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Posted 1:54 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
National Geographic Case May Predict Tasini Outcome
Steve Outing on freelancers vs. publishers
A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a photographer who sued the National Geographic Society, claiming infringement on his copyright when the Society republished his photos in a CD-ROM compilation of the magazine's content through the years. (Inside.com reports.) This case just might predict the outcome of Tasini vs. New York Times Co., the renowned freelancers vs. publishers case that's going before the U.S. Supreme Court next week. Observer say the National Geographic case is actually a more difficult win for freelancers than Tasini. Perhaps Tasini will be a slam-dunk for the writers?
Posted 12:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Ultimate Online Service: No Ads
Kerry Northrup on online business models
As has been noted earlier in this weblog, Salon.com is planning a new version of its online magazine that offers additional content and the added bonus of no advertisements for $30 a year. Maybe that is a service — no ads — that people are actually willing to pay for online. The Public Broadcasting System has had this business model for years, of course. Recall all those nights in which great cultural programming was interrupted every 25 minutes by fund-raising pitches, which the PBS volunteers would promise to stop as soon as they reached their contribution goal. Interestingly, in printed magazines and newspapers, readers indicate that ads are something they value. But then, those printed ads tend to cost more to do and so are better quality, limited in number, and more useful to consumers. It is online, where ads are relatively cheap and therefore so numerous that they almost qualify as graffiti, that users consider them something to avoid.
Posted 12:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Good Knight for Lubbock Online
Steve Klein on online sports
News that Bobby Knight would be offered the men's basketball coaching job at Texas Tech on Friday didn't break at a convenient time for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal's publishing cycle on Thursday. But that didn't prevent the newspaper from breaking the story on its Web site, Lubbock Online, at 11:40 a.m. and updating three times later in the day. And, as if "Techsans" couldn't get enough on the story, there's a "Bobby Knight Special Sitelet" with plenty of audio, video, extensive message boards, and a deep archive. Even Bobby Knight would be impressed.
Posted 3:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paying for Variety
Jade Walker on paying for online content
In the process of redesigning its Web site, the money managers behind Variety.com have decided to switch to a subscription-only format. Although a 30-day try-out is offered, anyone interested in reading this film and music industry news magazine must now fork over $59 a year to do so.Henry Shapiro, vice president and general manager of Variety.com, told CNet that the change was instituted because Variety was "concerned with maintaining the delivery of a qualified professional audience for our advertisers." Well, I'm sure their advertisers will be thrilled to know that I plan to get my entertainment news elsewhere. Looking at the latest surveys about paying for online content, I'm betting I won't be alone.
Posted 2:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Spam and the Single Man
Andrew Stroehlein on the STD of virtual sex: spam
A colleague was looking at some of the major porn sites for business research purposes ... no, honestly, he was looking into possible speakers for the Internet Content West conference. Unfortunately, he must have made the mistake of giving his e-mail address on a few feedback forms, and, well, you can guess what happened. Now, he is constantly spammed at work with offers of virtual sex and sex aids of all manners, shapes, and sizes. It's bursting his inbox and his sanity to the point where today, he finally snapped. He stood up at his desk and yelled at his monitor, "No, I don't want cheaper Viagra. No, I don't want a larger penis. No, I don't want a live Web cam view of a brothel in Amsterdam." Rather suspiciously, however, upon sitting down he muttered, "Well, maybe that." Perhaps spam-induced frustration does work as a marketing tool.
Posted 2:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Sad News From Sweden
Katja Riefler on an e-content death
Last November at the Content Summit in Zurich, Krister Bengtsson, then CEO and editor-in-chief of 24timmar.se (24hours), opened his presentation with a challenge to the major Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet: "Dagbladet has been around 135 years, we have been around 3.5 years. Let's see who wins." Unfortunately, he lost. One month ago 24timmar.de had to stop operations because of the lack of further funding. 24timmar was supposed to reinvent the market for local information in Sweden. It started in 1997 with one local portal in the small city of Orebro. Founded by former print journalists, it developed with its mix of local news, advertising, and community functionality into a real threat to local newspapers. It was seen as a strong competitor, by one paper even as the "biggest media event in 30 years."This year 24timmar had 57 local portal sites up and running. One of the reasons for the death of this ambitious project might be the awakening of the "dinosaurs" of the newspaper industry. They are meanwhile doing a terrifically good job on local news on the Web in Sweden. Do you know a local newspaper with a print circulation of 68,000 daily that generates more than 1.5 million pageviews a month (290,000 visits) and presents up-to-the-minute local news even during night hours? Nerikes Allehanda does, and even claims a small profit for its Web operations.
Posted 12:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspapers Out of The Box
Kerry Northrup on news distribution
Piceni Electronic Publishing Concept (PEPC) of the Netherlands has started placing its print-on-demand newspaper delivery kiosks in hotels around the world, some of the first of which are in Germany (hence this linked article, with picture of the device, from Die Welt). On first thought, many of us remember the failed PressPoint initiative of the same genre. But perhaps PressPoint is another example of a good idea being tried before the world was ready, while follow-ons such as PEPC might have stumbled on the right combination of timing and technology.
Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
AltaVista Does News
Steve Outing on Moreover search engine deal
AltaVista, a fine search service, has added an online newsstand to its main index. The big search engines are not good tools for finding current or breaking news (though many people mistakenly use them for that), so adding news-search technology is a good move. (Why didn't they do this years ago?) The newsstand is powered by technology licensed from Moreover, which provides Web filtered news feeds on a wide variety of topics. If you've ever wondered how Moreover intends to make money, now you know. Moreover also is in talks to license its news-searching service to the likes of Google and Excite. (Here's an AP story for more detail.)
Posted 10:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Painful Feedback
Jade Walker on reader commentary
Each time I publish a column or article on the Web, I receive a smattering of e-mail from readers. Some of these notes are complimentary, others critical. Will Leitch, editor of Brill's Content: The All Star Newspaper, has a reader who positively hates his work. Leitch shares these letters in his latest Ironminds column.
Posted 9:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Will Jittery Consumers Drop Cable and DSL Access?
Paul Grabowicz on broadband
ZDNet has a story about what impact the slowing economy might have on consumers' willingness to pay more for broadband access. There could be a lesson in what happened to cable TV in earlier recessions.
Posted 9:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pennies Add Up Online for J.C. Penney
Steve Klein on online retailing
The slow-to-the-Web tortoises are winning the race. Or, as Red Herring's Ken Yamada puts it, "The 'dinosaurs' are starting to rule the Web." Yamada defines dinosaurs as "those aging, old-economy companies that were supposed to be headed for extinction, overcome by the Internet explosion, and dot-com predators." Yamada cites J.C. Penney, the 98-year-old retail discounter. Its Web site, JCPenney.com, is supposed to become profitable over the next several months, fueled by a company-forecasted 36% rise in sales this year to $400 million. About 2 million people have shopped at JCPenney.com — a quarter of whom are entirely new to Penney.Are there advantages to shopping online? Well, about half of all online apparel sales are of specialty sizes and items; the company is working on targeted e-mail campaigns; and the catalog division is easily able to handle online orders from individuals. Of the company's $32 billion in annual sales, $4 billion comes from the catalog division, including the Web site.
Posted 4:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Writers Can Get Their Share of Contentville Sales
Steve Outing on copyright and royalties
The National Writers Union this week debuted the Web version of the Publication Rights Clearinghouse, a licensing system for authors. Writers who find that any of their articles are for sale on content e-commerce site Contentville should join the PRC so that they will receive 30% of any money Contentville gets when selling their articles. (Writers must still own copyright of their work, of course.) The agreement between Contentville and the NWU is the first of what the union hopes will be many. The idea is that the PRC becomes the writing equivalent of the music industry's ASCAP royalty sharing mechanism. This is an important development and a first step toward freelance writers getting paid when content database companies profit from their labor.
Posted 12:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Accidental Marketer
Steve Outing on marketing content
Last night I sent out the daily e-mail to E-Media Tidbits readers as usual, but I made a mistake. I went to the browser bookmark of the Web page I use to send out my weekly newsletter, Content Spotlight. So, 6,300 newsletter subscribers got the Tuesday e-mail version of Tidbits. Oops. When I realized my mistake, I sent out an apology note to Spotlight subscribers — and also mentioned that, now that they'd seen Tidbits, they might want to subscribe to that, too. In the first 12 hours after I made that mistake, I recorded 117 new Tidbits subscribers.Now, I assure you that this was a mistake. But I received several messages this morning from newsletter readers who suggested that what I had done was an effective marketing ploy. They wondered if I planned this. No, I'm not that smart of a marketer.
Posted 5:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
See Ya
Andrew Nachison on taking a stand against corporate news
Jay Harris, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, resigned yesterday in protest of corporate parent Knight Ridder's profit targets. Newspapers thrived during the dot-com boom, and the Mercury News in particular has struggled during the bust. But that's cyclical background noise. The real story is the mounting pressure from investors to boost media company profits to new heights. This same pressure drove Knight Ridder, and the New York Times Co., and Tribune Co., to contemplate Internet spin-offs last year. The goal was to enhance "investor value," not customer value.
Posted 3:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Salon.com: Pay Us or We'll Turn on the Big Ads!
Steve Outing on ads vs. paying for content
Last year at an Internet Content conference, I heard Salon.com editor David Talbot propose that his site would start offering premium paid content alongside existing free content — as a way to survive. Now, he's made good on that proposal by introducing "Salon Premium," which will debut next month. The idea, of course, is to get Salon's users to pay. The enticement is a premium version of the Web site that won't contain banner ads or pop-up ads — for $30 a year. You can still read Salon for free, but what's coming, Talbot hints, are larger and more intrusive ads. So if you want to avoid that, cough up the 30 bucks. Expect to see other major content sites mimic this approach. It look promising at a time when traditional Web banners are failing, and when Web consumers are starting to realize that the free-lunch period is almost over.Coincidentally, I also received a press release this morning from the European Internet Network, touting a new premium service that's modeled almost exactly like Salon Premium. For $9.95 per 6 months, you can get access to EIN's sites sans ads. EIN executives claim that users won't be paying for the content, but rather will pay for the convenience of the "Professional Edition" service.
Posted 2:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Guerrilla War
Andrew Nachison on information credibility
Add this to the trail of digital sleaze: The Los Angeles Times reports that entertainment companies have launched numerous fake "fan" Web sites to promote movies. We're talking about movies, and marketing, so no need to get too excited about the implications for "serious" Web sites.But the erosion of respect for truthfulness within corporate America hints at a digital age dominated by liars, deceivers, and information anarchy. What's next? Guerrilla marketing campaigns paid for by news companies? Media consolidation makes this likely, if it hasn't already happened: think AOL-Time Warner, or Viacom.
Posted 2:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ads You Can't Zap
Steve Outing on advertising within content
Because I have a TiVo personal network recorder, I no longer watch TV commercials. I don't watch live TV; I let TiVo record shows I care about, then watch them later — so I can fast-forward past the ads. (Watching the nightly half-hour network news is now a 15-20-minute experience!) How will advertisers get around that? As this article from The Standard demonstrates, advertisers are planting commercial messages within TV shows themselves. For instance, on Survivor: The Australian Outback, contestants vied for a crate of goodies with a Target logo prominently displayed.Given how ineffective Web banner ads are, this makes me wonder if the concept of including advertising within Web content is a likely future trend.
Posted 1:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
All The News That ...
Rich Gordon on NYT's digital strategy
Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Co. (and publisher of its flagship newspaper), recently gave a speech that nicely describes the tensions that erupt as a traditional media company wrestles with its digital future. He argues that the Times Co. has crossed an important cultural divide: "Whether it is the printed pages of the paper or the digital realm of the Internet, in magazines or books, on television or radio, we have become single-minded in our efforts to reach this knowledge-hungry audience, regardless of the means of distribution." I'm not necessarily convinced that the Times has truly moved beyond being print-focused, but certainly it has made more progress than many newspaper companies.He does point out one advantage the Times Co. has over some of its peers: family control of the business. Newspaper companies need to make investments in their digital operations — in most cases, money-losing investments — if they are going to have a future. I'm skeptical that publicly traded companies, with their incessant focus on the next quarter's revenues and profits, can ever be bold enough. (Case in point: The resignation of Jay Harris as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, after declines in ad revenue led to Knight Ridder pressure to cut expenses.)
Posted 12:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Only the Loftiest Can Charge
Vin Crosbie on online business models
Traditional media business models are associative: If the model works for one publication, it likely will work for all publications. For example, if the Wall Street Journal can charge $1 per copy, so can the Wyoming Business Review. But immigrants from traditional media who hope to transplant their publications online often don't notice that New Media business models instead are culminative: If a model works, it likely works only for the top-most title in a topical range. For example, if WSJ.com (Wall Street Journal) can charge $49.95 per year for access, fat chance that the Wyoming Business Review or any other business publication can. Only the topmost title in topical range can charge for content.WSJ.com, Playboy.com, and ESPN.com are able to charge for access to most of their Web sites because they are the premier topical titles for money, sex, and sports (which, by the way, are always the initial topics in any new medium). Nevertheless, those premier sites must still provide large amounts of content for free. And if a topical range has too many equally lofty competitors, then none can charge. For example, the New York Times' renown helped it force online site registration, but the site would lose millions of users if it tried to force users to pay access fees, because those users would simply switch to the free and equally lofty CNN.com, BBC.com, or WashingtonPost.com sites.
Posted 1:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Writers v. The World
Andrew Nachison on digital copyright
Regarding Tassini et al v. The New York Times et al, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court copyright case mentioned by Jade Walker (below): the case will shed some light on the question of whether authors or publishers retain rights to digital versions of analog documents they've published in the PAST. But I don't think it will do much to help writers in the future, no matter how it's decided.It's just not clear to me who comes out ahead in the age of digital publishing: publishers eager to exploit writers across multiple channels (each channel fragmented with smaller and smaller audiences), or writers who have more opportunities to circumvent the odious publishers. Will publishers suddenly double their budgets for freelancers, and freelancers find themselves driving BMWs? Unlikely. We have yet to see the emergence of truly competitive, writer-friendly digital alternatives to the big-name publishers involved in this case. Is it possible, or is "truly competitive, writer-friendly" an oxymoron.
Posted 12:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
UK Government's Dot-com Flop
Andrew Stroehlein on the World Internet Forum
The UK daily The Guardian led on Monday morning with news of a dot-com flop with a difference. The World Internet Forum, meant to be a grand meeting place for business and government leaders, went into liquidation, and there are allegations that false statements had been made to creditors regarding the organization's financial position. The collapse is hardly a surprise, since the inaugural Forum was canceled just three days before it was to take place last November after just 63 of the expected 500 delegates signed up. But this flop is an embarrassment for the Labour government, as the project was founded by prominent Labour Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Parliamentary Internet Group, Derek Wyatt.
Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Charging for It
Andrew Stroehlein on online subscription-based content
Another interesting comment made in Monaco last week at the Internet Content Europe conference concerned online subscription models. In the panel session dedicated to the subject, Chris Graves, managing director of business development for Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal), made an addendum to the standard content industry mantra that "only porn and the WSJ can work as a subscription service." To those two, Chris added Consumer Reports, the U.S. consumer products review magazine. Consumer Reports indeed does work successfully with a subscription service, and that's worth remembering. Interestingly, when Chris asked the audience who was currently working with a subscription-based business model, more than half the audience raised their hands. It may be profitable for only a very few, but that doesn't mean others aren't trying to make a go of it.
Posted 11:07 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'eContent' Calls for Proposals
Katja Riefler on European Commission initiative
Can bureaucrats help the E-Content economy? In case your business is located in Europe, the following might be of interest. The European Commission's new "eContent Project" has launched its first call for proposals. It is inviting demonstration projects, definition phase projects, and accompanying measures within the scope of its three action lines: (1) improving access to and use of public sector information; (2) enhancing content production in a multilingual and multi-cultural environment; and (3) increasing dynamism in the digital content market. Details can be downloaded from the program's Web site. An Information Day will be held in Brussels on April 26.
Posted 11:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The New York Times Faces Supreme Measures
Jade Walker on legal issues
I'm in a bit of a bind this week. On one hand, I'm a freelance writer, and a staunch supporter of fair compensation for work used in the electronic medium. On the other hand, I'm also a producer of The New York Times on the Web, a site that is fighting to publish freelance content in print, on the Internet, and in various databases without additional payment.Thankfully, this uncomfortable position will be short lived. Come March 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will help all freelancers determine their worth in the online realm, particularly with regard to payments and electronic rights. To learn more about this case, check out "Big Media v. Freelancers: The Justices at the Digital Divide" and "Tasini v. New York Times: Supreme Court Appeal" for a fairly balanced view of both sides.
Posted 10:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ode to the Personal Voice
Amy Gahran on a thought-provoking essay
For awhile now, one of my favorite online columns has been Joel on Software, by Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software. My husband is a software designer/engineer, and reading Joel's surprisingly lucid columns helps me understand the issues my husband grapples with in his work. I'm surprised how often I discover parallel issues in the worlds of software and online content. Yesterday, Joel published an especially notable and thoughtful column about the importance of a personal voice on a Web site: "Spring in Cambridge." In it, he reflects on what made arsDigita (Philip Greenspun's company) unique. He writes:I know, anybody at arsDigita will tell you "No, Joel! It's open source that made arsDigita different." Or community. Or content management software. Sorry, all that stuff bores me. What excites me was the way arsDigita had a personal voice on the Internet that made it possible to relate to it in a human way, which is what people want to do, since we're humans.
... Write on, Joel!
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