What's Your Morning News-net-paper? -- Discussion
Submitted by: ePluribus Media on Sun, 02/17/2008 - 07:54
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In the ePluribus Media Journal, read about the newest venture from the legacy media corporations: Google News, Yahoo, AOL and the last stand of the traditional Media -- quandrantONE
Already think of Google News or Yahoo! or even AOL News as the equivalent of your national newspaper?
The legacy newspapers can't be too happy about that trend.
Friday 2-15-08, in Media Firms Create ONline-Ad Network, the Wall Street Journal reported on the latest effort by traditional media to fight back: Gannet, Hearst, the New York Times Co. and the Tribune Co. are setting up a stand-alone online ad-sales network called quandrantONE.
As Rick Emonds in his Poynter Online column remarked yesterday,
the business constitutes a vote of confidence that there is money to be made placing national advertising in metro and smaller papers, once the current difficulties of varying specifications and billing systems are eliminated. That has been the pitch of the group of more than 600 papers that are hoping to launch a similar common platform in partnership with Yahoo later this year -- a move some say could boost member newspaper sites' online advertising 15 to 20%. Uncertainty over Yahoo's future probably makes the venture all the more timely and attractive to the four heavy-hitting partners.
In her analysis, Cho suggests that legacy news ad network quandrantONE is about more than just ad revenue. It's also about the legacy media companies most recent foray into to re-asserting ownership of its own content.
Do you agree?
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Does This Explain Microsoft's Move to Takeover Yahoo
They would not only playing catchup with Google then, but getting in on the ground floor of the new News venture?
You write that subscriptions and direct sales do not cover the costs of newspapers. The same is true, of course, for magazines. But isn't it the case that distribution and circulation costs are big budget items, along with support to staff?
Seems like citizen journalism is still out in the cold--or perhaps warming our hands at our own small fires. It's too bad the rest of the economy doesn't work on a volunteer basis, as I notice that inessentials like food at the super market are definitely on an upward price.
Vis a vis sponsored news. I think the constraints on their coverage are very noticeable, particularly the Jim Lehrer show which seems to me to have become extremely bland.
Exactly right Carol...
I don't have any real figures, just anecdotal, but obviously the costs of distribution for print editions are huge.
It's the ad revenue that makes up the difference and pays the salaries of the newsgathers, editors, the business people, the ad salespeople... the whole shooting match. There are even little "shoppers" that make enough on ad sales to cover the cost of bulkmail to every household in a town.
The media's venture in quandrantONE doesn't really have anything to do with Microsoft and Yahoo! -- and in fact, the media is really playing catchup here.
The thing to keep an eye out for is when GoogleNews et. al. start hiring news reporters and staff to create their own content -- and in fact, I have no idea if that is a trend that has already started. I believe AOL News Beta has hired news staff.
If that's the case, it's just that the news-dna folks have hired on with the Search Engine giants -- and the future dose of daily news will be Google.
Where does that leave us?
Do you see any possibility of the "independent" web journals like ourselves, Alternet, Scholars*Journals, the whole bunch--getting together to get an infusion of money that would help us all build our capabilities?
Google News to publish agencies' copy
Interesting article from the Guardian.......
excerpt:
Excellent Find! Avahome!
Even though he's talking about Google news and deals in Europe (but of course the Associated Press is everywhere)... Bale pretty much sums it up nicely:
The question is who is reaping the rewards on the content -- Google et. al. gets the ad revenue, the media companies have ponied up the cash to get gather and create the news, but they aren't getting the lion's share of the ad dollars in these deals with the search companies.
Although I can't access the full WSJ article
The other articles I find lead me to believe this new network is using a similar model to that being used by Blogads. Is that an accurate comparison?
Not sure...
what I found interesting in the write ups of the early attempt to go it alone (The New Century Network) is that they spent an inordinate time talking about what they were going to do and how they were going to divy up revenue (circulation vs content -- something akin to Carol's question I believe) and their inability to resolve anything -- much less build a business model had a great deal to do with the failure.
Not sure, and Poynter nor Bloomburg didn't give much detail on how they will work it.... Be very interesting to find out.
Thanks
I need to do more searching but am still having trouble wrapping my head around the rather high profit margins that are typically quoted for newspapers. I frequently hear the number of 20% profit margin tossed around. The last time I heard that figure was during a Congressional hearing on FCC oversight.
If that is still an accurate figure, many businesses would kill for such a profit margin. It just struck me that there is something terribly wrong in what we are hearing and what is really the case with the financial position of these companies.
I am no expert, nor even very well informed
but the crux of the problem for the legacy print companies is that they are at the peak... Print circulation is tanking -- even though the print media owns the ad sales and networks.. overall the ad revenues are going start dropping drastically. On the other hand, the readership of the digital arms of the old print companies is skyrocketing... only the ad revenue for the digital version isn't. The media companies have to figure it out fast, before the print ad revenue dries up.
Complicating it all is the beauty of the Search engine sales -- say one is American Airlines trying to sell a package deal for a vacation in the Bahamas. With something like Google, American can be assured that anytime anywhere a reader encounters stories about the carribean or airline or vacation travel, that reader will see an ad about American's travel package. IT doesn't matter if the reader is reading a travel piece in the New York Times Travel section or reading Ma Jones' what I did last winter blog. Google doesn't even have to generate the content.
The New York Times -- by itself -- on the other hand, only can offer American Airlines space on its digital paper -- maybe in the travel section. So if American Airline wants to purchase the same kind of exposure, it would have to do deals with many many papers. American probably doesn't want to go that route.
Of course, adding insult to injury, Google doesn't even have to pay for the news gathering and production of the stories on which it gets to make all its ad dough.
Anyway, the profits of print news organizations are like the last gasp before the dive.
Vis a vis profits
Leesburg Today, the newspaper I once Ibefore XMAS, wrote for was started by local people for whom getting across their point of view on local politics trumped earning big profits on the venture.
The newspaper owned the building where its offices were located and that became prime real estate.
Its ad revenue ballooned as the real estate market "enjoyed" its speculative boom.
So as the original owners got older and began thinking about their retirement and faced various illnesses, wham bam! They sold the paper to American Community Newspapers last year. They sold the land and building separately and the newspaper found another home.
Here comes the answer to your comment about profits Standingup. Barely six months later--just before the realtors got a bit smarter and began to stop spending the commission money they were no longer earning on newspaper ads, AN ACQUISITION COMPANY TOOK OVER. Their aim was DOUBLE DIGIT PROFITS.
Information from this is that at that time, the paper which was thriving WAS NOT MAKING DOUBLE DIGIT PROFITS.
However at that time my "terrific" feature articles--actually I worked really hard on them trying to support community arts programs and other activities I thought were important to the vitality of the community--my articles were cut back more than 50%. From an average of six a month to two a month.
When the acquistion company bought in they outed my articles. These days the space such as remains--it has been reduced by 30%--that used to go to my articles and similar ones by the staff has been allocated to "informationals" backing up ad sales.
This is just small town stuff but no big bucks there.
I think acquistion companies like to come in and strip down an operation, ie looting it, and then moving on. Of course this particular acquisition company moved at precisely the wrong time and they are now the proud owners of a local paper no one likes to read any more.
Again, Carol, exactly right
sometimes mature industries are ripe for what the markets call the "vampires" -- folks who come in and bleed out the profits.
When the owners are no longer those who care deeply about the industry (in this case, the world of news), the companies are tantalizingly for those who want to "harvest" the profits -- but who actually slash and burn the operations.
That's one reason everyone in the industry are focusing on Zell, the biz guy who knows nothing about the news and publishing industry, but who bought the Tribune. There's still a lot of money to be squeezed out of newspapers -- especially if one doesn't give a rat's patootie about the future of the enterprise.
Interesting
It sounds like the model of your local paper was unique and it is too bad for the community that the previous owners had to sell. I don't know how it compared with the sort of average figure that is tossed around.
Is the change in public sentiment about the paper due to the change in content? I think that is a key factor that so many news organizations overlook these days. They aren't providing the product the public is looking to consume. But I may be way off there too.
Well I have lots of friends around and about who tell me this
Blush! blush, they say how much they miss my articles.
The article is still running articles on local politics which are OK.
But what happened is more complicated than I wrote. The editor moved up the food chain to also become a "publisher" but not owner, and he took full responsibility for two other existing publications associated with LT--a business newspaper and a Loudoun newspaper which were really failing and are staggering around as usual still. Leesburg Today hived off Ashburn Today which covers the adjoining area. Both Leesburg and Ashburn are in the western halft of Loudoun County. They would both carry my feature stories but in really local stuff each has its own "news."
Where it used to be that reporters who wrote for the magazine got paid a free lance work, they are now expected to write for it as part of their job. Ditto they have added responsibilities to write for Business News which lost staff.
The entire staff of Leesburg Today quite, with the exception of one older woman. They had worked on the paper for years and had enormous background knowledge which they brought to the paper. They left because they were being loaded on with extra work with no extra pay and I guess they saw the handwriting on the wall.
I worked on a contract basis as a contributing writer, and older woman who stayed had the responsibility of copy editing and proofing my copy. Somewhere along the line they dropped their copy editor. This made things painful. She was horribly over worked and in the best of times was not happy that I was potential competition because we covered the same kind of areas. As things got worse on the paper internally my situation with the staff reflected the deterioration, plus I was not longer in direct touch--as I had been--with the editor.
So that's just a bit more about the internal dyamics.
Grumble
Noted: Yahoo is already pimping "Citizen Journalism".
= = = = =
Simply put: "Legacy" newspapers looked out over the horizon, and in their attempts to divine what lay beyond failed to notice the pot of gold at their feet.
Joining the legions of kool-aid-drinking lunatics who bought into the notion the internet signalled a profound change in the industry, they failed to realize the utility and utter simplicity of placing their newspapers - intact - online. "Front Page", "Metro", "Sports", "Business", "Op-Ed", and "Classified" sections have, in all too many cases, been electronically transmogrified into visual clutter.
Entry points appear thick as briar patches, making the reader wait patiently until the seemingly endless streams of java scripts, overads, embedded video, and singing toilets allow us to get a click in edgewise. (Just occured to me these pages may have some utility as an "enhanced interrogation technique" at Gitmo.)
In short, they tried to fix what wasn't really broke, shattering the thing in the process. Brilliant.
Bill Densmore made an interesting observation
He's the Director of Media Giraffe, but he was on a panel at Columbia talking about how the industry has changed.
He pointed out that Newspapering really was a manufacturing industry, but now it is more of a service industry. That struck me as so right. My dad used to refer to going into work at the paper as "going to the plant." The paper was all about huge rolls of paper, printing presses, and linotype machines, lead slugs -- Production issues all revolving around deadlines deadlines deadlines... 8:00 pm was the bulldog edition (the very first edition to hit the streets in the wee hours of the morning -- notable for its green newsprint front sheets, after 11:00 pm there was nothing more coming through for the morning edition... unless there was a "stop the presses" moment.
Capital improvements to the plant, such as the purchase of a new printing press, impacted the way the news was done, the sizes of the pages, everything, for decades.
Comps
Someone might want to compare European type newspapers with something like the New York Times.
First in respect to acreage devoted to ads. It is possible to put out papers without that area dedicated to someone else's product.
It might be that just as Starbucks is a real estate business pay for where you plant your butt, so is newspapering. Someone needs to look at the cost structure of the business, including ground rent or mortgage payments, interest and taxes in the mix.
Second, NEWS. US papers don't do NEWS. They reprint from wire services, and have a few guys otherwise. They do not believe that NEWS can generate income, increase readership or increase viewership. They don't want people to know what they know. How many articles has the Times withheld and not published, like what was that one they had that could have influenced the last election, and they didn't run. And then they keep on running stuff they know isn't true. Judith Miller.
They would need to take serious corrective measures to get back into the real world. Like apologies, publishing stuff they still aren't putting out, beefing up journalist employment, employing knowledgeable people.
But they seem to be comfortable being a US version of Pravda with lingerie ads.
There is a discussion about whether the government ought to take them over. I'm not sure about that. But the government does pretty much limit itself to failed businesses, so they do qualify. Would the advertizers pay the government?
Instead of worrying about the forn of what they put out, they should think about what a new national media network based on all modes, and featuring NEWS would look like. It would take a share-holder revolt to get that going and the paper will probably have poisoned itself in peppermint fumes and ashpyxiated before that happens.
BTW
Who decided Madison Avenue is going to be eternal anyway?
Maybe there's some way of rejiggering the federal and state tax codes to make advertizing do prohibitively expensive it just fades away. No one would really miss it.
There's probably a whole pile of such businesses where the US is a world leader that could be subject to a fiscal light sword.
I share your grand fantasies Chris!
Up front I'll concede the extraordinary creativity evident in much of Madison Ave's production.
But I think there're few -- if any -- cultural forces that are more insidiously destructive than the 24/7/365 programming of our collective social reflexes to what the sellers need to sell us.
The ubiquitous application of that power even to the names of our public places and buildings makes me sick because it is ubiquitous.
I'm sick of the corporative forces that have overtaken my government to the point that, I'm no longer a citizen on the website of one my service dot govs, I'm a frigging customer.
I'm sick of it because the capacity of the human mind to absorb reality has its limits and those are continually stretched and flushed and stretched anew by the need for sellers to sell to us.
What do we Americans share culturally but the reflex to consume? Why?
There's no room inside the continually recycled advertizing sponge we think is our mind in the saturating sensorial rush to condition our need to buy what they need to sell us.
Chris, there's too much of the American economy depending on the fact that our savings rate won't exceed 3%.
Dreams are sweet and now filled with commercials! We lost a long time ago ;-)
How'd they choose such an ugly extension of "quandary" as the name, anyhow? Aren't they the PROs? or is it just me?
Quandaries
Just wait till people can't afford to pay for ads (Citibank, Visa, Countrywide Mortgage, GM etc). Oh, I'm sorry, no matter how bad things get they'll still have to buy ads, won't they? Otherwise there'll be no hope at all. Why shouldn't the government step in to bail out Madison Avenue like some people are saying they should with the New York Times?
Quando Quando when oh when
Perhaps there should be a national per capita cigarette quota to generate funds to pay for all these luxuries like newspapers
Pots and Kettles
It was kind of amusing this morning to find the Times sponsoring a discussion about the future of PBS!
Here is a link to the article which got things rolling "Is PBS Still Necessary?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/arts/television/17mcgr.html
and this leads to the discussion
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/02/17/arts/television...
Maybe real news organizations could be restructured as not for profits and in the process leave behind all the 'bits' they've collected that interfere with the news mission.
I came on this news group that sounds interesting
A post on Alternet caught my eye, and I saw that the author Robert Parry had originally written it for his blog ,a href="http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/122104.html">consortium news so I checked the blog out. I found that his motives in creating the blog sounded a lot like that of the founders of ePm; and some of his investigative journalism looked interesting. So I am providing a few paras from his "about us" section. He is based in Arlington. I wonder what others here think about him and his blog.