today is playing the only hand it’s got.

Part of the problem of analyzing strategic moves like Gannett’s is framing them in the context of a publication’s previous success. Will USA Today dominate the mobile market? Of course not. No one will. The barriers to entry are too low. But can mobile delivery become a growing revenue source to complement a modestly successful Web presence and a profitable print product? Sure it can.

Hartman is critical of USA Today for fumbling away its leadership in sports coverage to ESPN.com, but the reality is that broad-based media will always lose out to narrow, targeted media. The best strategy for a comprehensive news site is to be everywhere but expect to lead nowhere. In this age of hyper-focused media, that’s not a very comfortable position, but it’s about the only hope a brand like USA Today has got.

Miscellany

Also in the realm of church-owned newspapers, the price for the floundering Washington Times is $1.00. At least that’s what a Unification Church-affiliated buyer could pay, according to a memo released to the media. The selling price probably reflects a bit of a family discount, since the buyer is Doug Joo, an ally of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church owns the paper. It’s not like the one-buck price is a bargain; the buyer has to assume all the paper’s unspecified financial obligations. The Washington Times has cut 40% of its staff this year.

Journalism schools are teaching more bells and whistles and less journalism, or at least that’s what some journalists and educators think. About.com’s Tony Rogers cites of some trends that make traditionalists uncomfortable, including the University of Colorado at Boulder’s recent announcement that it is considering dismantling its 700-student journalism school in favor of an interdisciplinary communication program. Roger spoke to several journalism educators who said schools are increasingly stressing video cameras and Photoshop over the  essential tools of good reporting. As a result, there are jobs for journalists with good public affairs reporting skills sitting open. While not denying that multimedia skills are critical, educators say the balance is getting out of whack, and we’re producing less capable journalists as a result.

Newspaper publishers probably welcome any help they can get these days, even if it’s from the company that perpetuated the largest oil spill in history. BP bought newspaper ads in 126 markets in 17 states in the three months after the spill, according to the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce.  BP dropped over $93 million in advertising during the three months after the spill began. That’s about three times what it spent in a comparable period a year ago. Most of the newspaper ads were targeted at the states most affected by the spill.

USA Today, which set off a publishing nuke, the impact of which still reverberates across the industry 28 years later, is undertaking the most significant overhaul of its format and strategy in its history. The Gannett Flagship is the scrapping of its traditional four-part organization (News, Sports, Money, Life) in favor of a cluster of 13 “content rings” that will produce information for distribution in both print and digital format. The rings will include Your Life, Travel, Breaking News, Investigative, Washington/Economy, Tech, and Auto, among others, paidContent.org reported. The company said the new organization is designed to address the growing importance of smart phones and tablets as delivery vehicles and potential sources of subscription revenue. About 130 staffers, or 9% of the workforce, will lose their jobs in the reshuffling.

An executive reorganization puts former life section editor Susan Weiss in charge of content. According to a slide presentation obtained by the Associated Press, Weiss will have a “collaborative relationship” with the paper’s vice president of business development. The presentation said the restructuring will “usher in a new way of doing business that aligns sales efforts with the content we produce.” The statement is already raising eyebrows by publishing pundits who fear that the deteriorating business situation in American newspapers will force editorial departments to become handmaidens of sales operations. Publisher Dave Hunke and editor Editor John Hillkirk said nothing will interfere with the paper’s commitment to independent journalism. However, as paidContent wryly put it, “While this doesn’t necessarily mean a complete demolition of the “Chinese Wall” that traditionally exists at established news organizations, it certainly sounds like it will be little more than a nylon curtain.”

Publishing executives would be wise to closely watch USA Today‘s moves. While the paper has long been derided as a journalism lightweight, it has a history of innovation in adapting to changing audience tastes. Many publishing veterans sniffed at USA Today in the early days, believing its formula of short stories without jumps, large infographics and generous use of color represented a dumbing down of news. A few years later, nearly all of them had adapted the same style. In the years since, USA Today has solidly established itself as a national institution with a readership of more than 1.8 million.

It’s particularly interesting that USA Today has made such a public commitment to harmonizing its editorial and advertising operations. This is a bitter pill for traditionalists to swallow, but a necessary one if professional news organizations are to thrive in the future. We believe that win-win solutions are possible when creative minds seek them. Few have done so to this point, and USA Today‘s strategy shift shouldn’t be dismissed until it’s had a chance to work.

Miscellany

Former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner is among the candidates to take over the bankrupt Tribune Co. once it emerges from Chapter 11 reorganization. Eisner confirmed speculation that he is a candidate for the top job in a Variety interview this week. Jeff Shell, a former News Corp. cable executive who’s now with Comcast, is being considered for the CEO slot. Presumably, that means Eisner would be chairman. In the Variety interview, Eisner expressed support for paywalls. “The salvation of the newspaper is some kind of pay arrangement [online], which will evolve into something significant,” he said. The Tribune may actually be a bargain. Romenesko got hold of a memo stating that Tribune Co. has $1.6 billion in cash and generated $18 million more in cash flow in July than in the same month last year.

Newspapers as we know them will be irrelevant in a decade, at least in Australia, digital media consultant Ross Dawson told the Australian Newspaper Publishers’ Association yesterday. Or at least that’s what he told Editor & Publisher he planned to say earlier in the week. Dawson, who is considered a media seer Down Under, said the publishing platform of the future will be iPads and their derivatives, which will fall in price so much that they’ll be given away free within a few years. By that time, news organizations will be earning serious revenue from subscriber dollars. But they’d better not get comfortable. Media revenues will soar, but “established media organizations will need to reinvent themselves to participate in that growth.”

Dawson is a big fan of tablets as a delivery medium and has several interesting posts on his blog about a topic. the chart below is one of the free takeaways (click to download).

The financially troubled Washington Times is reportedly being sold to News World Media Development, which is affiliated with the Unification Church, which owns the Times. The conservative daily, which claims a circulation of 40,000, has cut its staff by 40% in a desperate effort to stay afloat. Executive Editor Sam Dealey called the impending sale a “welcome development.”

Add the Waco Tribune-Herald to the growing list of metro dailies that are putting up paywalls. Beginning Sept. 15, non-print subscribes will have to pay $9.95 per month, or $1.99 for a 24-hour pass to WacoTrib.com. We had a chance to work with a couple of the top editors from WacoTrib last summer and we wish them all the luck in the world.

The former Philadelphia Newspapers continues to struggle toward viability. Newspaper Guild employees at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News voted for a package of wage cuts totaling about 6% in exchange for a year of job security for unionized reporters, editors and advertising staff. The company is also changing its name to the Philadelphia Media Network.  The Guild is the first of the paper’s14 unions to agree to terms with the new owners, who bought the paper in a wild and wooly auction in April. With 500 members, though, it’s considered the big cahuna of the negotiation process. The new owners have pledged to keep the Inquirer and Daily News editorial staffs separate and to manage the company for growth.

“Inc. magazine has released its annual list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the country. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, only 59 of them are media companies,” writes Lauren Kirchner on the Columbia Journalism Review website. True that, but Kirchner is choosing to take a glass-half-empty perspective. You can turn that statistic around and marvel at the fact that any media companies are on the list. Kirchner does go on to cite a number of interesting media startups that are actually growing and adding people. They aren’t media in the conventional sense, but they do appear to be onto something. This column Is worth reading for the examples alone.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism gave mainstream media a lukewarm but nonetheless positive endorsement for its coverage of the Gulf oil spill. Noting that the three-months-plus duration of the event challenged news organizations to explain and provide context for the event, Pew said media outlets rose to the challenge under trying conditions. “A news industry coping with depleted staffing, decreasing revenues and shrinking ambition was tested by the oil spill and seemed to pass,” Pew said.

And Finally…

Popular comic strip “Cathy” will end its 34-year run on Oct. 2. Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, 60, who started the strip as a series of autobiographical doodlings that she sent to her mother, said she wants to spend more time with her family and explore other creative avenues. Cathy was an instant hit in 1976. It struck a chord with the growing number of women who were entering the workforce and struggling to balance career and personal priorities. It currently runs in 1,400 newspapers. In recent years, the strip has been criticized for being dated and even anti-feminist. It’s still clipped to a lot of refrigerators, though.

Forbes likes blogs. In fact, the magazine that bills itself as the “Capitalist Tool” is now requiring its reporters to blog. The new rule is part of an effort to maximize the value of True/Slant, a blog-driven citizen journalism venture founded by Lewis Dvorkin, a veteran journalist who’s worked at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AOL and – you guessed it – Forbes.

Forbes Media was an early investor in True/Slant and apparently liked what they saw enough to buy the company and hire Dvorkin. In its new skin, the True/Slant platform will include content not only from Forbes’ bloggers but also from selected experts in finance and investing. The Columbia Journalism Review story says the first few entries look promising, but questions whether Forbes will be able to maintain its quality standards if all reporters are now required to blog on the side. It contrasts the Forbes approach to The Economist, which rigorously enforces a consistent style and voice, regardless of author.

Dvorkin doesn’t seem too concerned. “Editorial command and control is a relic of the past and has no place in a Web world,” he wrote in a True/Slant anniversary post last year. “It will slow you down, cost you and stifle the upheaval you want to unleash.” And CJR’s Lauren Kirchner is inclined to give Dvorkin the benefit of the doubt. “One can argue that, given the state of the online news industry, upheaval is good, and the time for Hail Mary passes is upon us,” she writes.

Speaking of magazines, Jeff Jarvis suggests eight ways magazines can survive if they’re willing to turn the traditional model on its head. Survival is job one for the U.S. magazine industry, which has seen circulation of the top brands plummet by more than 60% this decade. Jarvis’ number one suggestion: “Ignore print. Enable community…Magazines still have tremendous, if very perishable, value if you know how to unlock it because their people care about the same stuff. Enable communities to build and meet and create value around their interests, especially those that are specialized.” Magazines are still nexus points for communities of readers, but their value derives not from producing content as much as enabling community members to create and manage their own. Curation, anyone? Some of his recommendations – specifically that magazines diversify their revenue models – sound a lot like the ones we proposed back in April.

Miscellany

Publish2 announced the launch of News Exchange Co-ops, which make it “easier than ever for news organizations to share content with each other.” The new service is based on News Exchange, a service the fledgling company announced in May as “a new efficient supply and distribution chain for high quality content brands.” In its earlier announcement, Publish2 positioned itself squarely against the Associated Press, the wire service that angered some of its largest members with price increases as their businesses entered a free-fall two years ago. Unlike the AP, Publish2 isn’t set up as a source of original content, but rather as a way for news organizations to create content-sharing networks organized around topics, regions or anything else. If this sounds a lot like RSS feeds, there’s a little more to it than that. Publishers can “Set limits on which newsorgs have access to your content. You can exclude specific newsorgs, include specific newsorgs, or open your content up to everyone,” says a tutorial on the home page. Copy editing is apparently extra. Megan Garber has an excellent analysis of News Exchange on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog that looks at its rivalry with AP.

Publish2 describes as co-op as “a group of news organizations that all give each other permission to republish the content from one or more of their newswires.” The concept is similar to informal cooperatives that have been established in New York and Ohio. “You can create a co-op, invite your sharing partners to join, and then each of you adds a ‘Local News’ newswire to the co-op to share with the group,” wrote Ryan Sholin, Director of News Innovation, in an e-mail. “All newspapers contribute via their newswires, automatically importing stories from their print publishing systems. All  newspapers can then automatically export co-op content to their print publishing systems using AP standard formats.” There’s that AP again.

National Newspaper Association (NNA) representatives are opposing the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) proposal to drop Saturday service, saying it will hurt rural communities that have few alternatives to weekly newspapers for local information. NNA postal expert Max Heath said the loss will be felt most acutely in coverage of high school sports, which “form the nucleus of community gatherings. If the Postal Service’s mission is still to bind the nation together, it must use the bindings that the community chooses,” Heath told the Postal Regulatory Commission. In fact, the cost savings that are achieved from axing Saturday service will be more than offset by competition from private delivery services, which will step in to serve local newspapers, Heath said. Newspaper delivery has been the only growth item in the USPS’s revenue line over the last year. The USPS says it’s on track to lose $7 billion this year and that eliminating Saturday service could save $3 billion. Lawmakers are trying to block the plan.

Forbes likes blogs. In fact, the magazine that bills itself as the “Capitalist Tool” is now requiring its reporters to blog. The new rule is part of an effort to maximize the value of True/Slant, a blog-driven citizen journalism venture founded by Lewis Dvorkin, a veteran journalist who’s worked at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AOL and – you guessed it – Forbes.
Forbes Media was an early investor in True/Slant and apparently liked what they saw enough to buy the company and hire Dvorkin. In its new skin, the True/Slant platform will include content not only from Forbes’ bloggers but also from selected experts in finance and investing. The Columbia Journalism Review story says the first few entries look promising, but questions whether Forbes will be able to maintain its quality standards if all reporters are now required to blog on the side. It contrasts the Forbes approach to The Economist, which rigorously enforces a consistent style and voice, regardless of author.
Dvorkin doesn’t seem too concerned. “Editorial command and control is a relic of the past and has no place in a Web world,” he wrote in a True/Slant anniversary post last year. “It will slow you down, cost you and stifle the upheaval you want to unleash.” And CJR’s Lauren Kirchner is inclined to give Dvorkin the benefit of the doubt. “One can argue that, given the state of the online news industry, upheaval is good, and the time for Hail Mary passes is upon us,” she writes.
Speaking of magazines, Jeff Jarvis suggests eight ways magazines can survive if they’re willing to turn the traditional model on its head. Survival is job one for the U.S. magazine industry, which has seen circulation of the top brands plummet by more than 60% this decade. Jarvis’ number one suggestion: “Ignore print. Enable community…Magazines still have tremendous, if very perishable, value if you know how to unlock it because their people care about the same stuff. Enable communities to build and meet and create value around their interests, especially those that are specialized.” Magazines are still nexus points for communities of readers, but their value derives not from producing content as much as enabling community members to create and manage their own. Curation, anyone? Some of his recommendations – specifically that magazines diversify their revenue models – sound a lot like the ones we proposed back in April.

Miscellany

Publish2 announced the launch of News Exchange Co-ops, which make it “easier than ever for news organizations to share content with each other.” The new service is based on News Exchange, a service the fledgling company announced in May as “a new efficient supply and distribution chain for high quality content brands.” In its earlier announcement, Publish2 positioned itself squarely against the Associated Press, the wire service that angered some of its largest members with price increases as their businesses entered a free-fall two years ago. Unlike the AP, Publish2 isn’t set up as a source of original content, but rather as a way for news organizations to create content-sharing networks organized around topics, regions or anything else. If this sounds a lot like RSS feeds, there’s a little more to it than that. Publishers can “Set limits on which newsorgs have access to your content. You can exclude specific newsorgs, include specific newsorgs, or open your content up to everyone,” says a tutorial on the home page. Copy editing is apparently extra. Megan Garber has an excellent analysis of News Exchange on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog that looks at its rivalry with AP.
Publish2 describes as co-op as “a group of news organizations that all give each other permission to republish the content from one or more of their newswires.” The concept is similar to informal cooperatives that have been established in New York and Ohio. “You can create a co-op, invite your sharing partners to join, and then each of you adds a ‘Local News’ newswire to the co-op to share with the group,” wrote Ryan Sholin, Director of News Innovation, in an e-mail. “All newspapers contribute via their newswires, automatically importing stories from their print publishing systems. All  newspapers can then automatically export co-op content to their print publishing systems using AP standard formats.” There’s that AP again.

National Newspaper Association (NNA) representatives are opposing the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) proposal to drop Saturday service, saying it will hurt rural communities that have few alternatives to weekly newspapers for local information. NNA postal expert Max Heath said the loss will be felt most acutely in coverage of high school sports, which “form the nucleus of community gatherings. If the Postal Service’s mission is still to bind the nation together, it must use the bindings that the community chooses,” Heath told the Postal Regulatory Commission. In fact, the cost savings that are achieved from axing Saturday service will be more than offset by competition from private delivery services, which will step in to serve local newspapers, Heath said. Newspaper delivery has been the only growth item in the USPS’s revenue line over the last year. The USPS says it’s on track to lose $7 billion this year and that eliminating Saturday service could save $3 billion. Lawmakers are trying to block the plan.

Keep an eye on the launch of TBD.com this week, because it could presage a new format for hyperlocal journalism. Launching initially in the Washington, D.C. market, the venture combines a staff of professional reporters with a network of 127 local bloggers. All in all, parent Allbritton Communications has put about 100 people on the project. The DCist provides the details:

TBD.com will feature 12 full-time reporters, including one editor focusing solely on the neighborhood beats of population centers in the District, Virginia and Maryland…The website will also feature original reporting on sports…entertainment, transportation and a big focus on weather. But the real highlight of TBD’s Web presence is its inclusionary ethos: TBD’s blog affiliate network, which currently boasts an impressive 127 well-thought-of blogs covering everything from small businesses to allergies in Montgomery County, will drive content. The affiliate network is designed to plug in the gaps that the reporters…cannot reach.”

TBD has been blogging about its prelaunch activities, underlining its commitment to inclusive journalism. For example, staffers will hold office hours in public locations and invite locals to stop by to brainstorm, critique and just chat. Editors are also asking readers to be an active part of the reporting process by correcting errors, adding facts and suggesting new dimensions for a story. They say that linking to original source material will be standard operating procedure and that they won’t even try to compete with local bloggers when the bloggers provide superior coverage. In fact, the blogger network appears to be essential to TBD’s value proposition.
Laura McGann thinks this venture will be worth watching, and she lists six reasons why on Nieman Journalism Lab. Among them is TBD’s almost obsessive attitude toward making the entire news reporting process transparent, social and interactive. She also likes the site’s commenting policy, which assigns the highest visibility to those commenters who have contributed the most value in the past. That approach should reduce comment spam and create an informal hierarchy of community contributors.

Also on the hyperlocal front, AOL’s Patch network has grown to 99 locations in nine states, and now employs 48 people in Massachusetts. Each Patch site focuses on a local community of between 15,000 and 50,000 people. Each region is covered by one full-time editor who writes and shoots video. Massachusetts has emerged as a kind of Petri dish for hyperlocal reporting, with new ventures from the Boston Globe and Gatehouse Media. AOL has reportedly poured $50 million into Patch.

Miscellany

Jeff Jarvis sums up a new reality of the media world that has big implications: “Once-abundant privacy is now scarce. Once-scarce publicness is now abundant.” Jarvis goes on to riff about what this means to media organizations. Having control of public awareness used to be the source of significant value, but now that it’s easy for anyone to go public with anything, the essential value of traditional media is lost, he says. “They are being beat by those who break up their control and hand it out for free,” he writes.

The flip side of this dynamic is that new value is now being created from “publicness.” Sites like Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com deliver value by harvesting public comments and selling advertising against them. A couple of HP scientists claim they can now predict the success of a movie based upon anticipatory chatter on Twitter. Looks like that could be the basis of another profit-making venture. Of course, there are still nasty unresolved issues, like who owns public information and how should the creators of that information be compensated? Jarvis doesn’t suggest solutions, but his fundamental point – that ownership of information is no longer a valuable asset – is well-argued. It’s also anathema to how media have traditionally operated. “Being public is about giving up control, which is the exact opposite of how media used to make their businesses,” he comments.

Cablevision Systems Corp. reported a sharp drop in second-quarter profit as debt service offset growth in its core video, Internet and phone services. The news was pretty positive overall, except for Newsday, which saw revenue fall 9.7% to $80.1 million on a 12.6% drop in ad revenue. Reports from the Washington Post Co. were more encouraging, however. Newspaper publishing revenue increased 2% in the second quarter of the year to $172.7 million, even though print advertising revenue at the Washington Post newspaper fell 6%. The big winner was display online advertising revenue, which grew 20%, and online classified revenue, which increased 5%.

Public Policy Matters, an information resource for journalists who cover public policy issues, is eliminating its subscription fee for journalists. The service, which delivers a daily summary of news, press releases and reports culled from more than 2,300 government and public policy-related websites, is converting from a for-profit enterprise to a tax-exempt organization. “It could take four months or more for the IRS to act,” wrote Editor Edward Zuckerman. “We are providing free subscriptions without waiting for the IRS to act, and we hope 1,000 or more journalists will have signed up by the time our tax-exempt status is confirmed. We believe that a foundation is more likely to give us favorable attention if we can claim,” a larger audience. Here’s the subscription link.
And Finally…

From the Associated Press:

KEY WEST, Fla. — A white-bearded 64-year-old Florida man won this year’s Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, an event in Key West’s annual Hemingway Days festival that ended Sunday.

Charles Bicht, of Vero Beach, triumphed over 123 other entrants in the late Saturday night competition, a highlight of the annual celebration that honors the literary giant who lived and wrote in Key West throughout the 1930s.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for 12 years,” said Bicht, who credited his win to perseverance after 11 unsuccessful attempts. “Nothing can compare to it.”

‘When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who’s been working for a decade, not a couple of years,’ says Duy Linh Tu of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. ‘I worry about burnout.'”

He’s talking about the pressure of the new online newsroom. It used to be that daily deadlines were considered intense, but in today’s hyper-competitive environment, many reporters are expected to file several times a day. “Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers,” writes The New York Times.

Some staffers at The Politico start their work days before dawn. Editors walk the aisles asking who’s broken a scoop that day, and reporters may wake up to find an e-mail sent at 5 a.m. asking why they were beaten on a story. The pressure is on to file something – anything – that a reader hasn’t seen before.

The Politico knows that the new competitive environment doesn’t tolerate delay.  “Everybody in the audience is his or her own editor based on where they want to move their mouse or their finger on the iPad,” says Politico’s editor in chief, John F. Harris. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the Politico has lost about 20% of its news staff this year. But where are they gonna go? The website’s results-fueled journalism is becoming the norm.

The Christian Science Monitor sends a daily e-mail telling its reporters which stories had the highest view count the previous day. Gawker Media displays the top 10 most viewed stories, along with reporters’ bylines, on a monitor in its offices. Some news outlets even compensate their staff based on traffic. And then there are search-driven word factories like Associated Content and Demand Media that assign stories based upon search popularity and pay by the page view.  Search marketing expert Mike Moran calls these outfits “content chop shops” that cheapen quality by elevating search visibility. But you can’t argue with success. Yahoo bought Associated Content for $90 million and Demand Media is reportedly hoping to be the first $1 billion IPO in nearly a decade.

The good news is that some media properties are hot again. The bad news is that they’re places where few people can apparently stand to work (See also Search-Driven News).

Miscellany

A.H. Belo reported a narrower second-quarter loss, but what stole the headlines on the earnings call was the rising importance of circulation revenue, which now accounts for nearly 30% of the company’s sales. In fact, circulation revenue was up 66% in the quarter, largely due to price increases at the Dallas Morning News. Executives crowed that the Dallas paper is now the third most-expensive in the country, behind only The New York Times and the Boston Globe. The prices are a function of “the quantity and quality of what we put in the newspaper,” said Belo CEO Robert Decherd. They’re also a function of what the dwindling ranks of elderly print readers are willing to pay. Belo also reported that it has $60 million in the bank and is increasing is earnings before interest, depreciation, taxes and amortization (EBITDA), even though revenues continue to decline. The company’s strategy appears to reflect that of many of its competitors: milk the print cow while you can, cut costs and hope to get traction in new markets. That’ll work for a little while longer.

The Democrat-controlled Federal Communications Commission surprised everyone this week by choosing to defend rules adopted under the George W. Bush administration that loosed restrictions on media cross-ownership. In a filing with the US Appeals Court, the FCC supported the 2007 ruling by a Republican-dominated FCC that made it easier for media companies to own multiple media outlets in the same marketing. The agency had been widely expected to take the first chance it had to reverse that decision in the name of restoring more competition to the market. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski issued a statement that we read three or four times and still couldn’t understand. Perhaps the FCC has decided that owning multiple local media properties doesn’t matter for much when all are tanking at about the same speed. Fellow commissioner Michael Copps attacked the FCC’s decision and vowed to move the strengthening of cross-ownership rules “to the commission’s front burner where it deserves to be.”

And Finally

Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Breen decided to satirize the Gulf oil spill by drawing some of his cartoons using oil instead of ink. The process turned out to be a lot more involved than you might think. Breen flew from San Diego to New Orleans on his own dime and then drove to Pensacola, FL to find tar balls of sufficient viscosity to work with. He then diluted the tar with various solvents until he hit upon gasoline as the perfect element to soften the tar enough to work with. The result is a striking sepia tone, with which Breen has skewered not only BP but also America’s obsession with oil. Here’s Breen’s page on the San Diego Union-Tribune site. Click on the image at right to see a gallery.

In case you missed it, the perpetually poverty-stricken Journal Register Co. is doing some pretty gutsy stuff. The company, which was delisted from the NASDAQ New York Stock Exchange two years ago, has a new CEO who’s interested in reinventing publishing. John Paton (right) has a blog and a Twitter Account. He also has the admiration of Jeff Jarvis, who doesn’t confer praise lightly.

What got Jarvis so excited was a July 4 experiment in which the company’s 18 dailies published using nothing but free, web-based tools. They called this the Ben Franklin Project in recognition of both the country’s birthday and Journal Register’s liberation from ancient proprietary production systems.

More importantly, the company changed the way it reported the news for that day. Readers were actively involved at the front of the process in directing the reporting staff and looking virtually over reporter’s shoulders as stories were prepared. “The Ben Franklin Project is the beginning of a new era of an open and transparent newsgathering process,” wrote Paton on his blog. This is a company worth watching again.

MediaShift has an excerpt from journalism educator Alfred Hermida about rethinking the role of the journalist in the participatory age. While Hermida doesn’t break a lot of new ground, he crystallizes some concepts we’ve been talking about here for some time, namely that the evolving role of the journalist is as aggregator and authenticator rather than original reporter. Quoting Tom Rosenstiel, Hermida describes the still-important role of the journalist as “a sense-maker to derive meaning, a navigator to help orient audiences and a community leader to engage audiences.”

He also quotes from an article by BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks that calls for an end to “Fortress journalism.” Horrocks writes, “In the fortress world, the consumption of journalism was through clearly defined products and platforms… but in the blended world of Internet journalism all those products are available within a single platform and mental space… the reader may never be aware from which fortress the information has come.”

In the world Horrocks describes, the audience pulls together its own newspaper, woven from bits and pieces assembled from various online sources. The consequence of this is that media organizations can’t afford to reinvent the wheel anymore. Each needs to focus on what it does best and pool efforts rather than duplicate them. So maybe 90 of those 100 journalists who currently attend a Presidential press conference can spend their time out in the field assessing reaction and gathering analysis rather than listening to the same thing. What a concept.

Miscellany

Advertiser optimism continues to grow. Advertiser Perceptions Inc. (API) reports that 32% of ad executives now expect to increase their ad spending over the next 12-months. That’s the largest percentage increase since API began asking ad execs about their intentions in 2007. A year ago, the figure was -5%. The 1,412 ad executives who were surveyed continue to be pessimistic about magazine and national newspaper advertising, with intentions to increase spending down 10% and 32% respectively. But even those sentiments are greatly improved over the -26%/-46% plans of a year ago. The biggest winners are digital and mobile media, with more than 60% of ad executives planning to increase spending there.

Give Tribune Co. credit for trying to diversify its revenue stream. The bankrupt company is dedicating 10 people to a new consulting business that will sell knowledge of social media and Internet advertising to small and mid-sized businesses. The new venture is called 435 Digital Services, a nod to Tribune Co.’s headquarter address at 435 N. Michigan Ave.

The Denver Post is going after a local political site, saying that Colorado Pols is stealing its copyrighted material. The political site, which generates marginal revenue, allegedly lifted between three and eight paragraphs of news articles from the Post and other publications. Colorado Pols says it doesn’t need the Post. “There’s thousands of other outlets out there,” says founder Jason Bane. Post owner Media News is one of those media companies that wants to raise the perceived value of its content. The company has confirmed that it will begin testing online pay models this summer at its newspapers in Chico, Calif., and York, Pa.

Speaking of pay walls, Time magazine now has one. Secure in its role as the only newsweekly left standing, the venerable but mostly irrelevant magazine is requiring readers who want to read online versions of its print article to subscribe to either the print or the iPad edition. They can then see the same stuff that’s in the magazine on a screen. Online-only content will continue to be free.

Circ Labs, the University of Missouri-backed startup that is developing a tool that learns from a user’s online behavior and delivers recommendations for content, has launched a prototype service prior to general release. The prototype installs a Firefox add-in that enables the browser to recommend an article and to read similar articles suggested by the algorithm. Users can share content with each other and be notified of new content as it becomes available.

To test, go to gocirculate.com and create an account. The confirmation page contains a link to the toolbar software. You can then browse and add pages to the knowledge base. We were able to install the menu bar, but couldn’t log onto the site for some reason, and Circ Labs provides no means to recover a password. We guess that’s why they’re calling this a test.

Buried in a lightweight study of the Internet habits of young women is this nugget: “Nearly half — 48% — of all respondents now claim to get more news through Facebook than from traditional news outlets.”  This number comes from Lightspeed Research and Oxygen Media, which surveyed the habits of 1,504 U.S. adults who use social media. The researchers also claim that 39% of women between the ages of 18 and 34 now describe themselves as Facebook addicts, and that a third of young women check Facebook before going to the bathroom in the morning. We supposed one needs one’s priorities.

Variety’s website has adopted DailyMe’s behavioral tracking and recommendation technology called Newstogram.  Newstogram generates data on user’s interests to deliver visitors content, advertisements and e-commerce opportunities tailored specifically to them, based on their specific interests and behavior. DailyMe started life as a customized news service for consumers but has morphed into a customization engine that publishers can serve up to their visitors. Readers get filtered news and publishers get better insight into what motivates readers.

And Finally…

Roy Rivenburg is still at it. The jokester who dreamed up Not the LA Times two years ago continues to tweak the nose of the West Coast’s most self-important newspaper. A recent story has Times editors arguing over whether it’s better to start articles with the time or the weather. The inspiration is this page of formulaic opening sentences extracted from the real newspaper. “If I don’t find out the time of day in the first sentence, I stop reading,” says one subscriber.