Charging for online information: some follow ups
It is a topic we continue to discuss in this blog. We would like for it to be a topic of discussion in newsrooms across the world. I make it a point to bring it up,as I did this week in Kenya, and last week in Oman, and will do the same next week in France.
Two items of interest serve as good points of reference for those interested in arming themselves with information to fire up the discussion.
!. Financial Times profits up
Pearson, parent company of the FT, reported this week that its profits are actually up. But what is interesting, but not surprising, is that at the FT, circulation revenue was up 16 percent in 2008, thanks to a cover price hike and stable circulation, and subscriptions for FT.com were up 9 percent.(Yes, the FT charges for some of its online content, as does that other financial daily, The Wall Street Journal).
The FT Group, which is made up of FT Publishing, which includes the newspaper and a 50 percent stake in the Economist,, is well positioned to do well, even in these horrendous financial times, because of a major shift away from a reliance on advertising revenue. It has sold businesses that were largely print and advertising based, while acquiring specialist data companies like Mergermarket and Money-Media. Pearson has also invested in the Financial Times, FT.com and Interactive Data, a financial market data company.
For entire article, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/aczt6n
2. How to charge for online content?
If you want to read a thoughtful approach to the subject, stop by Alan D Mutter’s blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. Mutter, who describes himself as “perhaps the only CEO in Silicon Valley who knows how to set type one letter at a time,” is aware that newspapers will not be able to charge readers for everything they include in their printed editions—-a point with which I agree 100%. He writes:
If we are going to save the tradition of professional journalism, it is vital for publishers to begin producing content that is sufficiently unique, authoritative and valuable to motivate consumers to pay for it.
In addition, and this is a valid point that I mention to journalists all the time: newspapers have wonderful reservoirs of information, full archives of photographs, and hard-to-find historical information of local communities. At the same time, journalists are trained to seek and to disseminate information. Such information does not necessarily have to be the traditional journalistic fare that most of us trained to gather, to write and to edit. Here is how Mutter presents the point:
Fortunately for publishers, for-pay content doesn’t have to be the Watergate investigation of the future. People will pay for all manner of content on the web, it if it is thoughtfully conceived and marketed. U.S. News and World Report sells access to school rankings and other detailed college data. Consumer Reports gets paid for rating refrigerators. Congressional Quarterly sells high-priced, inside-the-Beltway dope. The New Yorker makes money off reprints of its cartoons. Millions are spent on Kindle books, iPhone applications and even ring tones.
Where I tend to disagree with Mutter is when he argues that the need for the traditional media companies to produce more and better content could not come at a worse time. True, newsroom budgets are being squeezed to the max by the lack of strong ad sales, heavy debt incurred during overambitious periods of bad investments and acquisitions, and, of course, declining circulations.
However, it is precisely at a moment like this that smart publishers and editors are going to concentrate on what their journalists can do best: storytelling. There is great potential for developing new models of reporting, selection of stories, and branching out into non traditional beats. Each of the traditional sections of a newspaper, from business, to local, to sports and entertainment, provides opportunities for the newspaper to use its storytelling expertise in areas of service. Readers love guides, survival tips, but, of course, they will never lose their affection for good human interest, people stories. However, they are more likely to pay for that story that lists all local houses for sale following foreclosures.
I heard today in a CNN business report that Rupert Murdoch has recently said he plans to continue to invest on the editorial content of his products. Not a bad idea, especially if his newspapers wish to follow the successful model of the Wall Street Journal, and start charging for content.
Go here for Alan D. Mutter’s blog:
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-charge-for-online-content.html
“Why didn’t my page win?”
All it took was a reference to the SND Awards won by the Gulf News, The National, and other newspapers from the United Arab Emirates, and my mailbox had about 10 emails from designers mostly asking one vital question: why didn’t my entry win anything at SND?
One writer, Paul, wrote: what does it take to win?
I am sure that many actors have felt the same way following the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, etc. Contests are a subjective process. I have served as a judge in many design contests. I have partaken of long (and somewhat exhausting) discussions on the merits of a page. Five judges look at that same beautiful page of a newspaper. Five opinions. In the case of the best of the best, unless ALL five judges AGREE that it needs to win, it does not. So, the beautiful page gets FOUR votes, one judge remains unmoved by arguments presented. The page goes in the trash can. Was it a page worthy of awards? Of course. But the logistics of how contests are organized, the mathematics of the process, kept it from winning.
My advice? Enter your page, see what happens. The real winning, however, is the impact the content and the visuals have on the reader. As long as you do your best, then be satisfied, and don’t take the contest so seriously. Do I believe that the SND’s World Best are the ONLY well designed newspapers in the world? Of course, not. True, they are all excellent, but there are dozens of others just as meritorious of the prizes. Some did not enter. Some failed to impress judge #5.
Remember that famous Broadway tune from “A Chorus Line” titled One—-about a singular sensation, that one dancer that appears at the audition and “suddenly nobody else will do.” It is the same at these contests. Each year, there is that one particular newspaper that becomes a darling minutes after it is placed on the judging table. As in the musical, “nobody else will do.”
That is what winning is all about in these contests: creating that one page that stimulates, overwhelms and grabs all five or six judges by the neck and will not let them go.
That should be inspiration enough for all of us to wake up tomorrow trying to create a singular sensation of a page or a newspaper. Why not?
“Oh, Mama, please don’t be my friend on Facebook”
It never occurred to me when I wrote my impressions of (and participation in) Facebook this week.
Suddenly, three or four mails showed me the other side of Facebook—the less fun, and perhaps more dangerous one.
One reader wrote: “I am a mother, and I think I am a friend of my two daughters, but they refuse to confirm me as their friend on Facebook. This is quite disappointing.”
I agree with this lady. But, believe me, this is not because of their secrets. Your daughters simply don’t wish YOU to read what their OTHER FRIENDS are up to. Does that make sense?
Then a highly placed editor in an American newspaper wrote me a more serious and thought provoking note:
“Mario, glad to know you are on Facebook. I am , too, but I don’t chat with anyone. I simply go in there to see what people applying for jobs or internships with my paper are up to.”
No comments.
As for me, all my kids have confirmed me on Facebook. And, true, the comments of THEIR friends reveal more than I sometimes wish to know, but, what the heck? My children are all adults in their 30s, married, with children of their own.
As for those applying for jobs with the publisher who sent me the note above: watch the company you keep, or the friends you confirm on Facebook. They may cost you your next job or promotion at the company you wish to join.
TheMarioBlog posting #207