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Posted 4:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Globe Assessment of Online News Malaise
The Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz takes a look at the current dismal state of online news in his Media column today. The conclusion: There's a lot of soul-searching going on in this business right now. The traditional news industry has not succeeded in figuring out how to profit from the Internet, and now with the dot-com downturn news executives are reassessing their strategies and new media investments. My advice: Don't take your eye off the ball! An economic blip does not mean that digital media is any less powerful a force in the long run. —Steve
Posted 1:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What Will They Read in the John?
NBC has told its staffers to cancel all their newspaper subscriptions and to get all their news online, according to New York magazine's Intelligencer column, which hits newsstands on Monday. Apparently, this will save $50,000 a year, and is part of an effort to make the television network more "paperless." Employees will have to start taking their PDAs into the bathroom, then, but they'll need to keep a firm grip.
(According to the New York Post's Michael Starr, however, NBC denies that the report is accurate; a spokesman says employees "were asked to get their news online when appropriate and to cancel unnecessary and duplicate subscriptions.") —Steve
Posted 1:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
BBC Will Rankle Some Feathers With Ad-supported Web Plan
The Standard reports that the BBC is planning to accept advertising on a new international news Web site, BBCNews.com, which will be launched in June. If true, this would mark the first time a publicly funded BBC Internet project has taken advertising money. Needless to say, the move would be controversial — as a publicly funded media entity would compete for ad revenues with competing commercial news enterprises. Until now, the BBC's directors have ruled out advertisements on Internet ventures because they would compromise the impartiality of the Beeb's public-service role. —Steve
Posted 12:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Separate New Media Division or Integration?
The burning issue of today among media companies is whether it is smarter to have a spin-off new media operation (as many a media corporation has done in recent years), or to integrate everything. CNN is doing the latter with its newly announced reorganization (and impending layoffs of 400 people); its Interactive unit will become part of the larger enterprise, and CNN journalists will need to learn how to create content for TV, radio, and online.
There's a fascinating discussion on this topic taking place on the Online-News list (which I operate). Some smart people from the news industry are examining this latest media industry dilemma. If you're not a list member, you can log on as a guest to read the discussion thread. (Look for the subject "Integration vs. separation, online/offline.") —Steve
Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Syndicates and Little Publishers
ContentBiz.com this week reports that Web syndicate NetContent Inc. is not abandoning small content publishers. A week ago, ContentBiz.com quoted executives of Screaming Media and Yellowbrix as saying that they are now unlikely to take on the content of small publishers. Says a NetContent Inc. VP, "We do carry content from smaller publishers and we will continue to do so. If Screaming Media and YellowBrix desire to offer their clients a narrow, shallow pool of content, so be it."
iSyndicate, meanwhile is not turning away small-fry content publishers, but it is being more selective in who it accepts. Says an iSyndicate manager quoted by ContentBiz, "We want to work with companies that will be around for a long time, who have a reliable publishing schedule, and those who we feel confident that we'll find a market for. So, we are raising the bar and looking closely at what we get." —Steve
Posted 8:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NBA Nixes CommentX 'Fan Commentary'
The National Basketball Association has sent its lawyers after CommentX.com, demanding that the company not broadcast a "superfan's" commentary via mobile phone to the Internet. The company had planned to conduct its first experiment tonight at the Seattle Supersonics game, but has canceled it. "Mike" of Seattle had a paid ticket to the game, and the plan was for him to comment via his phone as the game progressed, and interact with Internet "listeners." (See Steve Klein's article about CommentX in this week's Content Spotlight newsletter.)
CommentX responds to the NBA's legal threat on its home page — and although it ceded to the NBA's warning, the startup's founders say they will continue to work toward making their vision a reality. They also believe that case law is on their side, and that the courts will ultimately permit a fan watching a game to speak into a mobile phone during a game and interact with other fans. The vision is that fans at all sorts of sports events would be able to dial in to a system that would share their audio thoughts with Internet users. (A fan using such a system might be in a stadium seat, or sitting in front of a TV set at home.)
Is this the future of sports coverage? Or will the leagues shut the fledgling movement down with their armies of lawyers? This will be interesting to watch. —Steve
Posted 5:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Painful Changes at CNN
Jim Romenesko today published a memo from CNN Newsgathering president Eason Jordan to staff regarding the restructuring of CNN, which will result in about 400 people losing their jobs. A key message in the memo is that CNN's TV, radio, and interactive units will be much more integrated from now on. "The days of thinking of each of the dozens of CNN services and units as a separate silo are over. We are all on the same team," Jordan writes.
And here's an interesting quote regarding how CNN journalists' and editors' jobs will change: "CNN newsgatherers must be multi-skilled and meet the requirements of our TV, radio and interactive services. No longer will a newsgatherer work only for TV or Radio or Interactive. Correspondents whose expertise is TV reporting must know how to write for Interactive and provide tracks for Radio and deliver for them as needed." Journalism school leaders: Are you paying attention? Tomorrow's journalism graduates will need a wider range of skills to function in such environments. —Steve
Posted 4:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Generation Gap ('Like, Seriously')
What happens when a 49-year-old Washington Post reporter steps into a Britney Spears chat room on America Online and asks what the participants think of George W. Bush? The answer is hilariously funny. Click here for a good laugh. —Steve
Posted 12:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Procter & Gamble Kills Its Teen Site
As The Guardian reported earlier this week, consumer goods behemoth Procter & Gamble has pulled the plug on its teen-girl portal site, Swizzle. The purported reason is that it was a questionable investment to target a market segment that doesn't have the means (i.e., a credit card) to make online purchases. Swizzle was a joint venture with Excite that was announced at the start of 2000. Says the Guardian story, "The plan was to use the site to showcase P&G's brands, including Tampax, Clearasil, Max Factor, and Cover Girl to the fickle teen market."
There's a potential flaw in the business plan right there. Now I'll admit that I haven't seen Swizzle. (The site now says only, "Under construction.") But a consumer goods retailer is not, in my opinion, a good entity to be running a portal site. Only if P&G could resist the urge to overtly hawk its products would such a site work. No doubt, teen girls could tell if the site "had the goods" (quality content) or was merely trying to hawk its goods. Sure, retailers can get into the niche portal business. But they've got to think like publishers if they do, and for a consumer goods company, that won't be easy. —Steve
Posted 12:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Problem With News Sites: Poor Personalities
In recent weeks, I've been poring over newspaper Web sites as one of the judges in Editor & Publisher's annual EPpy Awards competition. In my weekly E&P column, I offer some general impressions of what I saw. (No, there are no hints about who won any of the contest categories; I don't know, anyway.) What I liked this year is that many more sites now offer a comprehensive suite of services to their users — features that I've been recommending in my writings for a long time. But what's really missing at many of the sites I reviewed is much "personality." Frankly, many were downright dull! That's not something you want your site to be in an Internet downturn. —Steve
Posted 7:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Sneakernet' Lives On!
Newspaper companies are really trying to get with it, but the technology they use still holds them back. As Mark Fitzgerald reports for Editor & Publisher, some media companies are running into technical hurdles as they try to integrate newspaper, TV, and online operations — which often have non-compatible computer systems. At such cyber-savvy newspapers as the Tampa Tribune and Chicago Tribune, staff needing to share information and files sometimes must resort to "Sneakernet" — that is, putting data on a disk and physically carrying it to another part of the building. Yikes! Arthur C. Clarke (of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame) would be disappointed. —Steve
Posted 7:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Self-publishing: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
If you're an author with a book that's not yet published in print, how do you win awards? Sometimes it helps not to mention that to content judges. John Blumenthal's What's Wrong With Dorfman? was named as one of the 50 best books of 2000 by the prestigious literary zine January Magazine. But the book was self-published and only available for purchase online. As M.J. Rose reports in her Wired News column this week, Blumenthal kept that fact secret, "because he’d been warned the book would not get reviewed by the mainstream press if it was known." Prejudice against online-published books is likely to remain with us for a while. —Steve
Posted 7:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Green Magazine Folds as Founder Gets Real Job
Green Magazine has folded, reports Inside.com, because the zine's editor and founder has taken a job at Money magazine. Green has primarily been a labor of love for founding editor Ken Kurson, who not long ago sold the venture to Bankrate.com. Now that Kurson is leaving, Bankrate has decided to shut down Green. Inside.com's report describes Green as a "punk outfit" — operating less as a business and more like a small group of journalists trying to create something of quality and impact. —Steve
Posted 6:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Massive Newspaper Digitization Project
Bell & Howell announced yesterday that it will digitize old issues of the New York Times dating back to 1851, making the paper's full history available online and not just on microfilm. The paper's historical archives will be made available on the Web via B&H's ProQuest online information service, which is available by subscription to educational institutions and libraries. There's no word in this Information Today article about when and if this content might be available to any Web user, but that will probably happen in time. The digitization process is expected to take 15 months, with monthly segments released covering 10 years of Times content each.
This is exciting, and is an early step toward the day when historical content of most major newspapers will be available on the Web. Most digital newspaper archives currently only go back a couple decades before they revert to microfilm or microfiche. This isn't the first attempt by a newspaper to digitize its assetts. The Chicago Tribune a few years ago embarked on a historical digitization project, for example. —Steve
Posted 12:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hats of Meat!
There are lots of comedy and spoof sites online, but most of them simply aren't very funny. However, here's one I just found out about that's truly original, bizarre, and funny. It actually made a jaded old codger like me laugh! Check out Hats of Meat. I don't know whether it's new or not. (Warning: this content may offend vegetarians and animal rights activists – or at least they'll claim that they're offended, after concluding their private guffaws.) —Amy
Posted 11:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Good-news Story
I don't know about you, but in the back of my mind I fear that someday I'll lose much of my digital work. What if my hard drive died, the tape backup was no good, and my Web site hosting company had a catastrophic data loss. Yeah, that's not at all likely, but you never know! Such was the case for San Francisco programmer Jake Savin, who lost three years of work and his Web site to the unthinkable. But wait! There's a happy ending. Savin discovered that Google stores old Web pages in a cache. He found all 400 lost Web pages in the Google cache and was able to restore his site. (Wired News tells this happy tale.) —Steve
Posted 11:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Retreat of Old Media
"The rumbling you've been hearing has been the sound of old media businesses stampeding out of their once-aggressive Web ventures," writes Kara Swisher, the Wall Street Journal's Internet columnist, in this article. Alas, that's not a smart strategy. About.com's Scott Kurnit is quoted by Swisher (which echoes my own thoughts): "Bar none, this is the time to invest and not act like the pack, if you can afford to look around the corner. If you keep on going in the weak periods, when you come out the other end you possibly have an enormously powerful content model and can blow everyone else away." —Steve
Posted 3:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Dave Matthews Band: Not Afraid of the Big, Bad Napster
Last week, the Dave Matthews Band released a single on Napster, while most major record labels are still suing the controversial music-sharing service. This marks the first time a major band has posted its music on Napster with the permission of its label – in this case, RCA Records, which is owned by BMG Entertainment, which is in turn owned by Bertelsmann (the gigantic German media conglomerate). Bertelsmann also owns online music store CDNow, and the latest Napster software (released last week) lets people connect directly to CDNow. —Amy
Posted 12:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
:CueCat: Still Clawing
Within the last week I noted that a newspaper writer had issued a "Death Watch" for Salon.com. The Internet company that would appear to really warrant a Death Watch is Digital Convergence, the developer of the much-maligned :CueCat personal scanning device. A New York Times report today documents the many troubles that the company has experienced — and marvels that Digital Convergence has managed to survive the dot-com downturn.
Interesting numbers cited in the Times article: Of the 400,000 Wired magazine subscribers who received free :CueCats, 60,000 of them actually tried out the devices. Some 850,000 Forbes subscribers received the free devices, and 100,000 of them tried them. And of those who did try them, many tried the devices then stopped using them. (Anecdotal example: My father-in-law tried the one he got from Wired, didn't like it, then gave it to me to try.) Just think of the cost of those more than 1 million :CueCats that ended up in the trash can or sit unused on shelves! It's mind-boggling. —Steve
Posted 11:52 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Fan in the Stands; The Future of E-books
This week's Content Spotlight newsletter features a very interesting article by Steve Klein about a new Internet venture that plans to have sports fans armed with mobile phones broadcasting commentary over the Internet — from inside the stadium and with paid-for seats. The sports leagues will not like this a bit — but do they have legal grounds to prohibit it?
Another article worth your time is Ethan Casey's review of Jason Epstein's book, Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future. Epstein, who "invented" the paperback book, has some strong notions about the digital future of books — and he's never been wrong about predicting the future of the book industry.
Also in this issue, see my report on the Web site Plastic (see item below), and Michelle Goodman profiles the conversative-news site CNSNews.com. —Steve
Posted 11:40 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Plastic Debuts as Slashdot for Pop Culture
A new Web site called Plastic debuted today, and it's got a very interesting model that's akin to the popular Slashdot.org. While Slashdot is for the tech crowd, Plastic tackles various aspects of pop culture. Both sites are user-driven, with editors screening user-contributed content — which makes running the sites inexpensive. The interesting part of Plastic is its partnerships with 10 independent content sites and media companies that operate co-branded Plastic sites in cooperation with Plastic's parent company, Automatic Media. I've written an article about the Plastic concept for this week's Content Spotlight newsletter. —Steve
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