Monday, September 10

Today’s reading: An Adweek article about ‘Web. 2.0’ in traditional publications; Alan Rusbringer’s prediction that ‘We’re all doomed to be surprised;’ the AOPUK’s short list of winners; a directory of interactive maps about crime; the Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik describes how the very large number needed just to comprehend total the cash cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq; Veterans Administration security officers detain a Syracuse journalism student who dared photograph a hospital from a public place; and what might North Korea do now that it has its own top-level domain on the Internet.

Bill Moyer's Speech to Journalism Professors

I recommend Bill Moyers’ speech to the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communications conference last week. Moreover, is part of the problem in journalism schools that incoming students pre-decide that they want to be old media journalists?

Congratulations to Elan Lohmann of South Africa

Congratulations to Elan Lohmann of News24.com in South Africa, who will chair Ifra’s 15th World Digital Publishing Conference this year. On other topics: Traffic to newspaper web sites has declined this month; approximately 80 percent of the American consumers who use magazines’ websites don’t read the print editions; Veronis Suhler Stevenson says that American consumers last year used media less than in previous years, the first first time in recent memory that the amount of time consumers spend with media has declined; and The New York Times publishes a story about what happens when a company mistakenly tries to use a new medium as a mass medium.

Are News Sites in Britain Wasting One-Third Their Advertising Potential?

Geography disappears online, except for language and culture. More and more research indicates that one-third of the traffic to news sites based in Britain comes from America. Those sites had best advertise to this audience or else waste over one-third of their sites advertising potential.

WSJ Parody; Pan Am and UPI; and Reuters Hot Car

A parody of what Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal might be like; neither the current UPI nor Pan Am are real; funding doesn’t mean much except money; Abel Mutsakani is shot; and Reuter’s burning bad luck at the Tour de France.

The Presses Will Be Outsourced Before Stopped

Though Business Week’s Jon Fine speculates that some major newspapers will stop their presses and publish online only, that would only make their predicament worse and many will instead outsource their printing. Why stopping the presses would be financially devastating. About the mistaken presumptions about why all newspapers need to do in order to survive is publish online. And why the San Francisco Chronicle would be better off financially if it delivered cash rather than newspapers to its readers.

Supply & Demand and 'Unpackaging' on Newspaper Content Online

Why news publications that withold some content from online, charge for ‘premium’ online content, or give access to some online content only to print subscribers are not only failing to stem their print circulation erosion but also reducing their sites’ online growth and potential.

Conference on New Media and the Press Freedom Dimension

The speeches and background papers the ‘Conference on New Media and the Press Freedom Dimension,’ held last week in Paris by UNESCO, The World Association of Newspapers/World Editors Forum, and The World Press Freedom Committee, are available online.

Each Day on the Road Requires Three in the Office

NYTimes.com’s TimesSelect’s pyrrhic $11.5 million revenues demonstrate the One Percent conversion rule. The New York Times reports Schibsted’s online success. The Society for Newspaper Design names Äripev, El Economista, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and Politiken as the ‘World’s Best Designed’ newspapers. American Journalism Review profiles Adrian Holovaty. And Dr. Piet Bakker tracks the rise of free printed daily newspapers.

Jim Chishold to Speak at 'Beyond the Printed Word'

There are two people who have more knowledge than anyone else about how to revive the newspaper industry, and one of them is iMedia Joint Principal Jim Chisholm. As co-chairman and co-moderator of the 14th annual Beyond the Printed Word conference next…

Business Models for Newspaper Publishers conference

I criticized the American Press Institute‘s Newspaper Next project last month for wasting more than US$2 million and a year producing a “blueprint” to “transform the industry” that in reality turned out to be little more than advice that publishers should think…

Today’s Watch List: 26.06.06

Consumers will soon be able to buy songs as they listen to them on digital radio in the United Kingdom; the Internet’s market share of advertising in the U.K. reached 7.2 percent; New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell confuses the U.S. newspaper industry with the airline industry; Slates Jack Shafer writes about The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper (Companies); and El Pais launches editions for Sony’s Playstation Portable devices.