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.

Newspaper Websites' Average User Aging as Quickly as Print Readers

Belden Associates’ research shows that the average age of online newspaper website users is aging as fast as the average printer newspaper reader and has been each years since 2001. The only difference is that the average age of the online edition user is 42 and the average age of the printed edition user is 55. If the newspaper industry is to reverse its declines in usership, it instead needs to have users whose average age is dcreasing, or at least increases more slowly than the calendar.

Culture Shock within Online Publishing

In 1998, media executives involved with new-media and new-media entrepreneurs were on roughly the same level of sophistication about technology and new-media theory. But most media executives are still at that 1998 level, while the entrepreneurs are now eight years’ more sophisticaled. This difference, as seen in two recent conferences, was so striking that I’m still in shock. This drives to the heart of why periodicals have failed to adapt to the Internet beyond about 1998.

What is 'New Media' (redux)

At the root of most publishing and broadcasting companies problems understanding and adapting to the New Medium is they actually misunderstand what a medium is. I’ve long been reluctant to explain this misunderstanding because I’ll need a long post to do so. This is it, a new version of my 1998 essay What is New Media?. It’s long, but I consider it the most important thing I have ever written except for the original essay, and hope you’ll forebear its length. I need to have this new version online because I plan to refer to it in future postings, specifically those about what radical changes that media companies need to implement.

Today's Goodies: Cauthorn Webcast; Parks Retrospective

Today’s Goodies: A webcast of Bob ‘Thorn in the Side of the Newspaper Industry’ Cauthorn; a Gordon Parks retrospective in The Digital Journalist; brilliant coverage by the Houston Chronicle and El País; Miami Herald Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler’s memo to his staff; Heidi Cohen on what advertisers should do now that publishers of printed periodicals are finally getting serious about shifting their business online; The Tyndall Report on ABC, CBS, and NBC news; Eight Diagram’s interviews with photographers & writers; and my beta test of Google Content Blocker.