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

I am on the other side of the world on what passes for hoidays in the 21st Century and it seems everyone back home is in need of therapy.
A read of Mark Potts' usually-even-handed Recovering Journalist blog is downright depressing. About the best he hopes is that a string of bankruptcies in America will stave off the vultures or precipitate a rethink of the industry.

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."

There's nothing like a power outage for the soul of a newsroom.
Journalists use their wiliest resiliance to defy the odds and produce on deadline. No matter how challenging human dynamics often are, there is something about an outage that builds an exceptional bond.
I'm several time zones away from a massive power outage in the Vancouver downtown that may take another day to restore, but the Sun and Province newsrooms used technology (mainly the Canadian-developed BlackBerry) to get the papers out overnight. Thankfully generators revived the production system by Monday afternoon, but not before many hours of production had been lost. Still only a fragment of the newsroom is fully wired and humming.
Here is a Sun accounting of how it got done, typically reserved in its storytelling about what people had to do to report and edit.

 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.

The rush is on to develop a new advertising model for newspapers. The dire results of the U.S. newspaper industry serve as a warning to other countries about how advertising is migrating, splintering and in some cases vaporizing.
Len Kubas has been a consultant on news media for as long as anyone can remember, and he reinvents his thinking routinely to provide some fresh ideas on the future state of affairs. His company's executive vice president, Ed Strapagiel, has produced a useful new set of prescriptions on how newspapers should approach the advertising environment in the digital age.
Largely it comes down to tearing down silos to create a common pricing and sales approach, developing a self-serve model to reduce the troop allotment, and investing in technology.
It's not my conclusion but theirs: Do it like Google.

Mary Nesbitt's posting on the Readership Institute site points to its latest wave of newspaper tracking research. The every-other-year survey examined 100 communities and their local newspaper and online sites.
What it makes clear is that readers aren't fleeing at the same rate --- not nearly --- as are advertisers in the U.S.
The local paper's reach is still there, a large part of the paper is being consumed and at some length, and while there are not good signs that young people are acquiring the newspaper habit, the data involving those aged 45 and older indicate a stability in the audience.
Interestingly, a large number of those surveyed had not gone to their newspaper's Web site. The penetration rate in the market of those sites remains very low, which doesn't mirror developments north of the border, where newspaper Web sites are actually faring better in terms of traffic and reach.

Most likely we all come from households that tacked things on a corkboard or magnetically attached them to the fridge. Which is the principle behind some of the initiatives at newspapers: Create clippable, useful guides to life that bear enough importance to be kept in a prominent place in the home or office.
Follow The Media suggests this so-called hyperlocalism is part of the shift in newsrooms away from far-flung coverage. I'd prefer to echo folks like Jeff Jarvis, who say newsrooms should do what they do best and link to the rest.

The rollout later this year in Europe of the Readius is reported in today's New York Times. An attribute of that device is its pliability and portability. It's able to browse e-mail. It can be rolled up into a lapel pocket, unlike some of the tablets. While it's still generating in shades of grey and on a five-inch-diagonal screen, it's not going to be long before there are colours and greater-sized displays. For the newspaper and magazine business, these are significant technologies. Might they (in an advanced form, presumably) one day supplant the printing plant and all of the associated transportation and distribution costs?

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.

Electronic paper is touted as one of the most viable options for newspapers in the years ahead because of its capacity to reproduce text and images with greater lines of definition and by using natural light --- as opposed to backscreen illumination --- in its presentation. Thus, easier on the eyes, with the electronic benefit of updated information.
In this context there is a very revealing interview with Ryosuke Kuwata, in charge of the Asia Pacific region for E-Ink, the electronic paper firm. He predicts that the first commercial applications in e-paper newspapering will emerge in the second half of 2009. Verification of the technology seems to be taking place starting later this year.
Kuwata also notes that the Hearst Corp. is looking at developing a proprietary terminal to carry the product in the U.S., and that Le Monde is examining its options in this field.