Yesterday a reader sent me an e-mail asking for my opinion about the Tribune Company’s recent troubles. The fact is that bankruptcy isn’t the end of the line for the Tribune Company, but it does significantly change the game.
If you check out Steve Chapman’s take over at the Chicago Tribune, you’ll find one of the golden nuggets in this market transition:
It’s our job as journalists to provide something people want in a form that they want and are willing to pay for. If we can’t, we deserve our fate. But I hold out hope that we can.
The current recession is doing a lot to hurt newspapers with already shaky financial foundations. The timing couldn’t be worse. But that doesn’t mean that news isn’t a profitable enterprise.
Video is on the rise. It’s a slow, yeast-like rise, that doesn’t draw much attention to itself and certainly isn’t going to bother anyone until all of a sudden we have bread.
A recent study conducted by Forrester called Watching the Web: How Online Video Engages Audeinces (here’s the press release) concludes that there is a growing audience for long-form web video—young influentials who watch more than one hour of online video per week.
Now to me, that doesn’t sound like much. I probably watch at least three hours of online video per week, but for the purposes of the study, one hour per week is the gateway to being an “engaged viewer.” And the difference between an engaged viewer and a non-engaged viewer is dramatic.
The Nieman Journalism Lab has a great post up looking at the linking habits of Frank Rich. And for comparison, the corresponding non-linking habits of his peers.
Why does Frank Rich wield the link so frequently?
Rich says his linking is as much about backing up his argument as it is about adding background. If one’s argument is only as good as one’s facts, Rich sends you to his facts. “Now, sometimes it’s unlinkable material,” he says. “But why not give the reader, if he or she wants to, the opportunity to see the sources, or a source, when it’s available? It helps bulletproof the column, because if they say ‘He must be making that up,’ they can look and see — here’s the source, take a look and judge it for yourself….If I’m citing a figure, at the most banal level, from the Labor Department or a poll or an economic report, [why not] link to the whole document it comes from?”
Those are the words of a smart columnist who gets the web as a medium. The internet allows readers to choose from literally thousands of sources for their news and opinion, and you can bet they’re going to go to the most compelling personalities and the best reading experiences.
FastCompany.TV is nice enough to have a video that I can embed on my own blog, so you don’t have to actually visit their video page to see it, but I’d encourage you to do so just to show Scoble that people are interested in this type of interview…
Maureen Dowd pointed out in the New York Times that much newspaper work may soon be outsourced to places like India. As an example, she shared the success of 53-year old James Macpherson at the Pasadena Now.
The concept has certainly started some discussion. But there are three reasons why I think it’s not a sustainable venture.
Fred Wilson argues that “trading analog dollars for digital pennies” may not only be inevitable, but also good. Holding on to legacy business models is not the way to survive in the future.
Also, he links to an Economist article that suggests that online advertising is not going to be hit by the downturn like many expect it to be.
That suggests to me that online advertising is where newspapers ought to be. Of course, I’ve said thatbefore, haven’t I?
Community engagement is one of those buzzwords flying around the internet. Everyone “in the know” seems to think that you ought to have a “community manager” at your company, or that you should spend a lot of time interacting with your readers through twitter, facebook, ning, or even (gulp) real life events.
But why bother? What’s the ROI on community engagement?
There may not be many traditional ways to measure how much benefit your newspaper gets from fostering community, but there are some definite tangible benefits. If you’re working to build community around your newspaper, you may already be seeing some of these three benefits.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, mostly because I love food, and there is no better holiday for someone who enjoys cooking and stuffing their face as much as I do.
Just for fun, I cruised through the Thanksgiving entry on Wikipedia to see if there was any tangential relationship I could draw between the holiday and the publishing world. As far as I can tell, I’m on my own.
But today, like on all thanksgivings, I plan to:
Eat, and then
Sleep
So I figured I might as well log in and hit
Publish
As well. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. What are you doing reading a blog today anyway?
Last week I wrote a guest post for TwiTip, the new Twitter blog run by Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. If you don’t already know who he is, you should really look him up.
TwiTip already has a large and active readership after one month (this should tell you how important Darren is), and I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask people about what place Twitter has in journalism, especially in light of how well Mónica’s earlier post on Twitter was received.
I was expecting a lot of really cool conversation in the comments, and that’s exactly what I got.
You’ll remember that in late October I invited readers of this blog to participate in Microsoft’s new “TV on Your PC” beta program. I’m now happy to announce that the Windows Media Center group at Microsoft will be sponsoring The Pitch on December 10th.
If you haven’t already, be sure to put your name on the guest list.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry.