Newspaper online advertising has not benefited greatly from the recent upswing in online ad spending, according to the New York Times and most of the recent newspaper company quarterly results. This is no surprise because most newspaper websites sell SPACE for commodity advertising — display ads and classifieds — and thus are hard pressed to compete with ad networks that specialize in selling commodity ad space by the megaton (or giving it away for free, in the case of Craigslist).
Back when newspapers where the only game in town for ad space, they could charge whatever they wanted. Now the web has near infinite ad space, and newspapers find themselves playing the wrong game. They’ve got ad sales staff that specialize in commodity order fulfillment and not premium advertising solutions.
So what distinguishes a premium ad solution from commodity ad space? It’s a premium solution if not every site can deliver the value. Any site can slap a display ad on a page — that’s what makes it a commodity. High-end brand publishers like newspapers really have only one way to distinguish themselves from every other web publisher on the planet — their ability to create high quality content that attracts a targeted, high quality audience.
It doesn’t matter so much whether Google succeeds or fails with this particular experiment. What matters is that they are trying to solve the right problem.
The challenge for media companies is not to figure out what to do with their content — content in and of itself doesn’t matter. It never has.
It’s all about the package.
Newspaper articles don’t matter without a newspaper. Magazine articles don’t matter without a magazine. TV shows don’t matter without a broadcast or cable channel.
Google knows a lot about the future of news — more than many publishers. It’s evident in Google’s new product, Fast Flip, which allows news consumers to “flip” through news stories. What’s striking about Fast Flip is that Google is innovating precisely where publishers used to lead innovation.
Fast Flip is a new package for news.
The publishing business has always been about packaging content. Newspapers. Magazines. Newsletters
In digital media, on the web, the news package is now a function of software — which is why Google is innovating precisely where publishers are not.
It was a busy Monday morning in two corners of the hacker journalist community: EveryBlock is acquired by MSNBC, and Y Combinator announces a “request for startups” to address that whole “future of journalism” question hanging out there in the open air.
MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock
blog.everyblock.com | August 17, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: From Adrian’s post at the EveryBlock blog: “MSNBC.com has hired our whole team, and they’ve made it clear to us that we’ll be driving the site’s strategy and implementation, and that our site will remain an independent destination as a community service.”
Tags: Media & Journalism, Adrian Holovaty, msnbc, EveryBlock
knightfdn: Wondering if EveryBlock’s code remains open-source? Yep. Download it at the links posted here: http://kflinks.com/everyblock Ryan Sholin says: The source code, as it was when the Knight News Challenge grant expired, will remain available. I wouldn’t expect to see an open-source fork maintained by the crew now employed by MSNBC, though.
Tags: Media & Journalism, EveryBlock, knight news challenge, msnbc
Msnbc.com acquires EveryBlock, what it means for local media
Lost Remote | August 17, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Cory Bergman of LostRemote and MSNBC on the EveryBlock acquisition: “One of our first conversations will be how we can share EveryBlock data with local media partners. Our plan is not to compete with the local news ecosystem, but identify ways to reinforce it. After all, data complements coverage.”
Tags: Media & Journalism, EveryBlock, msnbc
Msnbc.com Acquires EveryBlock… Welcome Brother!
Mike Industries | August 17, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Here’s Mike Davidson of Newsvine — acquired by MSNBC a ways back — on the EveryBlock news: “The organizations that succeed in local news will be the ones who respect all of the great journalism and increasingly available data in cities and neighborhoods across the world while creating better ways for people to consume it.”
Tags: Media & Journalism, EveryBlock, msnbc, Newsvine, Mike Davidson, Technology
YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism
ycombinator.com | August 17, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: The first YCombinator “request for startups” asks: “What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money—as print media once did—instead of taking a particular form of journalism as a given and treating how to make money from it as an afterthought?”
Tags: Media & Journalism, ycombinator, journalism, newspapers, Technology
Y Combinator Starts Seeding Ideas To Startups Ryan Sholin says: MG Siegler pens the TechCrunch post on Y Combinator’s new “Requests for Startups” including the first one, on the future of journalism: “This RFS is just the first of 3 to 5 that Y Combinator hopes to get out there before the October 26 Winter 2010 class application deadline, Graham tells us. Startups applying specifically for these RFS ideas will be able to indicate that on their applications.”
Tags: Media & Journalism, Technology, startups, funding, Business, ycombinator
rosstmiller on YouTube | August 13, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: In this video, FriendFeed (comically) reveals the secret little orderly process that keeps updates flowing through their network in real-time. A little industrial for my tastes, and proponents of the DRY principle in programming might throw up in their mouths a little bit. (Spotted via ReadWriteWeb.)
Tags: Technology, FriendFeed, video, legos
Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
GigaOm | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: Om Malik calls it “the problem of plenty.” Facebook is trying to solve it by acquiring FriendFeed. Will news orgs compete?
karaswisher: Now That There’s FaceFeed, Does That Make Twoogle More Inevitable?: http://bit.ly/fET9I
Twitter | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: Winner – Best FF/Facbook Post Title
mediatwit: Quick thought: What if Facebook is just buying FriendFeed to kill a potential competitor? Wonder if they’ll integrate it, kill FF site.
Twitter | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: Good question.
dangillmor: Facebook buys FriendFeed, combining two of the most popular social networking sites i rarely use
Twitter | August 10, 2009
BenLaMothe: Crap, crap, crap. My favourite URL shrinker, tr.im, is dead
Twitter | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: In a nutshell.
kleinmatic: tr.im’s collapse will have a more obvious and lasting effect than Facebook/Friendfeed.
Twitter | August 10, 2009
The Briefing: Who’s going to save your URL shortener from extinction?
Publishing 2.0 | August 10, 2009
Everything you need to know about the death of tr.im and the issue with URL shorteners but were afraid to ask. First draft of new Publishing 2.0 blog feature (this post is another first draft).
ianbetteridge: The last company to try and control 3rd party software as Apple does on the iPhone was IBM with its mainframes. And we know how that ended.
Twitter | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: But the iPhone is just a wee bit cooler than the IBM mainframe. And it’s consumer hardware.
carr2n: wake up call. @BradStone writes that you probably didn’t have your coffee before you checked this tweet: http://bit.ly/e2qGt
Twitter | August 10, 2009 Scott Karp says: For more and more people, the web has replaced newspapers as the first media they consume in the morning.
Yesterday, URL shortener tr.im announced that they’re shutting down.
Why? What do you need to know about it? What’s going to happen as bit.ly swoops in to the (attempted) rescue? Are we too dependent on services like tr.im to tie the social Web together?
Ten links to answer your questions:
tr.im R.I.P.
tr.im | August 9, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: From tr.im’s official blog post on their demise: “And, the data that tr.im generates — the hottest links that people are sharing right now — is all well and good, but everyone has this data. tr.im gets hit by countless bots every day farming this data to create and operate websites such as tweetmeme.com. So, *everyone* has this data, meaning it is basically worthless *by itself* to base a business on (as bit.ly and others are attempting to do) at least in our humble opinions.”
Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die? Ryan Sholin says: tr.im dies, says there’s no way to monetize URL shortening. Well, of course not, if that’s all you do. The first-wave URL shorteners will be replaced by shorteners that are just secondary features of other apps. See also: Diggbar, Su.pr, HootSuite, etc.
zseward: What’s that expression? You never want to outlive your URL shortener http://tr.im Ryan Sholin says: Zach Seward posted one of the first tweets I’ve been able to find noting tr.im’s untimely demise.
URL shortener Tr.im’s demise: Social web is built on house of cards
VentureBeat | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Matt Marshall weighs in: “In other words, the rules of the social web are still being made up on the fly, and if you run a Web business, or are dependent on the Web for traffic, you should beware of the risk in relying on things like URL shorteners. One trick: Build your own URL shortening service.”
jperras: Seems http://tr.im is shutting down. Guess it’s time to switch to some other URL shortener & hope that it doesn’t go the same way.
Twitter’s platform shortcomings
Scobleizer | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Robert Scoble enumerates Twitter’s shortcomings on the occasion of tr.im’s collapse: “5. Twitter has built a system that relies on a third party for functionality. Even now, if we use bit.ly links like Twitter recommends, there’s no guarantee that Twitter will keep those links working in the future if Bit.ly’s investors decide it can’t make money. Since money has NOT started flowing through the Twitter system yet we’re all wondering just how Bit.ly will make money…”
Bit.ly Wants To Make Money With A News Service; But Will Anyone Pay For It?
paidContent.org | July 31, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Tameka Kee at PaidContent wrote this about bit.ly just a few days ago: “We’ve suggested a premium subscription service, where media companies and other heavy users would pay for advanced analytics, since bit.ly currently lets people track the number of clicks their links get and where their traffic’s coming from for free. In an interview with Wired, bit.ly General Manager Andrew Cohen acknowledged that the startup was thinking about charging for more robust data access, but also about creating a real-time news service that tracked breaking and popular stories.”
301working
bit.ly blog | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: This bit.ly response offers to archive all shortened URLs via “a wayback machine-like approach.” (Note the privacy concerns.)
An Oversized Ruckus About Tiny Web Addresses: Bit.ly’s Bigfoot Offer to the Rest of the Business
All Things Digital | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Peter Kafka on bit.ly’s proposed solution to play Internet Archive for short URLs: “To me, that sounds a bit like a mafia don shaking his head a tad wistfully after hearing that one his old rivals got bumped off, then sending a big bouquet to the funeral. And I think that the tr.im team, as well as some of bit.ly’s other competitors, may take it in the same vein.”
Shorten this
zeldman.com | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: Zeldman on URL shorteners: “Rolling your own mini-URLs lessens the chance that your carefully cultivated links will rot if the third-party URL shortening site goes down or goes out of business, as is happening to tr.im, a URL shortener that is pulling the plug because it could neither monetize nor sell its service.” (Note the link to an excellent WordPress plugin for short URLs deep in this post.)
YouTube | August 10, 2009 Ryan Sholin says: A three-month-old screencast review of tr.im’s features, which may serve as a useful archive of what the service offered as its users look for a substitute.
[Note: The links in this post were curated with Publish2.]
Journalists are news companies’ most valuable assets.
That’s what Mike Arrington asserts, and I think he’s right (disregard the “failing old media” rhetoric):
And earlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to – they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have a news room 1,500 journalists and editors strong. Amazingly, failing old media is throwing away their most valuable assets. And AOL is eagerly picking those assets up for a song. Before anyone knows it, AOL may be the most powerful news outlet in the world.
Given that NYT has gone to great lengths to avoid newsroom layoffs, I suspect they know full well how valuable their journalists are.
The New York Times technology blog, Bits, which features original online reporting by all of the NYT technology journalists, has formally launched a new feature called “What We’re Reading.” This feature (powered by Publish2) illustrates a number of important best practices for how journalists and news orgs can create significant value for readers by curating the web. I’ve got six of them for you.
But first, here’s what the feature looks like, in the blog’s right sidebar, under the ad at the top (click for larger image):
Ryan Sholin says: If you're looking to wrap your head around the concept of 'linked data' on the Web, this list by Martin Moore is a good starting point. Follow the links, and you'll find a few different explainer threads.
Ryan Sholin says: Josh Stearns notes the trend of inter-news-organization collaboration, most notably at newspapers in places like Ohio, Maine, Florida, and Texas, including mentions of a few projects powered by Publish2.
Ryan Sholin says: Matt Thompson draws a bright line between the episodic distribution of information as it stands today, and emerging methods to put those episodes in context.
Ryan Sholin says: Felix Salmon of Reuters announces a collaborative reporting project on the topic of climate change, featuring a group of news organizations you might recognize from last fall's Copenhagen Collaborative.
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