A Free Newspaper Passes the Post
Posted: October 30, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: free dailies Leave a comment »From Reuters yesterday evening:
Metro US, the leading free daily newspaper, has become the 5th largest circulated newspaper in the country according to newly released circulation statistics. With a US circulation of 590,553 daily copies according to the most recent Certified Audit of Circulation report, Metro US newspaper (New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) has effectively pulled ahead of the Washington Post to reach this position.
Washingtonian’s have the Express, so they may not be completely familiar with Metro, but its functionally the same and has reach in a few extra cities. Here’s where it gets interesting, save the Wall Street Journal, most of the paid dailies experienced serious declines when it came to their circulation numbers. Even bolstered by its hotel livelihood, USA Today dropped to number two. Look at these stats (based on Audit Bureau of Circulations information):
It’s not just that Metro is now number five. It’s that, for the most part, these other papers are free falling around it and, as a free daily, the circulation isn’t necessarily changing. There’s minimal overhead to produce a 20-page, free weekday micropaper – after all, wire stories are still cheaper than staff writers – and it isn’t unlikely that the advertising model could continue to support it because the audience is known and probably more homogeneous.
Wait a second. Homogeneous audiences, low overhead, borrowed news stories, free to the reader and supported by ads. Sounds like a blog!
Kidding, but only a little. There’s no inbound links.
[Quote of the Day] Why Newspapers are like the Titanic
Posted: October 27, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: quote of the day Leave a comment »“The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?” he asked. We hadn’t. “What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?” We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? “A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?” he said, shaking his head. “Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed,” he said. “Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane.”
~NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. via Mediaite
[Morning Treat] Stewart Explains Net Neutrality
Posted: October 27, 2009 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: daily show, net neutrality Leave a comment »What’s Net Neutrality?
My answer: legislation/ideal that says the people who control the wires that let you log-on the Internet have shouldn’t have any say in what – or the speed in which – you download any kind of content.
Stewart’s answer: much funnier; involves an inappropriately placed Unicorn horn.
Weekend Treat: Fake AP Stylebook on Twitter
Posted: October 23, 2009 Filed under: journalism | Tags: Twitter 1 Comment »[Stuff] My Dad Says is pretty funny. FakeAPStylebook is funnier:
H/t: Gawker
[BREAKING NEWS] CNN Acknowledges Breaking News Doesn’t Matter
Posted: October 23, 2009 Filed under: Department of Digital | Tags: CNN Leave a comment »Since CNN unveiled the new design for its home page yesterday at a press event in New York City, there has been a significant amount of discussion (correction, “discussion,” they are just retweets of Mashable’s post) on the new look for CNN.com.
The reason I’m taking some space this morning (in what has been a very light posting month, unfortunately) is that something is jumping out at me. If featured content areas are the “above the fold” of online media, then managing editors over at CNN have clearly made that even more featured. The headlines section is minor and seems more like a navigation window than key, first-click content.
To me, this is the same change that ESPN.com made in the last year: headlines, minor, driving content, featured.
Take a step back: that acknowledges how the game is played online. Breaking News is everywhere, and, time and time again in 2009, it has been social media to announce a developing story. Look at last week’s Attic Boy incident: it was a failed attempt at breaking a story to which only mainstream media could really tell by way of its satellite trucks. I don’t know if this is the same logic as the powers that be behind CNN.com, moving away from a headline driven home page offers three benefits:
- Flexibility. A headline has to be text and it has to be brief – you know, like a tweet. Making rich media the center is a more bendable content shape to fit things into.
- Avoiding the battle to be first means that you can take time to be right. Sure, a stub article may appear shortly after the Tweet army gets it trending – it’ll be buried on the left side of the new CNN.com page – but other than that, let it be and get it accurate.
- The journalism that does cost money/take time to produce can be featured, drive more views and content interactions that will lead to higher traffic and, thus, incoming links and online reputation. There is a return on the investment for the highest quality articles (what some would refer to as “professional” journalism), providing justification for the organization to keep a deep bench of trained reporters. They have a way to use them effectively and toward a high-return.
So, did CNN officially admit that they don’t need to break news? No, not at all. Is the intention just enriching content? Probably, but there just may be a new business model hidden within that new, portal-like design.
It’s not Thanksgiving without Newspapers
Posted: October 17, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: newspaper association of america 2 Comments »A special announcement from your friendly neighborhood “Big Print” trade association, the Newspaper Association of America (h/t: MediaFile). The below ad will be running nationwide on Monday to remind us that, sure, Turkey, Football, and Family are nice, but all of that means nothing if we can’t read the glossy ads on Thursday morning to plot our savings for Black Friday.
The Google friendly copy of the stats, will have to do some digging tomorrow for the source (i.e., not on my way out the door):
- 104 million adults read a newspaper in our country every day.
- 67 % clip and save coupons
- 82 % use newspaper inserts when shopping
- 79 % read newspaper inserts to help make purchasing decisions
- 56 % bought something in the past month as a result of a newspaper ad
A Checklist on Why Your Plan to Save Journalism Is Doomed
Posted: October 15, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: future of journalism 1 Comment »Thanks to Boing Boing, this is a must keep/print/post to cubicle wall:
Why Your Idea to Save Journalism Won’t Work
Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) crowd-sourced approach to saving journalism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws owing to the avaraciousness of modern publishers.) ( ) It does not provide an income stream to the working journalist ( ) Nobody will spend eight hours sitting in a dull council meeting to do it ( ) No one will be able to find the guy (X) It is defenseless against copy-and-paste (X) It tries to prop up a fundamentally broken business model (X) Users of the web will not put up with it ( ) Print readers will not put up with it ( ) Good journalists will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from unwilling sources ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Many publishers cannot afford to lose what little business they have left ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business ( ) Even papers run by trusts and charities are already going bankrupt Specifically, your plan fails to account for (X) Readers' unwillingness to pay for just news ( ) The existence and popularity of the BBC (X) Unavoidable availability of free alternatives ( ) Sources' proven unwillingness to "go direct" ( ) The difficulty of investigative journalism ( ) The massive tedium of investigative journalism (X) The high cost of investigative journalism ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes (X) Editorial departments small enough to be profitable are too small to do real reporting ( ) Legal liability of "citizen journalism" ( ) The training required to be even an rubbish journalist (X) What readers want, in the main, is celebrity and football ( ) The necessity of the editing process (X) Americans' huge distrust of professional journalism ( ) Reluctance of governments and corporations to be held to account by two guys with a blog ( ) Inability of two guys with a blog to demand anything ( ) How easy it is for subjects to manipulate two guys with no income ( ) Rupert Murdoch ( ) The inextricably local nature of much newsgathering ( ) The dependence of all other forms of news media on print reporting ( ) The dependence of national press on local press reporting ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) The tragedy of the commons ( ) The classified-driven business model of much print publishing (X) The tiny amounts of money to be made from online ads for small sites
[Morning Reading] The Boston Globe Lives to See Another Day
Posted: October 15, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: Boston Globe, New York Times Leave a comment »Collection of articles with the news that the Globe seems to be off life support (for now):
Think of the Loggers!
Posted: October 11, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: death of print, future of print Leave a comment »
File this away for the “butterfly causing a hurricane” sect. I mean, when you close the newspapers, who’s thinking about the paper-and-logger industry?
The American Forest & Paper Assn. estimates that newsprint production in 2009 will fall by one-third, or almost 1.5 million tons, from the previous year, and magazine print by 1 million tons, or 25%. August was the 18th consecutive month of double-digit declines in U.S. newsprint consumption, according to research firm CreditSights. The paper-products industry now employs 37% fewer people than in 1990, while the forest-products industry as a whole has 34% fewer workers.
Moment of silence here for an industry that, when you account for a slumping new construction market and other circumstances, has been one of the heaviest losers during this recession.
Then again, ask those same people, and not only is the decline of print a helping hand in the destruction of their industry, the perceived “green” benefits of digitalizing news over tree-killing aren’t as big as once thought. First, newspapers are generally printed on recycled paper (the American Forest & Paper Association estimates it at around 57 percent of all print pubs came from recycled materials in 2008; via Business Week article, but the release is available on its site, PaperRecycles.org).
(Additional parenthesis: the euphemism for this is “Paper Recovery.” Message testing, noted).
So – next time you choose to not buy that newspaper: think of the logger and how we are already recovering paper to keep the environment going. Then hop online, ironically read the article from Business Week even if it’s delivered to your apartment, write a sarcastic blog post that questions the intentions of microsites like PaperRecycles.org, and then continue to read the Sunday paper online.
Plus, I had to look up what comprises the Institute for Sustainable Communication because my mind isn’t working quickly enough this morning to get through whatever that is supposed to mean. Final moment of irony: I couldn’t do that in a newspaper and I don’t think a logger could help me explain it, either.
(cc) Image via flickr user State Records NSW
Even My Dad Doesn’t Believe in It
Posted: October 5, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: Gourmet Leave a comment »Quick post this morning, but you know it’s bad when my pops has an opinion on media. For full disclosure: he’s a brilliant finance guy, reads the print version of the Boston Globe every morning and has absolutely nothing to do with communication or the media. He also loves the Food Network, so when my sister sent this link to our family about Conde Nast closing Gourmet, I was surprised to see this response:
I also would have thought they would have ditched Bon Appetit first. Seeing as interest in cooking is at an all time high because of the Food Network, Julie & Julia, etc. it just goes to show that traditional print media is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
