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Half of Newspaper Publishers Believe Online Pay Walls Will Work - MediaBuyerPlanner

Half of Newspaper Publishers Believe Online Pay Walls Will Work - MediaBuyerPlanner.

Published on September 13, 2009 | Email this article

More than half of newspaper publishers believe readers will pay to access online newspaper content, according to a survey conducted by industry consultants Greg Harmon and Greg Swanson for the American Press Institute.

51% of publishers say they believe they can successfully charge for content, while 49% either aren’t sure or believe paying for content will not work, reports Alan Mutter in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.

68% of publishers said they thought that, even if readers object to paying for content, they would have a difficult time finding that information in other places, while 52% said they thought it would be either very easy or somewhat easy for readers to find replacement content.

More data from the study:

• 58% of publishers said they are considering charging for content, but 49% said they have no timetable in mind for how that will play out. 12% said they plan to charge for content by the end of the year, 18% said they will do so in the first quarter of 2010, and 10% said they would begin charging by the beginning of next summer
• 10% currently charge for some portion of the web content

In terms of how charging for content might play out:

• 38% say they will limit full access to stories to monthly subscribers
• 28% say they will likely offer monthly subscriptions as well as micropayments for individual articles
• 15% expect to offer monthly subscriptions, micropayments, and “day passes”
• 19% expect news articles to remain free but that they will produce content specifically for the website which would be behind a pay wall
• 9% say they may adopt a system which would make visitors pay separately for each story they want to read.

The poll was completed by 118 newspapers of all sizes in all parts of the country.

The American Press Institute (API) has partnered with ITZ Publishing and Belden Interactive, operating as ITZBelden, to monitor media companies’ online revenue initiatives, including pay for content. API is working with ITZBelden to produce surveys of local media enterprises’ ongoing and new revenue initiatives.

These results from the first survey are being presented at API’s Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference this week.

Newspaper companies including News Corp. and MediaNews Group are among those that have said they will begin charging for online content. News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch says the company will charge for all of its news sites, including FoxNews, by the middle of next year.

MediaPost Publications Free, Fee, or Flee? 09/29/2009

MediaPost Publications Free, Fee, or Flee? 09/29/2009.
Big or small, how can companies charge for content and services online when a free alternative is often just a click away? Whatever Rupert Murdoch thinks, there's no easy answer.

A new study by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell of Harvard Business School and Feng Zhu of USC's Marshall School of Business takes a look at the problem by examining the business models of over twenty companies divided into four categories: pure fee-based models like iTunes; pure ad-sponsored models like Facebook; mixed models like WSJ.com; and tiered content models such as Match.com.

Of particular note, the study finds that once a free, ad-based competitor enters a market, rivals offering mixed strategies loose their relevance -- something Murdoch and other newspaper publishers seem to just be realizing.

The surest path to success, therefore, is committing entirely to one monetization method: ad-sponsored or fee-sponsored business model. "When there is an ad-sponsored entrant, the incumbent is more likely to prefer to compete through a pure, rather than a mixed, business model because of cannibalization and endogenous vertical differentiation concerns," according to the study.

Free or fee? How are publishers supposed to decide? By making honest appraisals of their own fare, and how it compares to the competition. Rupert Murdoch obviously believes The Wall Street Journal's content is worth a premium, and its successful subscription business backs it up. From Hulu to MySpace, News Corp. will now have to decide on which side of the fence its various properties lie.

Moreover May Sue UK Newspapers Over Redistribution Fee | paidContent

Moreover May Sue UK Newspapers Over Redistribution Fee | paidContent.

Patrick Smith Jun 26, 2009 12:43 PM ET

Online news aggregator Moreover, which until last month was part of Verisign, is considering taking legal action against the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency in response to plans to impose a fee on re-distribution of online newspaper articles. The NLA, which polices unauthorised use of content for thousands of local and national newspapers, wants to impose charges on “web-scraping” services that copy sites’ entire content and redistribute it via tailor-made datafeeds to paying customers, something it says Moreover does.

This comes as the company was recently bought out by a UK investor group, led by former AOL business development SVP Paul Farrell, and relocated its HQs to London. Also, this not the first time Moreover publishing model has come under fire: AP sued the company in 2007 for publishing excerpts of news reports, though the case was settled in August last year. More details on PCUK here.

News after Newspapers: Circulate enters the fray: holistic, user-centric content discovery tool

News after Newspapers: Circulate enters the fray: holistic, user-centric content discovery tool.

Circulate enters the fray: holistic, user-centric content discovery tool

News after Newspapers

An examination of the tools and techniques for journalism and news publishing that are rising as newspapers fall, by MARTIN C. LANGEVELD

Again with full disclosure up front: this is a venture in which Martin is personally involved:

A few weeks ago in Washington DC, my partners and I announced the formation of CircLabs and the intent to develop a product "code-named" Circulate, incubated at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. But the announcement stopped short of an explicit description. We've now unveiled the CircLabs Inc. website with more details about our plans for Circulate on the About Us/FAQ page.

Circulate is a holistic, user-centric solution aimed broadly at sustaining journalism in a digital world, with specific relevance to the ongoing exploration of paid-content models for newspaper Web sites. Circulate enables experimentation with subscription and per-item user charges, but as a user-centric content discovery tool, Circulate goes well beyond the announced features of other systems that have been proposed in that space.

Circulate will be rolled out in phases. Initially, it will be a browser add-on that you can have always handy as you move around the Web. Circulate will function on multiple platforms to allow full portability: a mobile application is planned, possibly first as an iPhone application, along with user start page and e-mail notification options.

We describe Circulate on our site in these terms:

Circulate will be present whenever and wherever Web users go online. Circulate learns the user's preferences and becomes an intelligent, indispensable Web assistant that replaces the hassle of search with on-target recommendations and social interactivity....

Circulate travels with you, at your option, wherever you go online. Using your expressly shared interests and preferences, along with your current browsing path, it suggests where you may want to go next, or later on. Over time, you can refine your content interests so that Circulate gets to know you and becomes an even better personal guide to the Web....

Before Circulate, you had to know where you're going online or use unpredictable search engines. And you needed to do all the work by typing search terms or by scanning links. This hasn't changed much during all the time the Web has been around.

Circulate solves this problem by bringing the Web to you simply and quickly. With Circulate, you can take a big step into the post-search, Web 3.0 world. Circulate is a personal information agent that works just for you....

When you begin using Circulate, you'll probably want to tell it a little bit about yourself. As you continue to interact with it, you can allow it to learn more about you and your preferences, and it uses that information to deliver Web recommendations to you.

Eventually, you'll find that Circulate brings you what you want to see, learn about, and interact with online, before you even think about it. In a real sense, it will become an intelligent personal information agent.

As a Circulate user, you'll be able to have an account with a home-base publisher, like the local paper, and optionally profile yourself. Then the Circulate system will go to work and discover and present to you information that’s really relevant to your interests. You'll be able to set alerts if you want, but you don't have to. Circulate won’t start out carrying advertising, but eventually when it does, you'll see advertising that matters to you, not blindly-aimed mass-market ads. And it sets up the possibility that you could optionally subscribe, through your home-base publisher, to valuable information at hundreds and eventually thousands of news and other websites, all at a low monthly blanket rate.

Circulate will feature social functionality, so that you can share and discuss content (but its content recommendations are not sourced through "collaborative filtering"). Over time, you will be able to select additional features on Circulate as they are developed.

Importantly, a core, fundamental value at CircLabs is user privacy. While Circulate will work best when the user shares information, that will happen with the user's explicit permission, not by virtue of obscure language buried in user agreements no one reads.

For publishers, we see Circulate as a game-changing solution that can enhance revenue in a number of ways:

• Local branding
• Increased high-value site traffic
• Local advertising on Circulate
• Subscription revenue
• Per-item revenue
• Other forms of commercial revenue

We invite publishers to contact us and to explore the features of Circulate in more detail. We've begun software development, but Circulate will improve even faster if we can work with publishers in various ways, including technical collaboration, refinement of the end-user experience, marketing to end users, local and national advertising sales, and paid content options.

Besides myself, the CircLabs leadership team consists of Jeff Vander Clute, President; Joe Bergeron, VP, Product Development; and Bill Densmore, Co-founder. You can read more about us here.

We expect to begin beta testing Circulate this fall.

MediaPost Publications Content Doesn't Want To Be Free, Just Cheap and Easy 06/18/2009

MediaPost Publications Content Doesn't Want To Be Free, Just Cheap and Easy 06/18/2009.
Steve Brill, founder of paid content startup Journalism Online LLC, took his mantra that content -- make that quality journalism content -- doesn't want to be free, and indeed cannot survive through existing advertising-only supported models to the OMMA Publish conference on Wednesday.

"No one can point to a quality journalism product that has depended only on advertising revenue," Brill said during the conference's opening keynote speech. "The closest was the network news operation when there were three networks and even then their news content was a loss leader."

Brill, who is best known for starting American Lawyer and Court TV, has been making the rounds to talk about the potential demise of quality journalism.

Brill's start-up will, among other things, create an ecommerce site where consumers sign up just once to pay for all types of news content online from publishers who joined Journalism Online, which Brill said could include bloggers and journalists who operate independent news-gathering sites that want to receive payments for their work.

The venture's success, however, depends heavily on Brill persuading large traditional publishers to join Journalism Online. Brill's startup will make its money by taking a percentage of the fees paid by consumers, so it needs to bring in the media companies that consumers want content from to make significant revenue. Brill's partners in the venture are L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Leo Hindery, the former CEO of AT&T Broadband.

Brill said that each publishing company that joins Journalism Online will decide how much and in what form it wants to get paid for content, but Brill said that the ecommerce site could offer an "all you could read" program that charges $30 for all the affiliates or targeted subscriptions such as sports for a lower price.

To watch out for any antitrust concerns since the industry can't collude on pricing, Brill has brought on David Boies, who led the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft's and former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olsen to counsel the company as well as be a part of negotiations with aggregators and search engines that traditionally have pushed for content to remain free.

He also wants to offer market intelligence to publishers that strike deals with his company. "We'll give them reports from the front lines, what's working and what's not working," he said. "There are debates about micropayments versus subscriptions. Who knows which works best? Our affiliates will know because we are giving them reports."

This kind of intelligence may be the most compelling concept behind Journalism LLC as more companies in the media industry consider shifts from free models to paid content models. It's also going to be increasingly important as more online properties -- whether journalistic or not -- realize that their content is not being supported by advertisers either. Another big issue discussed at OMMA Publish was the problem of selling excess online ad space inventory. Or said differently, why is it that even when content is free, advertisers may not be interested in paying to reach consumers viewing those pages?

Brill's success may depend heavily on having access to that kind of information as well if Journalism Online is going to succeed. Brill is not espousing putting all content behind a paid firewall, he said, but instead getting eight to 15 percent of visitors to pay for more unique content. The remaining majority of readers would access existing content for free that is less unique. Helping publishers figure out what should and shouldn't be behind a firewall and how much people will pay could be key to Journalism Online's success as business and distribution models continue to evolve.

Indeed, during a panel discussion at OMMA Publish an hour after Brill's speech, executives from Rodale and Time Inc. noted that these issues are already being discussed, and some are already in practice. The panel, titled "The Payment Plan: Pipe Dream or Promise," focused in part on what type of payment plans for content are already in place.

Moderator Terence Kawaja, managing director with GCA Savvian Advisors, asked all the panelists to give their thoughts on Brill's plan. All were supportive of Brill's passion to make certain that quality journalism survives because it's important in the broader discussion of issues such as democracy and civic duty. But they also see the difficulty in taking what was once free and making consumers pay for it.

"The struggle is how do we charge for content that is already free," said Sean Nolan, vice president of online operations and external online marketing at Rodale. "But for us, the content that we charge for has never been free."

Time Inc. executive vice president John Squires echoed that sentiment, saying that it is a misperception that the company's magazine content is free. "People magazine's content isn't free online," he said. "People.com is an hourly site with different content. We've always believed in paid content."

They also noted that new distribution models, particularly on mobile devices such as the Kindle and iPhone, may be changing the way consumers think about paying for content. "It may not be that consumers won't pay, but what will be the advertising model for mobile," Squires says.

MediaPost Publications Brill's Content Model 06/18/2009

MediaPost Publications Brill's Content Model 06/18/2009.

Tangled in what he calls "a form of group suicide," media entrepreneur Steve Brill on Wednesday implored media publishers to shed their collective "inferiority complex," and start charging subscription fees for content. "The world you helped to create needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed now," Brill told attendees of the OMMA Publish conference on Wednesday.

To do that, Brill -- along with former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery, the former head of Tele-Communications, Inc. -- recently embarked on a venture to help publishers charge readers for full access to Web sites, single articles or packages of related content.

"It's all up to them," Brill said of publishers' freedom to bundle and monetize their own content as they see fit.

When it launches, Journalism Online -- so-called -- will provide consumers with a single account to subscribe to different publications across various platforms.

Backed by private investors, Journalism Online will attempt to package and market content under a variety of brands. "We will pay the cost of building this type of Web site," said Brill, adding that the company then will take a cut of subscription revenues.

While considered a dead model by some, paid subscriptions have had success in certain content verticals. The Wall Street Journal, for one, presently claims over 1 million paying subscribers, each of whom fork over $103 a year.

With regard to new subscription models, Journalism Online is not the only game in town.

Newspaper and technology consultant Alan Mutter is currently pitching an online registration service that would track Web users as they read articles on an array of publisher sites. Owned by its participating publishers, the ViewPoint venture intends to compile personal data profiles comprised of demographic information and reading histories. Naysayers of such efforts find it hard to believe that consumers will ever pay for content that they currently get for free.

"How do you get people to start paying for something that's already free?" asked Sean Nolan, VP of online operations and external online marketing at Rodale, from OMMA Publish.

Hogwash, said Brill. "Publishers need to shed their inferiority complex," he said, explaining that most individual newspapers already have the critical mass they need to succeed.

Brill insisted that publishers can easily convince at least 10% of their monthly visitors to pay subscription fees, while maintaining the vast majority of their non-paid traffic.

Brill has also hired antitrust lawyer David Boies to help publishers negotiate better terms with Amazon. "How can Amazon be extracting 70% of subscription fees and controlling the consumer relationship?" Brill asked.

Rather, Amazon should make its money by selling Kindle devices, and leave the subscription fees to the publishers. "It's like if Sony told HBO that it wants 70% of what people pay for its content because people watch it on a Sony television."

Finn remakes classifieds in Norway unburdened by cultural baggage - INMA: Sharing Ideas, Inspiring Change

Finn remakes classifieds in Norway unburdened by cultural baggage - INMA: Sharing Ideas, Inspiring Change.

Finn remakes classifieds in Norway unburdened by cultural baggage
Posted at 03:43 PM - 16 June 2009

I meant no disrespect to Frode Nordseth, but his story was freaking me out.

As chief operating officer of Norway's Finn (www.Finn.no), he weaved in and out of anecdotes, data points, and PowerPoint slides to explain a “newspaper killer owned by newspapers” – perhaps the best story in the Schibsted stable of properties.

In short, Finn is Norway's leading classified advertising portal. It was founded in 1996 by five non-competing regional dailies precisely to cannibalise their print classifieds. The newspaper executives a decade ago believed it was inevitable that someone would create a better digital mousetrap for classifieds. They were correct, they were set up as competitors to their own properties, and they turned out to be the cannibals.

Finn – which means “to find” in Norwegian – today is the leader in verticals such as real estate, cars, boats, jobs, and private-party. It is Norway's fifth-leading web site in terms of unique visitors and second-leading in terms of page views. In 2008, the fast-growing Finn generated US$108 million in revenue, US$43 million in operating profits, and a profit margin of just short of 40%. The classifieds portal employs 268 people, including 80 in information technology.

Finn is the cultural opposite of media properties with print roots: always on the offensive, sales-based, solution-oriented, metrics-rich, and young. Its executives are disappointed that marketing expenditures are down to 5% of revenue in today's environment. Its digital sales dashboard confronts visitors on large plasma TV screens upon arrival in its Oslo office and is integrated into anything with a screen among Finn executives.

What freaked me out about Nordseth's presentation on my recent trip to Oslo was imagining how to explain this story to the typical newspaper executive today who didn't have a similar foresight and can't imagine creating a business to garner a fraction of what it otherwise would have made without the internet. I was equally freaked out about how important scalability is in an operation like this, relying heavily on constant technological investments.

The Finn story is like a faithful Buddhist saying a few “Hail Marys” – just in case.

For Finn and their Norwegian newspapers, “just in case” happened close to plan.

SCUBA-DIVING FOR CLASSIFIED GOLD

What Finn does well, strategically, is relentlessly burrow into classified categories. The initial Finn strategy was to optimise existing verticals. Yet it's not an optimisation most newspapers would understand. By attacking sub-categories deeper and deeper, Finn discovered under-served segments such as boats, snowmobiles, theme travel, agriculture, and more. Said Nordseth: “No money is too small for us to pursue.”

In short, newspapers snorkel the classifieds; Finn scubas the classifieds.

Despite the many sub-brands created with their scuba strategy, there is one over-arching brand. Finn's brand awareness is 97% in a country with two newspaper competitors and international players such as eBay, Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

What Finn lacks in design sexiness it makes up for in effectiveness. Nordseth likened Finn to an old Volvo: safe, not sexy, but usable.

AVOIDING BUSINESS MODEL MONOGAMONY

Finn is the embodiment of a media company that doesn't believe in monogamous business models.

To illustrate this, Finn's five main areas of business are:

• Classified ads: Revenue sources are job openings, real estate for sale, real estate for rent, cars for sale, “bits & pieces,” and yellow pages. Ads are bought for a certain period of time.

• Brand ads: Revenue sources are real estate for sale, cars for sale, finance and insurance, and travel. Business models include pay-per-impression, search results, and banner advertising.

• CV/resume searches: Revenue sources are recruitment firms and large corporations, and the business model is pay-per-access to search for a certain period of time.

• Travel searches: Revenue sources are hotels and air fares. Business models include pay-per-click and a percentage of the sale value, including 10% for hotel bookings.

• Value chain products: Revenue sources include real estate photography and real estate presentation data. Business models include payment per activity and fixed prices for full and partial photographic sets.

While its revenue sources are diverse and business models as flippable as a light switch, Finn also is open-minded about ownership structure. In addition to the five regional dailies, Norway's real estate agents own a nearly 13% stake in Finn Real Estate. So they have an equity stake in the platform they use to move inventory.

IN CONTRAST TO NEWSPAPERS

Learning of Finn's past is a kind of portal to the future for many newspapers.

For example, Finn desperately needed the brands of its five newspaper partners Adresseavisen, Aftenposten, Bergens Tidende, Fædrelandsvennen, and Stavanger Aftenblad when the digital classified initiative was launched 13 years ago. Today, the value proposition is flipped: the newspapers need the Finn brand on their print classifieds.

Nordseth believes that one aspect of Finn's success is the understanding by executives that people who search and browse the classified marketplace are not particularly interested in editorial content. The connection between news content and classifieds was a happy historical coincidence. A pure-play classified portal has no mixed loyalties to journalism and a crystal clear mission that doesn't include an editorial anchor.

The only semblance of ties to editorial today are about customer knowledge. For example, page views on Finn real estate advertising skyrocket during football matches. Why? Women flee the television screens during the matches!

The truth is, the entire culture of newspapers is why Finn was created as a stand-alone competitor. Newspaper classified departments have historically not had real salespeople but "order-takers" set up mostly to service big accounts. The key for Finn is they are willing to sell anything of any size.

By circumventing the newspaper culture, Finn has been a category killer for a newspaper like Aftenposten which has lost to the internet the car market and seen all but the brand elements of the job market migrate to digital.

THE FUTURE

What do you do when you're on top? Keep attacking, Nordseth says.

A Finn-like concept is being internationalised by Schibsted, which acquired a pure consumer-to-consumer portal in Sweden several years ago called Blocket. This portal now has a similarly dominant and profitable position in Sweden as Finn does in Norway. Blocket has been so successful that it is now being set up in other European and Asian markets, adjusted to market and cultural differences.

Meanwhile, Finn is focusing on building its position in the travel market and value chain products, and increasing market share in brand advertising. It also is keeping an eye on structural changes in the directories business.

While continuing along that strategic continuum, Finn believes it is moving from publisher to “active transaction facilitator.”

And it is always looking to differentiate. Nordseth says Finn's differentiators are its platform control and how close it is to its customers. Sounds like something anyone might say, yet here's their specific peg: Never outsource customer support or salespeople as they are your difference-makers. That Finn retains a high percentage of its employees helps, too.

Schibsted is a great story in the investment community, and Finn is one of its treasured stories. For a newsmedia industry in search of anchors in today's storm, Finn is a good starting point for imagining the future.

Poynter Online - The Biz Blog

Poynter Online - The Biz Blog.

Belden Interactive's research is the important piece in this report, but though Belden correctly identifies the likely size of the core audience, we need a few papers to try various options for purchasing content-by the article, or by user session, or weekly or monthly subscription- before we will really know how readers are going to respond. Volunteers should call me, asap.

Greg

API Report to Exec Summit: Paid Content Is the Future for News Web Sites

Posted by Rick Edmonds at 11:12 AM on Jun. 4, 2009

		RELATED
		If I'd been at that hush-hush newspaper meeting... NYTer: Newspaper execs' meeting wasn't "secret" Are newspaper execs violating antitrust law with their hush-hush meeting in Chicago? NAA confirms newspaper execs' meeting in Chicago Newspaper execs meet today to discuss charging for online content

The American Press Institute (API) has surveyed the many options currently being discussed for paid content and "fair use" fees from Google and other aggregators, and basically endorses them all as a remedy to what ails the newspaper business.

In a 31-page white paper prepared for last week's newspaper executive's summit in Chicago, API concludes, "newspapers can make the leap from an advertising-centered to an audience-centered enterprise" and should get on with it immediately.

 

The report, titled Newspaper Economic Action Plan, recommends that industry leaders follow five new "doctrines."

• True Value. Establish that news content online has value by charging for it. Begin "massive experimentation with several of the most promising options."
• Fair Use. Maintain the value of professionally produced and edited content by "aggressively enforcing copyright, fair use and the right to profit from original work."
• Fair Share. Negotiate a higher price for content produced by the news industry that is aggregated and redistributed by others.
• Digital Deliverance. "Invest in technologies, platforms and systems that provide content-based e-commerce, data-sharing and other revenue generating solutions."
• Consumer Centric. Refocus on consumers and users. Shift revenue strategies from those focused on advertisers.

Within its discussion of the basic recommendation, the report endorses micropayments, subscriptions and hybrids of the two as all having possibilities. Generally, the report suggests that a free, ad-based strategy may have made sense when online was a small, supplementary business for newspapers. But now that various digital platforms are becoming the medium of choice for so many news readers, it makes sense to charge for what is expensive to report and edit professionally.

Focus on "core loyalists," lose "fly-by users"

Newspapers would lose some readers/unique visitors, the report argues, but they are mostly "fly-by users -- who come to a Web site for a specific purpose and rarely return." Citing research by Belden Interactive, the report says these make up one-third of unique visits per month but only 1 percent of page views.

 

The same Belden study identifies a second group of online readers as "core loyalists," who visit a news site an average of 18 days a month. They contribute 85 percent of the page views and user sessions. That group, API reasons, values the content and could be induced to pay for it.

Paid content wall would protect print subscriptions

The report also suggests a paid content wall would help retain print subscribers, citing a recent USC Annenberg survey finding that 22 percent of online news readers said that they had dropped print subscriptions because they could most of the same content free online.

Pressure Google

On the hot-button Google issue, the report concedes that 25-35 percent of traffic to news Web sites comes from the search giant and its Google News. (Newspapers can run their ads opposite articles to which users link but are not otherwise compensated). The relationship need not be turned upside down, API suggests, but it advocates bringing pressure on Google from several directions to "reinstate value along the supply chain, from the creation of content, through its harvesting and presentation."

 

The report has little discussion of advertising but is not outright dismissive, conceding that print advertising will be the biggest revenue source for most companies for several years to come. It does express skepticism, though, that print advertising can hold its own against competing digital formats during an economic recovery. Display advertising to news Web sites, the report adds, "continues to morph without apparent direction" and may be a minor revenue stream for all but the most heavily trafficked sites.

Kindle offers limited revenue potential, duplicates print audience

While generally positive to emerging vendors of paid content systems and new delivery technologies, the report takes several swipes at downloads to Amazon's Kindle as a new revenue source. "Publishers are coming out on the wrong end of the partnership with Amazon, which takes 70 percent of the subscription revenue," plus most ad revenue plus republication rights.

 

Besides, more than half of Kindle buyers are over 50, so usage tends to duplicate the existing print newspaper demographic rather than capturing a younger or a non-traditional audience.

 

The report, written by API staff, grows out of a series of summit meetings beginning last November in Reston, Va., with 50 publishers. A follow-up meeting was held in January, a third during the Newspaper Association of America annual convention in San Diego in April and the fourth in Chicago last week. API is independent of NAA but there is some overlap in their missions and NAA was the convener of the most recent of the meetings.

 

None of the meetings has been open to press coverage. But the agendas and working papers circulate to a large group of publishers who, in turn, share them with staff, so the contours of what is being discussed seep out.

 

API President Drew Davis, in a phone interview, described reaction at the meeting to the paid content proposals as "very, very positive." The objective was not to have the action plan formally adopted, he said, and it is unclear what will happen next. One priority item, Davis added, "is getting regulatory relief so that these disussions can take place" without any anti-trust jeopardy.

Poynter Online - Romenesko

Poynter Online - Romenesko.

MediaNews execs: We'll no longer give away all our print content to web users

May 8, 2009

To: MediaNews Group Employees
From: Dean Singleton, Jody Lodovic
Re: Interactive Strategic Summit

Two weeks ago, 22 executives from across the company, including Publishers, Editors, and Interactive leaders, met to discuss MediaNews Group�s interactive strategy. While our websites attract a significant audience and drive considerable page views, we face three daunting challenges that needed to be addressed. First, we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free. Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business - the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis. Second, our interactive revenue growth has slowed because it has been too closely tied to our print classified business, which has suffered with the advent of Craigslist and other free online classified opportunities. Finally, we are not significantly extending the reach of our audience, as our online products too closely resemble the newspaper, and thus fail to meaningfully reach the next generation of readers.

This interactive summit was meant to address these issues head-on; to build a strategic plan that places a value on our content, protects our core print business, extends the reach of our audience, and creates new revenue opportunities online. We cannot continue to give all of our content away for free; we must consider, create and deploy new products and sites that both decouple our interactive revenue from our classified business and offer a compelling new experience for a younger (non-newspaper buying) demographic. From this conference, we have built consensus on a three pronged approach to enhance our business moving forward:

* We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content. We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don�t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay. If a non-subscriber wants the newspaper content in its entirety online, they will be directed to some sort of registration or pay vehicle (and if they are a print subscriber, they will have full access at no charge). To be clear, the brand value proposition to the consumer is that the newspaper is a product, whether in print or online, which must be paid for.

* We will begin differentiating our sites from the newspaper and focus on strategies designed to reach younger audiences and extend our reach. The websites, newspaper.com as we call them now, will become a different product. This new site, which we have been calling news.com, will be a regional news site that is actively managed to present breaking news. It will continue to draw a content from the newspaper (but probably in a more abbreviated form), but will also have user-generated content, community involvement and third party content. News.com will continue to serve our existing audience, which spends a lot of time on our sites, and drive significant traffic. They like and depend on our sites for their national and local news. We must not alienate them as we strive to expand our audience and attract younger people and non newspaper subscribers. Obviously, our sites must draw upon the content of the newspaper, but the presentation of that content will be different. News.com will be an entry page to new content offerings, local retail advertising opportunities and premium offerings.

* We will build a new local utility site (Local.com), which is an ecosystem of local information, resources, user content, shopping guides, and marketplaces. This site will be focused on a younger audience as well as other targeted audiences based on demographics which are attractive to our current and potential advertisers. We have the advantage of being the trusted source of for news and information in our communities and have a large base of traffic to feed into Local.com. Local.com will leverage existing newspaper content and existing traffic, and we will add new content (such as Entertainment/Lifestyle) to target a younger audience. Central to this local site will be an aggregation of city or community sites (in the YourHub model) and marketplaces. Local.com will be the ultimate site for people to find stuff, do stuff, and get stuff done in their local market.

We will initially focus on five or six niche vertical content channels to support targeted advertising opportunities (many of which have reverse publishing opportunities). We will build these out with a common template, for ease of execution and maintenance, and deploy across the company.

New tiered circulation pricing strategies will be considered as part of, and tied to, the above online strategies. Such pricing strategies will be designed to maximize revenue, improve overall profitability, add value to full priced, seven day delivery, subscriptions, and reinforce the value for online content.

In order to execute this vision, we have agreed that these new strategies will be done with a template approach, using a menu of common tools and vendors. We will take advantage of the size of MNG to leverage enterprise solutions and build off a common platform that allows for fast implementation and a companywide rollout.

We will form four taskforces (News, local, premium and technology) to drive these ideas to market. They will focus on content, sales, marketing, research and build a business plan. We will also form a technical taskforce to evaluate the needs of a new content management system.

We will keep you posted periodically as we develop these new products and as this strategy evolves. Our online business is a critical piece of the future growth of this company and is integral to growing and targeting new audiences. Our newspapers continue to attract the largest and most desirable audiences in our local markets, but we feel strongly that developing new and targeted audiences online will position us to deliver the most comprehensive and effective solutions for our advertisers.

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits.
Posted by Joseph Lasica at 7:03 AM on Apr. 22, 2009

Between 2000 and 2005, newspapers were slow to adopt blogging. Now every news outlet seems to have blogs. Today we're seeing a similar uptake trend with other forms of social media, particularly Twitter. While other social networks like Facebook and Ning have their uses for journalists, a consensus seems to be building that Twitter offers journalists an easy way to connect with members of the local community.

For a 10-week online course for Poynter's NewsU (including two upcoming public Webinars), I've begun to collect examples of how newsrooms are starting to use social media. Paul Gillin, Michele McLellan and I are leading the course, and we're collecting examples of best practices from around the country and overseas.

Here is a sampling of what we've spotted so far:

• Dozens of journalists at the Austin American-Statesman are now using Twitter. Internet editor Robert Quigley and Tribune Interactive's Daniel Honigman talk about how their organizations use Twitter for community outreach in this 9-minute video interview.
• Andy Carvin, social media strategist for NPR, talks about how NPR has used social media, such as Ning, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, in its inauguration and hurricane coverage.
• In this audio podcast, general assignment reporter James Janega of the Chicago Tribune discusses how Twitter helps him in his daily reporting.
• Poynter coverage on social media includes the recent Tidbit, "How to Use Twitter to Break News on Your Site When Staff's Away."
• In December, graphicdesignr.net listed 1,125 U.S. newspaper Twitter accounts -- a number that reached 1,360 in February before the author gave up.
• A dozen commenters have weighed in with additional examples here: How to use social media in the newsroom.

We'd love to hear your stories and experiences. Are you using any widgets that spotlight community conversations? Any interesting uses of Flickr, YouTube or other hosting sites? What about live-streaming events with ustream, Kyte or Qik? How are you using geotagging? Do you use social bookmarks like Delicious? Have you found value in using Digg, Reddit or other news sharing sites? How are you using Twitter or Facebook?