kirk lapointe's themediamanager.com: how the news business is changing

While I'm taking a break, I tripped on Eric Alterman's latest column for The Nation and how it mourns the tone and disposition of those in the newspaper business as the wide-ranging media industry attempts to predict the future of news.
The dearth of decent ideas to save the business is "curious and depressing."

 If advertisers are only willing to really pay as their ads are viewed, should publishers only pay if the content is read?
Blogger Tim Anderson is the latest to weigh in on a fledgling debate on the way in which writers should be compensated in the digital sphere. His piece is based on an interesting technical method from Chris Green on quantifying an author's appeal online. Anderson and others have noted the problems in this approach. There are many dynamics in the publisher-writer relationship that transcend click-per-view models.
Forget the click fraud issue; technology can likely address that. Bigger issues are the value attached to a reader (income, education, etc. that an advertiser might cherish), how a particular piece of writing contributes to the value of the publication (its placement and prominence), and how important a publisher wants to retain a writer for competitive purposes --- among many other things. Pay-per-click doesn't encompass those issues in the least.
In recent weeks Gawker has pruned its pay-per-click compensation for its writers.
Anderson notes that a changing model of journalism is going to need rethinking on compensation. Newsrooms essentially pay the same rates for their staff's work. But how that might change is anyone's guess, and a minefield after the guess.

Two of Canada's largest telecom companies, BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., announced yesterday they are proposing to charge cellular customers 15 cents for each incoming text message. Wanted or unwanted.
The implications for consumers are clear, but the implications for journalism are not far behind in being clear, either. If anyone wants to launch an underwritten text service or a for-a-fee text service, life is about to get much harder.
The Canadian Industry Minister, Jim Prentice, has weighed in today, saying the idea was "ill-thought" and stands to penalize consumers who are spammed or sent unsolicited content. He wants a meeting with the telcos to explain the matter, and one has to believe this will be a major regulatory matter quite soon. Canadian consumers have already been noisy about the arrival of the iPhone and the associated fees, and today the telecom carrying the iPhone, Rogers Inc., has altered its proposed data charges to permit a lower-cost plan.
Certain mobile technologies with journalistic applications have not caught on in Canada because the country has among the highest cellular fees for industrialized countries.
This latest text issue is far from over.

Media reports suggest Microsoft's five-month on-again, off-again quest for Yahoo might be on again --- if Yahoo dumps the board. Which makes for a spectacle August 1 at the annual shareholders meeting.

We all like getting the unmarked brown envelope, sealed by someone who has had enough with the subterfuge or the disinformation or the misguided media. We can only imagine what it feels like to have that brown envelope contain a secret we kept from the public.
Which is why Wikileaks has been such an adventure online since its inception a year ago. It has been fearless --- almost dangerous --- in taking documents that weren't destined for the public domain and putting them up for all to see.
In the early days of the Internet, there was criticism that roughshod sites might elude accountability by placing servers and domain registration in jurisdictions indifferent or averse to prosecution. Wikileaks has revived that concern, and many groups that seek to take it down have been thwarted in part by its mirrored addresses and vaguely organized operation.
But it hasn't pratfalled over the tripwires. Large news organizations have cited its findings. Large companies, groups and governments have descended at times to shut the site --- all of them unsuccessfully. And somehow Wikileaks has adhered to a discipline of verification.
Wired's profile this month does well in examining its challenges of securing content in a very security-conscious information environment.

New research has been released from a recent select conference on the future of media, and it suggests online Canadians have a strong commitment to broadly defined field of news and information. On average they spend 2.3 hours consuming it from a variety of sources, with TV holding a small edge on the Internet and newspapers.
The Canadian Media Research Consortium report indicates online Canadians like the speed and visual qualities of the Internet, the reliability of television and the depth of newspapers. Having said that, the Internet is also used for deeper dives.
What is also clear from the report is an emerging visual culture. While older Canadians like their text, younger ones want stories told visually.
Disclosure: I am on the advisory board of the consortium.

A leading edge of information consumer is the senior executive. How he/she believes data serve best is an important sign for media. Time was, that source was the newspaper. But a new study from Gartner and Forbes.com suggests the Internet is overtaking print as a principal first-thing-in-the-day source.
Hardly surprising, but noteworthy.
So-called "C-level" executives (with the word Chief in the title) have shifted to the Internet as a prime source in large numbers over the last three years. The increase in Internet reliance is 22 per cent, while the decrease in newspaper reliance is 11 per cent. The supremacy of Internet is clear: 67 per cent prefer it, up 37 points in three years.

There are a number of ways to interpret the British House of Lords report on media ownership:
1. It's not wise to relax ownership restrictions because there are more media sources.
2. It's not wise to relax ownership restrictions because more media does not equal better media sources.
3. It's not wise to relax ownership restrictions because more media does not mean more investment in journalism.
Any way you interpret it, the report found that the growth of news sites isn't necessarily contributing to proper investment in news gathering. The pool is wider, but not particularly deeper. Of particular concern are investments in investigative work. Much of the new sites are repackages of other content, not generation of original material.
While proprietors argued that the proliferation of news sources made it possible to relax restrictions, the report says more is not necessarily better, and relaxing the situation might only make it worse.

The over-50 generation will continue to nurture and support traditional media, and if anything their loyalty and longevity ought to help ensure survivability and transition. That conclusion comes from an analysis of a further public release of information from last week's massive annual PricewaterhouseCoopers media and entertainment forecast.
The population growth of the older-than-50 cohort will "help sustain traditional formats," the report notes.
For some time demographers have tried to reassure the doomsayers about conventional media. People are living longer, more prosperously, and more leisurely into their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Presumably they will continue to consume through patterns and habits the media they grew old with and be less inclined to adopt new formats.
Unquestionably the growth of sub-30 populations is fueling an enormous rise in new media consumption. But the PwC report indicates a balancing factor is the ongoing support of the older generation.

When veteran newsman Neil Budde announced recently he was joining DailyMe.com, you had to expect good things would come about. This week the customizing news aggregator rolled out three products: DailyMe (your custom aggregation), DailyWe (a community-built aggregation) and a Top News (a sort of top-down approach aggregated by the editorial team).
The clean part of DailyMe is that it licences all of the content it serves up, so no skirmish with the likes of The Associated Press (a service here) will ensue.
While I found a few services I might like to see (ahem, there is more than just The Canadian Press for Canada, and The New York Times is missing, as are leading British broadsheets), DailyMe has assembled a pretty strong lineup that is only bound to get better.