Category: Media

So, I finally get quoted in Romenesko, everybody’s favorite old-school journalism blog — and it’s something I’m pretty sure I didn’t say:

Newspaper pages of the future will look like web pages
Investor’s Business Daily
That’s Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr’s prediction. “What a newspaper might come to look like is a printed digest of what’s online,” he says. The American Press Institute’s Vickey Williams tells Doug Tsuruoka: “The newsrooms that are successful in the future will move faster and be more outwardly focused on news consumer preferences and less risk-adverse than they are today. The successful newsroom will anticipate rather than react to change.”

I went back and talked to the reporter, and it appears he was asking about design and I was talking about content. Of course, newspapers are going to seem less fresh to anyone who’s been on the Web in the last 24 hours. But I don’t think they’re going to take their design cues from the Web. Newspaper websites already take too many design queues from the print edition, and they need to diverge from print.
We’re in for a period of innovation as newspapers try to figure out what they should look like when all the news they print is already (or should be) online. Multiple changes in ownership, cost-cutting, declining circulation and ad pages are going to force newspaper editors and designers to rethink what a newspaper is. And they’re going to come up with more than one answer. I’m not prepared to say right now what the results will be, but I’m willing to bet it won’t look like a Web page.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

I’ve been visiting a lot of news sites and looking at video in preparation for a report on podcasting I’ve just completed and an upcoming report on best practices. It’s not surprising how rough a lot of the video is on non-TV news sites. But I was surprised how inconsistent we are about the way that we offer video to our readers.
Usually there’s a dedicated section for video on the site. Often, but not always, it’s linked to the individual story. Sometimes remarkable videos are hidden inside a special package for a particular story.
It’s often unclear whether the video linked comes from in-house, an affiliated TV station, or a wire service — until you start the video.
Sometimes we let the user choose the format (QuickTime, Windows Media, or Real) on the first click, sometimes we ask for them to choose a format after the link, and sometimes we don’t give them a choice.
Sometimes we use a screen capture to link to the video, sometimes a photo, and sometimes we just use a headline or the word “VIDEO” and sometimes an icon. Or some combination of the above.
Worst of all, your chances of getting a reasonable, permanent URL for any video clip, or even a reliable landing page, is pretty much a crapshoot. This continues to be a huge problem, and it’s especially troubling since video benefits so much from viral sharing.
The sheer variety of the way we link to video and promote it on our home pages is a good indication of how immature this technology is. We’re in a stage of experimentation, and producers feel it’s still too early to even steal good ideas. The lack of consistency keeps video adoption lower than it should be. A good resolution for 2007 would be to steal more ideas for designing online video into our sites.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

It’s hard to quantify, but we’ve all seen stories on Digg whose popularity are simply baffling.
Niall Kennedy did some good spadework on a specific story that did very well indeed on Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and del.icio.us which was clearly boosted by votes from interested parties. Digg and others are working hard to deal with this kind of abuse. But until it is eliminated, the credibility of social news sites will be in question.
Our research shows that consumers see social news sites as less trustworthy than news media or portal sites — by a fairly wide margin. Stories like this tell us it’s going to take a while for social news aggregators to win the trust they need to be more than a fringe source for most consumers.
I took a look at consumer interest in social news in reports on social news aggregators and trustworthiness, both of which were released last week.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Jeff Jarvis provides more evidence that the future of “television” is being remade on the web, mostly by amateurs, hackers, and struggling artists.
Online video in 2006 feels like the Web in 1994. It’s all pretty rough, but a lot of it is very creative. Much of the stuff that’s being created for the web by the mainstream media has a raw, experimental quality that we’re not used to from big organizations.
Jeff’s story of producing his segment for CBS versus producing a segment for Amanda Congdon’s webcast hints that the eventual impact of web video on television will be greater than the impact of the Web on print.
One of the most significant parts of all of this is that amateurs can produce higher-quality video than is possible with standard Grown-Up TV production techniques. The technology is necessary but not sufficient. Production processes have to be re-invented for the low-overhead, small-screen, short-subject, random-access, bandwidth-thrifty web. We’re still in inventing a new grammar of online video, just as Desi Arnaz (yes, Desi!) invented multi-camera production techniques late in the early days of television.
I’m finishing up a report on the market for online video in the news business. I have also begun to take a look at best practices for online video.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Google’s new newspaper advertising service shows an adaptation to new markets and willingness to listen to business partners that goes beyond anything I’ve seen from them before.
Everything about the service shows that they’re paying attention to the folks who’ll be distributing their ads: not making the service a full auction, but giving the papers a chance to accept bids for ad space; giving media the ability to review and decline proposed ads for any reason; and the creating ability to forge connections with an entirely new set of advertisers who may never have advertised in print.
Print advertising is a complex business. In broadcast, if a particular saleable minute doesn’t optimize its revenue, that opportunity is lost. Although publishers often have space that will run unsold, they can also add pages to accommodate more advertising. As the daily deadlines approach, it can be a judgment call whether to accept a particular ad.
What’s less clear is the long-term effect. Even with these safeguards, Google’s new service may put further pressure on newspaper margins by increasing the pool of competition. The basic economics of the newspaper business are like most media, with high fixed costs and low variable costs. When there’s competition, this almost inevitably leads to vicious price-cutting, often below the cost of production. They don’t call it a newspaper war for nothing. Traditionally, the discounts flowed to readers. In the current circulation, they will have to flow to advertisers.
For this service to work for publishers, they will have to hold the line on prices, formats, and client relationships.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Every six months, we hear from the Audit Bureau of Circulations that newspaper circulation has declined yet again. This isn’t exclusively bad news.
While some of the circulation decline is due to the continuing slow-burn generational crisis, some it appears to be due to needed corrections in the composition of newspaper circulation.
At an NAA conference this summer, I stated that if I were the publisher of a daily newspaper, my first move would be to clean out my circulation and focus on quality, rather than quantity. Alan Mutter over at Reflections of a Newsosaur seems to be headed in the same direction. Many in the industry understand this what look like extra-lousy circulation numbers are the result of clearer thinking by newspaper publishers.
The web provides publishers with the opportunity to segment not only their audiences, but their news. It’s important to stop thinking about fulfilling your promise to your advertisers and fulfill your promise to your readers. Think about what well-defined audience will be reading the paper edition in ten years, and aim for that market today. The online edition becomes the way to micro-target neighborhoods and communities that are poorly served by major metro dailies, as well as a way to promote the stories that genuinely matter to a regional audience.
As a former magazine circulation manager in a couple of well-run publishers, my first encounter with a newspaper circulation department was a rude awakening. What I found was a mass of poor direct marketing practice, bad CRM, and just plain junk circulation ginned up to meet the ratebase. A great deal of the junk was kind of shoved into place to maintain circulation numbers that were the heritage of a different era — when newsprint was a lot cheaper, and a man didn’t feel fully dressed unless he was wearing a hat.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Conde Nast’s acquisition of Reddit resonates all kinds of trends that are remaking the online publishing business.
Syndication: We’ve been saying for some time that publishers need to build sites that take advantage of syndication: “Deconstructing the Website”. The increasing prominence of aggregators like Digg, and maybe now Reddit, makes this more urgent.
Aggregation: Publishers need to aggregate as well as syndicate. This is a big untapped opportunity, but one that publishers must explore with technology partners. Reddit’s acquisition may give it an opportunity to provide aggregation services to news organizations. Conde Nast is owned by Advance Publications, which has 25 daily newspapers that could benefit from exploring aggregation.
Social Media: OK, the social media aspect is kind of a no-brainer, but the intersection of social media with syndication and aggregation is a key segment for publishers, and one that I’m exploring in my upcoming report on “Networked News”. Digg made this market famous, but this is a style of aggregation that should go beyond a single company.
Consolidation: We’re predicting continued consolidation in the Internet business, but it may seem counterintuitive to see a large, private, traditional media company acquire a Web company at this late (and expensive) stage. This isn’t anything on the scale of News Corp. buying MySpace, but it shows that you can’t count anyone out of the next phase of consolidation: either as a buyer or a seller.
Web 2.0: Reddit’s not all AJAX-y and bounded by rounded corners like most Web 2.0 sites, but it shows that lightweight database applications that transcend traditional single-site-oriented economics can reward their creators.
My recommendation to Reddit’s new owners would be to not seek false synergies in focusing on integrating Reddit with Conde Nast, but to their advertising, editorial, and financial resources to build an outward-looking business that can partner with other publishers, especially in the news business, to help them compete with Digg.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

David Card faults Google for providing a search engine without a lot of help for users. I didn’t have any trouble creating a custom search engine for a site where I’m a domain expert and integrating the results within my site’s templates, but David has touched on a general problem with Google’s efforts.
Documentation is spotty at best and the tools are designed for hard-core techies. I’ve been using Google Analytics for about a year, and I’m still learning interesting and useful things that I can do with it. I’m also discovering that many of the statistics don’t mean what I thought they did. I would love to make more use of Google Maps in some personal projects, but Google’s tools are too programmer-oriented and I haven’t had the time to seek out more polished third-party tools for map integration. Google Base feels like something you could do lots of fun stuff with, but I’m going to need more than an API to get me started.
In our most recent survey of online consumers, we found that about a quarter of the US online population is now creating its own content and the percentage of bloggers has more than doubled. When anybody can be a Web producer, it’s critical to provide tools that are both powerful and simple. Your core customers are now talented and curious amateurs and no longer programmers looking for an API. And perhaps you shouldn’t be depending on the kindness of strangers to serve your best customers.
Widgetbox gets this right with good-looking, well-presented tools that can be implemented without a lot of head-scratching. A big part of their strategy is to provide distribution to large sites looking to tap into the market of amateur Web producers who just want to solve a problem or have some fun. I wish Google made it this easy to get started with their tools.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review says that, rather than paying a billion dollars for the troubled Los Angeles Times, that the local zillionaires who want to buy it should start their own news-gathering organization instead. “Why offer a million dollars per reporter for the Times?”, he asks.
He’s on to something. There has never been a better time to start a news organization. Why, at a time when the entire concept of the newspaper is in flux, would anyone want to invest in such an enterprise, when they can have more influence over the agenda with a startup? Especially if you have a billion to spend. That’s what Phil Anschultz is doing with the Examiner, creating a national chain of free newspapers. That’s what Ted Turner did with CNN.
Everybody seems to be after a piece of this market, and I’m sure that everyone would have a different opinion about how to go about it. There’s more than one correct answer. My take: Los Angeles is a city of neighborhoods that are themselves entire cities. Each “neighborhood” is only marginally served by the LA Times product. If you focus on the low-hanging fruit, you could come up with a dozen or more communities that need and can support a real paper that focuses first on community news, and secondarily on the common coverage that unites Los Angeles.
And since you’re designing it from the bottom up, you should design it with the Web as your primary news platform and a print edition as your marketing and advertising vehicle. This is a strategy that has real economies of scale on the business side (production, ad sales, circulation). The only editorial economies would be on the share city and county coverage. This is a model that could also rock the Orange County Register in its home market, which is just as diverse as Los Angeles.
Just to be clear: This is nothing like the current wave of free tabloids, which seem to view the Web as unnecessary competition to their core business. And these online sites would be produced by professional journalists, not by amateurs or consumers. Although they would be invited to contribute. This is a model that is working in some communities today, but I don’t believe has been done in a major metro market.
The kind of bottom-up network is described probably doesn’t appeal to the heavyweights who want to own a prestige title like the Los Angeles Times. It’s probably going to take a scrappier millionaire to make it happen. Someone who likes the idea doing journalism more than the idea of owning a newspaper. Someone more like Charles Foster Kane, only less fictional.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.

One of the most important things Web publishers can do to prepare for the future is to disaggregate their sites. It’s time to think of each story — and not your website — as your main product. This is the best way to reap the benefits of links from bloggers and aggregators.
It’s clear that not everyone has gotten the message. Last week, I was featured on the local TV news. I ran a story about the segment on a local news site that I maintain, so my readers could check it out. All I needed to do was to link to the story on the station’s website. That turned out not to be so simple.
The station uses a content management system provided by a supplier to TV stations. Their site had no links to individual segments or landing pages for the segments, because each clip was launched in Windows Media Player by a Javascript. I wasted about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to link to the story before I gave up.
I thought I had solved the problem by calling the reporter, who gave me the webmaster’s name (he had no contact info the website), and calling the (hard to find) main switchboard at the station and asking for the webmaster. He told me how to structure the link.
Even is if the link worked — and it turned out to be a bum link — this is one news organization that is not ready to be aggregated.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.