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MediaShift: Is digital media environmentally worse than print?

3/31/2010

An old adage: The newspaper business is about killing trees.

A new cliche: The paperless digital media are environmentally conscious.

Neither is particularly true.

Newsprint is made from wood waste and the business has taken many measures in the last decade to minimize its environmental footprint through smarter manufacturing practices and an emphasis on recycling. And digital media are built with great energy, consume great energy, and generate great environmental waste and hazards in being stockpiled after use.

PBS' Mediashift carries an essay by its environmental correspondent, Don Carli, a research fellow steeped in industry studies. He argues that we are deluding ourselves if we believe digital media have brought about an environmentally clean era.

"If you thought you were saving forests and protecting the environment by going paperless...think again," he writes. "The real dilemma you face is that you may be doing more to cause environmental degradation and deforestation by going paperless than you think, and making responsible choices requires informed decisions and rational tradeoffs."

While he concedes there is a visibility to smokestack industries and piles of newsprint, he suggests we do not adequately calibrate the hidden digital costs to the environment. It's a thoughtful essay to rethink precepts.

Forbes' Trevor Butterworth on the future of journalism

3/31/2010

In recent months a fresh call for public financing of journalism has surfaced and been debated, in no small way due to the challenged economic circumstances of the media business.

Such scholars as Robert McChesney have suggested journalism is in dire shape and must be rescued by public money. The alternative --- the argument goes --- is the erosion of the more public service-minded and investigative nature (in other words, the expensive stuff) of journalism.

Trevor Butterworth, the head of STATS.org in an essay for Forbes, takes on the notion that journalism needs to find public financing to forge its future. He notes that previous technologies have been accommodated, that journalism has morphed into new forms, and that the arrival of digital ought not to be much different.

He argues journalism shouldn't be converted into a public good, besides. Government will help until it hurts, a system of accountability will be necessary, and journalism will not flourish in any event.

Without necessarily identifying the road ahead for media as business models come under stress, Butterworth suggests it's time for those who want government help to simply leave the business.

TBI Research: The Apple iPad won't save magazines

3/31/2010

The arrival this week of the iPad is being treated in some quarters as the turning point in the industry's search for a palatable business model.

In other words, a model ideal marriage of a device, platform and content.

But TBI Research has punctured the balloon by noting the revenue magazine publishers will derive from their new iPad applications will by no means offset their declines in circulation and advertising revenue from the printed product.

"Even if iPads fly off the shelves, magazines will still realize only a small per cent of their overall revenue," it notes.

Even if there are more than 2.5 million of the devices in circulation, they'll yield only about 10 per cent of the revenue magazines now derive from circulation and advertising, TBI notes.

Alan Mutter: Philanthropy won't save journalism

3/30/2010

It isn't clear when anyone observed that non-profit foundations would salvage the stressed newsrooms of the nation (at least, the stressed newsrooms of the United States). Someone might have along the way.

But in his latest post on Reflections of a Newsosaur, Alan Mutter has done some math to drown the notion that charitable giving can ensure journalism living.

Mutter believes that nearly one-third of all philanthropic contributions would need to be redirected to save the jobs of journalists at challenged newspapers: $88 billion out of about $307 billion in annual giving.

He notes the arrival of such entities of ProPublica to fill some gaps but argues they cannot replace bread-and-butter daily local reporting. Moreover the limited resources provided to date with those new entities doesn't bode well for philanthropy in journalism.

Now, it is arguable how many funds are necessary to constitute acceptable local journalism that fulfils its public mission and engages the community. But Mutter believes it's well beyond the capability of journalism to attract that kind of support.

"So, let’s stop dreaming about a visit from the Non-Profit News Bunny and get serious about discovering some realistic possibilities," he writes.

Who uses Twitter? Why, it's the veterans

3/29/2010

The Canadian research firm Sysomos has compiled a billion Tweets of data to identify who is really, really using Twitter. The answer in short form: The people who have experience.

Now, it might be that the people who have experience are also the ones who have come to like it --- and thus use it. But what the data also indicate is a discouragement phase, somewhere between three and six months into using it. The heavy users seem to be in the period up to three months and again after nine.

The data also indicate Twitter is growing more outside the United States than inside it.

Sysomos suggests there now are about 53 million Tweets daily. The total has grown 30 per cent in the last four months alone.

Robert Scoble: Curators need new tools

3/29/2010

"The curator is an information chemist." So writes Robert Scoble, the Scobleizer, one of the Internet's veteran developers and journalists.

He is writing in the context of the journalist-as-curator era we are entering, in which the gatekeeping and even authenticating roles are in some question, and the role becomes one of consuming, editing and presenting more personally.

But Scoble has hit the wall, which means the rest of the pack has long since done so, because he lacks the tools for the job. His seven-point advice would make a developer prosperous.

His points (and my interpretations in parentheses):

1. Curators need to bundle. (Is there a tool to package the most relevant 10 Tweets? No.)
2. Curators need to reorder. (Is there a tool to take someone's package and place new emphasis on some components? Not really.)
3. Curators need to distribute their bundle. (Is there a way of combining the elements you want, then sending them across networks? Not exactly.)
4. Curators need to editorialize. (Part of the value of the new editor is the added value of commentary, but is there is a tool to easily do that?5. Curators need to update. (The ability to take the package and revamp it isn't going to be addressed by the blog; it needs more dynamic firepower from software.)
6. Curators need to encourage participation. (Widgets to build the audience into the creation aren't around.)
7. Curators need to track the audience. (Tools aren't there to give real-time audience measurement and to understand particularly who they are.)

As journalists morph into curators, Scoble offers some clear imperatives for the industry serving them.

Christian Science Monitor editor: News sites need new meaning

3/29/2010

John Yemma, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor, has spent the last year learning lessons about what the customer wants. He has been overseeing the newspaper's transition to a digital format and understanding the relationship between the technology and the user all over again.

He has concluded that the technology isn't the particular value in the equation. Rather, it's in using technology to develop a new relevance in the presentation of content.

"There is no future in a paywall. No salvation in digital razzle dazzle," he writes.

Instead, he sees a "bold future in relevant content."

As he sees it: "The multimedia debate needs a new question: How are we using technology to create a more relevant product? We’re not going to “save” media by out-featuring each other. We can and will re-cement media by using the technology to deliver the experience consumers want most: intelligent, meaningful news that’s accessible where they are in the moment."

Robert Niles on online comment etiquette and standards

3/28/2010

In his latest Online Journalism Review post, Robert Niles argues for five rules to govern online comments. He believes in the value of comments but not unconditionally. Rather, he seeks something approaching a consensus among creator and audience.

His five (and my interpretations):

1. If the author can't or won't participate in discussion online, it should not proceed in his/her absence. (End of discussion, so to speak.)
2. Once you open articles to discussion, you have an obligation to manage them. (In other words, you can't just flip the switch.)
3. Publishers should permit discussions to not proceed on particular articles or for particular authors. (In short, one size does not fit all.)
4. Try to deal with the difficult commenters. (It pays off for your wider audience to see your effort.)
5. It is not inappropriate for comments to criticize your work. (So don't treat them inappropriately.)

What Would Twitter Do? A business model looms

3/28/2010

We have been waiting and waiting for the pronouncements from Twitter about its next stage, the one in which the fun and frolick of freely publishing 140 characters and sharing content would reveal like magic something approaching a business model.

The idea isn't just that Twitter will identify how it will generate profit but that countless businesses and individuals will draft in behind it and reap the benefits.

Looming is a mid-April conference held by Twitter, Chirp, at which the industry largely expects (it has been wrong before) Twitter to roll out something more definitive than its vaguely worded notions for premium accounts.

The paidContent folks believe there could be announcements in five categories: advertising, e-commerce, premium accounts, mobile and search. It writes that deals have been done or are pending in many of these areas (although it notes almost nothing has been done to create an advertising model and truly nothing done on e-commerce).

Whatever the plans, they appear imminent.

The Sunday Times of London explains its paywall decision

3/28/2010

Rupert Murdoch, the world's largest press baron, said some time ago that his operations could no longer continue to provide information freely online.

For years his Wall Street Journal has charged an online subscription fee (to be fair, he bought WSJ after it had been charging for several years). But he served notice that his major newspapers would soon be doing so.

Today his Sunday Times of London formally announced what had been rumoured for months: a separate, redesigned site available only to subscribers for two pounds a week.

In writing about the move, the Times (which will create another paywalled site for its Monday-Saturday papers) argues that good journalism requires good financial backing. Giving the content away will not generate sufficient advertising support to pay for the kind of work that the Times believes is necessary to do its job.

"We believe many readers will be prepared to pay this relatively small amount because they value our journalism and they understand that nothing of value is free," it writes today.

It also believes others will follow and that the only free purveyors will be of inferior quality or public models like the BBC --- even they are starting to understand the impact of Internet investment and scaling back their foray into publishing, the Times suggests.

It is, as the newspaper notes, a significant gamble in a revolutionary age. It comes as a range of new e-readers are hitting the market (Apple's iPad at the end of the week) and publishers are setting their prices for subscription-based models in those formats.

WSJ, for instance, will be roughly 18 dollars through iPad, almost double its cost of delivery to the door, so presumably the online version comes with additional functions.

The Times believes its loyal customers will understand why it needs to do this. Study after study has indicated a small but loyal cohort exists t who would pay for access to the content.

But there are many serious questions lingering around paywalls, among them:
1. Are organizations capable of producing content sufficiently original to capture direct subscription financing?
2. Are paywalls technologically enforceable in an age of robust search engines and an aggressive culture of cut-and-paste bloggers of content?
3. Are there "good enough" freely available alternatives to the paywalled journalism?
4. Are paywalls actually going to hinder the development of a sustainable business model online by suppressing audience size and opportunities to attract new users?
5. Are organizations too late in reversing a decade-plus-old culture of free (once you've paid for your computer and Internet connection) access to content?

Not surprisingly, the Times is inundated with negative comments on its site about the initiative.

The New York Times will be the next major organization to try a metered system of access next year. But it would be surprising if many other major organizations, frustrated at the slow-developing digital business model for content, don't watch what happens very carefully in the weeks ahead and try to mirror any success that might develop.

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