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Around the Web links about Business of News
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 27 weeks 1 day ago
If you’re following what’s happening in our business, you know that one of the big names today is Ken Doctor. He’s a leading news industry analyst and author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. OK, I can hear what you’re thinking: “I’m trying to get out a newspaper in the most difficult economic times in my lifetime for this business. The last thing I have time for is some media theorist.” I get it. But Doctor writes about trends that aren’t as far down the road as we would like to think – and he definitely has some insights that everyone in community journalism needs to be thinking about. At the Center, we frequently talk about these issues as the difference between hurricanes and tsunamis. Hurricanes announce their presence with wind and tide shifts and bands of rain. Tsunamis are different. They are a gigantic wall of water created by tectonic shifts in the earth. You can be on a beach in sunny weather and be totally unaware that just past the horizon a giant wave is headed your way. The tsunami has already hit the metros, but we see less evidence in community journalism. Nevertheless, it’s coming. And Ken Doctor is one of those people who’s writing about the changing business models brought about by the digital revolution. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, here’s a great introduction. In this article, he starts out talking about Netflix and goes ahead to draw parallels to the news business. He calls Netflix “a canary in the circulation coalmine.” Take a few minutes to look over this interesting piece on the future “newsonomics” of our business.
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 35 weeks 5 days ago
New advertising figures are now out from NAA, and it’s a mixed bag of news. On the positive side, there was a 4 percent increase in print employment advertising, and newspapers attracted nearly two-third of Internet users – more than 111 million unique visitors in April. On the downside, total print advertising revenues fell 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011. And overall, print revenues are down $10.5 billion from 2006. The figures also showed that digital is now nearly 15 percent of total newspaper advertising revenues.
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 37 weeks 21 hours ago
So we have two media companies. Both are wildly successful and make a lot of money. They have all the customers they could want. And then the media landscape begins to change. One company stands pat and believes that it offers such a valuable and appreciated service that it will weather the storm. Or to paraphrase TARP terminology, it is “too valuable to fail.” The other company realizes that it does not have to change the product it delivers, only come up with a new delivery system while still keeping the old product. Which newspapers are we talking about? Not newspapers – Netflix and Blockbuster. Netflix is still in the movie business, but changed from being a send-it-in-the-mail business to a video on demand leader. Blockbuster went bankrupt and got swallowed up by Dish Network, which is itself in trouble. There are definitely lessons here for the newspaper industry.
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 40 weeks 1 day ago
This article, "15 Ways to Generate Revenue for a Community News Site," was written for hyperlocal online news sites -- the competitors of most newspapers. But some of these ideas can easily be adapted for use by your own newspaper's website. Here the first one: "Find a topic of interest to an audience and a particular advertiser. Have the advertiser put together a video to be aired on the site as a webinar. Readers sign up for it for free. The advertiser gets the names and emails of the attendees as possible sales leads in exchange for a sponsorship fee. A real estate agent might conduct a webinar on how to shop for a home, for example." Let's imagine, for instance, that you have a restaurant that's known for making the best apple pie in town. Take your Flip camera down to the restaurant and let the owner show how to bake a great apple pie, step by step, on video. Then he/she can talk about the restaurant and the other pies they make there. At the end of the video (and you promote this at the very first to keep people tuned in), you offer a recipe if you click on a link -- that helps to build the owner's email list with the captured addresses. And who's going to help the owner with the email campaign and tie it into your print and Internet editions? Your paper, of course!
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 52 weeks 11 hours ago
Groupon has just expanded to San Angelo. That means the site is now found in 13 cities in Texas and obviously, it’s beginning to move toward smaller markets. Other Texas cities that have Groupon sites are Beaumont, Fort Worth, the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Dallas, Lubbock, Austin, Corpus Christi, Houston, Amarillo, El Paso, Midland/Odessa and Abilene. Groupon is just one example of the move of advertising dollars to digital direct marketing. Forbes magazine called Groupon “the fastest growing company ever.”
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 1 year 9 weeks ago
You can choose as to whether this is a half-full or half-empty glass. A survey just released by Cribb Greene and Associates indicates that 51 percent of 239 smaller-market publishers surveyed believe ad revenue will be up next year. But that’s down from 71 percent in the spring survey. This survey is certainly worth checking out as an indication of what publishers are thinking. Other interesting stats: 43 percent would consider outsourcing printing, up from 32 percent; 50 percent believe profits will be the same or better as in the past; and 86 percent believe their local economies are improving or stable. Cribb Greene is the oldest newspaper and publication brokerage in the nation.
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 1 year 35 weeks ago
If you’re trying to get a handle on just what the options are for traditional media companies like yours in a new media world, check out this article. The options briefly outlined by the article are these: (1) Erect a paywall. (2) Put up a semi-permeable paywall (a fraction of articles are free to encourage readers to become paying customers). (3) Implement a metered system, where readers can read a certain number of articles a day and then must pay for further access. (4) Remain free – to try to get more readers and thereby create a site where advertisers will want to appear. (5) Create a better value for advertisers – in effect, turning the newspaper’s advertising department into a miniature advertising agency that offers creative advertising solutions. This article summarizes the various options out there right now, and it will help you think more concretely about what your online future may hold.
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Shared by Tommy Thomason 1 year 42 weeks ago
One of newspapers’ main advertising competitors is dead, though they haven’t acknowledged it yet. It’s the various yellow page directories, and the same thing happed to those ubiquitous yellow books that happened to our classified pages: the Internet. But there’s one difference, according to blogger Alan Mutter – newspapers could be in position to benefit from the demise of the yellows. You should read Mutter’s piece and have some serious conversations about it with your ad staff. The bottom line, Mutter says, is that customers won’t trudge through fat books looking up stuff when they can mouseclick their way to better information in seconds. How much is at play here? Mutter says it’s $16.5 billion. And guess who else is looking to cash on the deathwatch of yellow pages? Google, of course. But the blogger reminds us that Google doesn’t have even a fraction of the sales force that we have. And last time I looked, Google didn’t have anybody pounding the pavement in Brady or Dalhart or Corsicana or Mt. Vernon. Advantage, newspapers. Mutter summarizes the opportunity: “If you are a newspaper publisher interested in diversifying away from print while building a valuable, defensible and sustainable digital revenue stream, then it’s time to think about the online directory and web-marketing business.” So be sure to read this blog. And if you’d like to talk with someone about implementing some of these suggestions, call us at the Center.