Newspapers at cost per page?

Reacting to the newspaper industry crisis, Shira Ovide of the Wall Street Journal Blog announces:

A top executive at Hearst, which publishes 16 newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said the company is mulling how much of its online offerings to keep free, while reserving some content exclusively for people who pay.

This new pay model is something publishers have discussed for a while now and implementing it won’t be easy. As with reprint permissions, different rates for educational use and trade use are difficult to monitor. Journalist Alan D. Mutter offers his insights:

Judging from the terseness of the announcements, the statements seemed to be more aspirational than the result of lengthy and detailed strategic planning…It’s a journey publishers absolutely have to begin. After years of giving everything away for free on the web, it won’t be easy for them to start charging for at least some of the content they spend small fortunes to produce. But there is no other choice.

Warner Crocker in his blog sounds off on Hearst’s attempts at an e-reader. His readers also reflect on the increasing demand for electronic reading of news over print.

It’s difficult to say if these new strategies will pay off, but as more and more newspapers face closures, something does have to give. Time will tell if Hearst’s client will be willing to pay for the content they consume, and if more publishers take notice and change their own models.

 

 

Newspapers: Getting Kicked into Change

With the recent announcements of even more newspapers folding or facing major cutbacks, lots of change is in the air for media corporations. Folio’s recent 2009 media predictions create a sense of urgency for media to evolve into a more user-friendly version of itself.

Keith Kelly, a columnist for New York Post suggests:

More closings of magazines and newspapers and more survivors clinging to the online world as a life boat. Fundamental problem of the digital age vs. print. While the gross numbers grows, advertisers still don’t invest in all the niche products with anywhere near the level of support that they once had for old mainstream media.

While Andy Cohn of VP Media foresees:

Five out of every 10 magazines and newspapers will go out of business, scale down their frequency or move entirely to the Web.  This will not just be survival of the fittest, rather survival of the most willing and able to adapt to the changing media paradigm, and throw all of the old rules out the window.

David Callaway sees the threat of the institution leaders will force innovations to save newspapers:

Unlike autos and finance, the problem with newspapers isn’t the content, but the delivery. The business side was too slow to adapt…So, by all means, mourn the passing of great names, just as we do in other industries. But look for the new channels from which all the talent that made them great will flow.

 

Publishing Wars

Amazon’s recent decision to offer their own print on demand titles (from their acquired BookSurge Company) has caused quite a stir in the entire industry. In the past I’ve used Lightning Source for print on demand and they’ve done remarkable work. I’m sure their business will greatly suffer if the majority of publishers sign up for Amazon’s print on demand services.

Author James Grahame is finding this new arrangement troublesome as he too enjoyed the flexibility offered by his use of LightningSource:

I’m going to choose the “or else” option. I don’t much like being bullied, especially after years of directing the majority of my book’s sales to Amazon, who earned as much as 45% of the cover price for each book sold in the USA and UK. The “buy” button still appears on my book’s Amazon page, but I fear that will change once Amazon runs out of inventory.  

Dangerous Communication

London is combatting the dangers of texting while walking by giving pedestrians a cushion on the perilous lamp posts. I can see the combo of walking and texting as a dangerous one, especially since just walking is dangerous in large cities. I wonder how many problems the e-readers are causing. I have seen my husband get pretty involved while reading his (even while watching a movie!). But there is one documented case where an e-reader saved an avid bookie. This poor guy was about to get evicted because his plethora of books became a fire hazard.Other crazy people get academic while driving. Maybe not a good idea.Getty Image 

Introduction

Technological enhancements have revolutionized how society acquires the majority of its media content. In this digital age, it is the desire of the masses to have access to large amounts of digital information. Electronic book (e-book) technology offers another platform for readers. Is digital literacy universally high enough to warrant an upcoming trend towards readers and do they, in the end, offer what the bound book cannot? 

Best-selling authors talk about the new platform (“storefront”) to sell their titles:

Technology’s Earmarks

A recent NY Times piece tackles the idea that something gets lost with our society’s change from phone to email communications.

THE self-knowledge gleaned from a few years’ worth of phone calls is unquantifiable. So it’s unlikely that consultants and organizational learning strategists will pay it much attention. But recently I walked the halls of my old office, and they were cemetery-silent at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. No yelling, no giggling, no breathless appeals, not even a perfunctory “Hello, may I speak to. …”

When the stock market crashed my great uncle Pat was working as switchboard operator at a large hotel in New York City. It amazes me just thinking about what all went into a phonecall. You had to really want to talk to someone, have the patience to likely get disconnected somewhere in your attempts and then have a middleman in the entire process. Now, most of our communications consist of emails that look disjointed and incomplete.

For work I see the benefit of emails, they are an instant paper trail. And I have definitely been guilty of google-ing a person to get their email instead of using the phone number they left. Sometimes I cannot be bothered, and it really seems to me the quickest way to get any point across. The idea of phone tagging one another for a couple days seems silly.

Even with friends, phone conversations are a luxury these days. Different time zones and busy schedules do not make for calling ease. Sometimes I will go months with only email, or even g-chat updates from friends. I do love sending letters, but it’s hard to find time for that lately as well. Skype has become a new best friend of mine, and has allowed me to keep up-to-date on my Lis in London. To see her, and her bright happy shiny apartment is almost to be there and give her a hug. But what is odd is that I know more about what is going on with my friend over the pond than with my friends right here in my own city. Hmm.

Web 2.0 and Copyrights

It looks like the same group of people who brought J.K. Rowling to the reign of publishing royalty is now causing her problems. A fan, Steve Vander Ark, started his own website with interactive elements covering every facet of the beloved books (and yes I’ll admit it– a book series I’ve never read). And now he intends to publish a reference encyclopedia with RDR Books capitalizing on his own vast collections via his online portal. This is a tricky one. One commenter equates Rowlings suit against Ark as having “‘blog-slapped’ him.” I kind of love that phrase.

Facebook for Mags

Mediabistro’s Fishbowl recently focused on the need for magazine publishers to go Web 2.0 completely. In their article the

MPA Digital Conference was heavy on the “you should be doing this already, you entrenched print industry.” Only this time, it was social networking and user-generated content freaking out the magazine folk: You’ve got to be making widgets to disseminate your content on all the social networking sites — Facebook, MySpace and infinite others. You should be shooting Web video everywhere your outlet goes, making producers of your reporters, editors, and other content pros whose under-the-radar days are numbered.

I wonder how hard more tenured staff will find this. Even for the younger generation is their an ick factor even if they have the technical skills to pull this off? This is very web 2.0 interaction and it must be where we are headed. Steve Borsch discusses his family’s own hand in the waning newspaper industry. “We’re not alone in finding less value in ink on dead trees than we do from our newsreaders and the web sites we frequent.” He thinks the interactivity of a blog network could just be what the doctor ordered. I don’t know how this translates to book publishing, as magazines are definitely more conversational and maybe this new platform is best for them. However, Michael Geist would reject this assumption, as he points to several good reasons why book publishers need to jump on the web 2.0 train.

I am quite interested in how more academic titles can take advantage of these online delivery platforms without taking away from their intended message. It seems even Dr. Seuss has gone digital. Ross Dawson reiterates the importance of a networked connection from publisher to clients:

“Absolutely we are shifting into a world where experiences and physical interactions are becoming more important than ever… We are yet to see whether the spaces where people spend their time are those based around books and collected information.”

WiFi

Tech savvy cities including Philadelphia and Los Angeles have begun working towards becoming WiFi’d cities. In the meantime a good friend Chelsea passed along Forbes new helpful tool for locating free WiFi in your area.

Europe seems to be well ahead on the times.

Network This

Social networking sites have great potential and I see their benefit. I first joined Friendster years ago after months of continual nagging from friends. I grew a nice list of friends (which felt like work by the way) and a couple people actually found me whom I had long since lost contacted with. I saw the use for free sites like this when places like reunion.com and other sites cost big bucks. But now that Friendster has long since been surpassed by the likes of MySpace and Facebook, I find it hard to keep up.

A grad-school professor of mine got me started on LinkedIn.com’s site. This is MySpace for the adult professionals, and I’ve found it to be quite useful. Not that I’m looking for a job, but it’s nice to have professional contacts for a variety of other reasons. But again, having only a couple of connections you put yourself in the nerd corner. Now, after all this I don’t know why I accepted an invitation to yet another site with the same professional connection capabilities. Doostang promises the same functionality as Linkedin, but is banking on a different presentation of the data.

Blogger Simon Collister finds the social networking angle of groups, in Facebook specifically, provides a pure benefit not to be overlooked:

It goes beyond simply gathering useful contacts and instead looks to build a potential network which can be called on to help achieve mutual goals…While essentially there is nothing new in terms of what the group aims to achieve, but credit is due in that it is leveraging maximum benefit to a new medium. Furthermore, it is leveraging maximum benefit according to a set of new and different values.

Some may argue it all sounds a bit sinister, but by using an online network the organisation as a whole should end up becoming more transparent. I can see a similar group working just as well for prospective MPs and this is exactly the sort of thing political parties should be investing time and money in to engage with a disaffected, young electorate.

On a different front I agree with one blogger that profiles on these social networking sites don’t often depict people in their truest light. They are friends with classmates or the people they meet on illustrious trips. They summarize themselves as good people with interesting hobbies. But the same can also be said how most people present themselves in person. I see both the pro and con to these sites. It’s just funny how companies enter the race for the next best social networking site. Wondering what will be next.