Back to E-Media Tidbits
More Pre-10/2002 Archives

 

Friday, August 17, 2001

Posted 12:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Say It Ain't So ...

Rich Gordon on print "new economy" mags
Well, I've received my first edition of Business 2.0 since its purchase by Time Inc. It's a pale shadow of the original magazine — not just in page size and thickness, but also in editorial quality. It's obvious that Time just rebranded its original eCompanyNow magazine with the Business 2.0 nameplate and got rid of most of the staff that made Business 2.0 a must-read for those interested in new media. And now comes the demise of The Industry Standard (coverage from The Standard itself, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.), the other consistently compelling new-economy publication. It's interesting that these old economy, print-based publications clearly over-reached — expanded too quickly, spent too extravagantly, and failed to respond quickly enough when the economy turned sour — just as much as the companies they covered. Yet, it also seems obvious that there's still a huge market of potential readers (and advertisers) for quality coverage of the kinds of topics these publications specialized in. Who will step into the void?

Posted 12:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Salon, The Counterpoint

Steve Outing on Ken Layne's view
Writing for Online Journalism Review, Ken Layne offers a curmudgeonly view of Salon.com, which is in the news yet again because it recently got another modest round of money to burn through in its never-ending quest to survive through profitability. Most of the media fawn over Salon, Layne complains, but really it's not that good of a publication, he says. ("The site routinely praised for its 'great writing' has very little writing you could even call 'good.'") I don't agree and remain a Salon supporter, but nevertheless urge you to read Layne's criticism; it's good.

Posted 12:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Freelancing's Slippery Slope

Steve Klein on a trend in freelancing contracts
The slippery slope that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens warned about in his dissent of the 7-2 Tasini decision that supposedly favored freelancers may be getting slicker. In that dissent, Stevens wrote that rights could revert back to the days before the 1976 Copyright Act, when writers had almost no rights to their work. "Indeed, today's decision in favor of authors may have the perverse consequence of encouraging publishers to demand from freelancers a complete transfer of copyright," Stevens wrote.

Jason Blevins writes in the Denver Post that freelance writers at SKI and Skiing magazines (both owned by AOL Time Warner) have rejected a new contract that includes a work-for-hire clause, which conveys all copyrights to the magazine. "It's so onerous I cannot imagine signing this," said freelancer Steve Casimiro. "This has the potential to be precedent-setting. ... This is a fight for the future of all freelancers." Blevins writes that work-for-hire contracts have become increasingly common among media outlets (online, as well as print) since the June decision, which ruled that "publishers could not reuse freelance work without paying the creators of that work." Says Dennis DeMaio of the National Writers Union: "They are popping up like poisonous mushrooms all over (the U.S.)."

Posted 11:48 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Lessons from DoCoMo

Rich Gordon on charging for wireless content
The latest issue of Wired magazine has a the best piece I've seen to date about the phenomenal success (measured in market share or revenue) of Japan's NTT DoCoMo i-mode wireless service. (Unfortunately, to read the article now, you need to pick up the print edition, because it won't be online here until September 11.) I've read a number of critical assessments suggesting that DoCoMo's success is an artifact of unique aspects of Japanese culture — rather than, as the article suggests, brilliant execution based on a sophisticated understanding of marketing and product development. In light of today's questions about charging for Web content, I was particularly intrigued by DoCoMo's relationship with subscription content providers.

DoCoMo takes care of charging and billing, taking a 9% cut of subscription revenues. The company also sets strict limits on how much content providers can charge — no more than 300 yen ($2.50) per month — and has staff members who patrol i-mode sites to make sure that content is kept up to date. The amazing thing is that in addition to any content subscription costs, DoCoMo charges users .3 yen (1/4 cent) per 128-byte packet uploaded or downloaded. The average user is paying $80 a month for the service — so with 25 million subscribers, this is a huge business.

Thursday, August 16, 2001

Posted 6:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Salon Cautiously Optimistic

Norbert Specker on a talk with Michael O'Donnell
The general gloomy atmosphere in San Francisco these days is not reflected in Michael O'Donnell's office. On the brink of collapse, his Salon.com secured a new ($2.5 million) round of financing with clear directives to become profitable. So far 12,000 subscribers at an average of $33 prefer ad-free content and the added value promised. Not a lot with 3.8 million unique visitors per month, but a start. "We have the opportunity to use our free content as the marketing platform for our paid-for content," the webzine's CEO says. "And over time we will shift more and more content to the paid part. Advertising will still constitute most of our revenue at $5-8 million." We hope it works. As Wired News editor-in-chief George Shirk says: "It is sad so few quality pure plays make it. I really hope Salon stays out there as an independent voice."

An interesting phenomenon are the Table Talk aficionados. Of the 50,000 members, quite a few have followed the community over to The Well (which in itself is a moderately profitable business) and are shelling out $120 per year to participate. "We have found that advertisers do not like to put ads in discussion boards as the ads often provide the starting point for a rant on the shortcomings of the advertising company," says O'Donnell. "Plus, we find that the community audience is distinctly different from the online magazine audience."

Posted 5:43 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Industry Standard Shuts Down

Steve Outing on breaking media news
Ad Age is reporting that the leading Internet industry publication, the Industry Standard, is suspending publication effective immediately and searching for a buyer. The Wall Street Journal also has an early report, which speculates that a pared-down version of the publication will continue on the Web.

Posted 5:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Are the Seattle Mariners Scalping?

Steve Klein on online ticketing
Are the Seattle Mariners scalping tickets for their fans? The top team in Major League Baseball this season is promoting its Web site as a "venue for season-ticket holders to sell their seats," according to an article by Peter Lewis of the Seattle Times. The Mariners believe, however, that what they're doing is legal despite Seattle's anti-scalping law. Since the online service began on June 27, about 3,000 game tickets had been sold, including "some field-level seats going for about $100 over face value." The season ticket holders aren't the only ones making out. The Mariners take a cut of the transaction — 15% from the seller and 10% from the buyer. The Mariners defend the practice. Said Rebecca Hale,, the club's director of public information: "There's a big difference between what's happening on the Web site and what happens outside the ballpark. Some people outside the ballpark are selling stolen tickets." Yahoo! and eBay also auction tickets, of course.

Posted 12:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Don't Speak of Hardcore Shakespeare Search Engines

Steve Outing on stupid content filters
This week in my Editor & Publisher Online column, I wrote about opt-in e-mail newsletters getting blocked from reaching their subscribers. One of the (less sophisticated) filtering methods used by some ISPs, Web e-mail services, and corporate mail servers to block spam is to watch for "naughty" words in incoming messages. On a private discussion list that I participate in, which is frequented by a number of e-newsletter publishers, several list members cited their bizarre experiences with keyword filters rejecting their publications. Among the words and phrases contained within their newsletters that triggered the spam filters: penis; "hardcore Shakespeare fans"; porn; "crapped out"; "search engine"; and Scunthorpe (name of a town).

Posted 11:52 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Struggling with Convergence

Katja Riefler on content sales of media companies
Media in Germany have a long way to go to convergence. A recent study, "Cross Media 2001" (German language) of the management and IT consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, shows that only one-quarter of the biggest German media companies use content for multiple media, although the analysts are convinced that there is no alternative. Web content syndication seems to be wholly dead except the paid archives of the big newspapers. Most syndicators stopped their business in Germany. Latest victim: Altraglobe, a joint venture of Sueddeutsche Zeitung and a big Bavarian bank, was shut down August 1. The goal to sell content to financial sites all over Germany failed after just a few months.

Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Posted 7:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Who Owns Corporate Webcasts?

Steve Outing on an online press freedom issue
The Wall Street Journal's Stacy Forster has a fascinating story today about webcasts by corporations. Increasingly, public companies stream live webcasts over the Internet for events like quarterly conference calls. The archives of the webcasts are kept online by the companies for a few days, then taken down. But financial journalism organizations, like Bloomberg, have been archiving the quarterly calls — and some companies, like R.J. Reynolds, don't like this and are demanding that the media companies halt the practice. The public companies (emphasis on public) will have a difficult time winning this argument that they should control the content that they put out on the Internet. I view this as yet another example of how corporate executives need to adapt to how the Internet changes how they do business — and learn to live with it.

Posted 2:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Can an E-pub Own Reporters' Sources?

Steve Outing on a bizarre legal claim
Here's a journalistic legal case set on a premise you don't see every day. Paperloop.com, a forestry and paper news service of Miller Freeman Inc. and Pegasus Capital Advisors, has filed a lawsuit against a competitor, Forestweb. Paperloop alleges that journalists who left Paperloop to go to work for Forestweb should not be allowed to use the same sources they relied on while covering news stories in their previous jobs. Hmmmm, I wonder what Paperloop's lawyers were smoking when they came up with this one. If their dubious claim were to be upheld, no reporter who switched jobs would be able to utilize sources previously cultivated. Frankly, that's crazy; it probably violates constitutional protections, and represents an employment agreement that would not be upheld by the courts. Here's Forestweb's side of the story (Warning: Press release). And for a more balanced view, read today's media column by Dan Fost in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted 12:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Bill Collecting on the Internet

Jade Walker on online libel issues
MJ Rose has written an interesting brief for Wired (second item) about how WritersWeekly.com has been "outing" delinquent publishers for shady payment practices. The story says the site has collected over $15,000 in the past three months for writers by shaming companies into paying. "But, the worst possible penalty is that they get a grand slam mention in that week's issue of WritersWeekly.com, which now has (more than) 55,000 subscribers, most of whom are freelance writers," said founder Angela Adair-Hoy.

Other magazines, including my own, have dabbled in this area. When we receive complaints from writers, we usually contact the publisher directly and the problem is solved with a little mediation. If that doesn't work, we recommend taking action through the National Writers Union. However, we have shied away from publishing notices to our readers about these companies for fear of legal action (i.e., libel suits). What do you think of this practice? As an online writer, do you support this form of information sharing, even with the legal implications it brings? Write me.

Posted 11:53 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Much Better Than Local TV

Katja Riefler on live-multicasting on demand
It's really fun: For a long time I have been urging my newspaper clients here in Germany to install interactive webcams at places where people meet people, especially at clubs, bars, etc. I thought it to be a terrific service for young people if they could see on demand what is just happening at places they want to go. Unfortunately, no one liked the idea. Now I just discovered that the Sacramento Bee and one of its online offerings, Sacramento.com, soft-launched with SacClubCams, an even improved service like that, just two months ago. According to Jim Bonfield, online business development manager of Sacramento Bee New Media, they multicast Internet-based streams of video and audio from local clubs in real-time. Users can also chat. The Bee launched the network with a limited number of promotional partners. Additional clubs will be brought into the network pending successful sponsorship acquisition. Each club pays a nominal fee that helps to defray hardware costs.

I'm very curious whether this approach will be a success for the local audience. While wondering, you can read a summary of the story at NAA's Digital Edge.

Posted 11:48 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Broncos Pay to Web Play

Steve Klein on online sports sites
Back in the good old days of Web site management, companies paid for the privilege of maintaining professional and collegiate sports sites and took a cut of the action. That's changing. The Denver Broncos of the National Football League, whose Web site is the sixth most popular in the league, have hired fee-based Applied Theory to operate and host the site. Marketing services manager Steve Harbula said the team has a two-year contract with Applied Theory that will pay the company "in the low six figures." The Internet environment has changed, Harbula said. "Those were good times, when people knocked on your door to say, 'We'll pay you to maintain your site.'"

The Broncos, Super Bowl champs in 1998 and '99, also replaced its merchandiser, Venator, with Global Sports, according to an article by Steve Caulk in the Rocky Mountain News. "They (Venator) are good at the NFL level, but that expertise didn't refocus on the club level very well," Harbula said. "The look and feel was of the NFL. Now the branding is all Denver Broncos." Harbula and a staff of two provide content for the site, which has been profitable for the last three fiscal years.

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Posted 3:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

A Day Off

Steve Outing on this weblog
Things are still pretty quiet in the land of online content/media (at least compared to the last few years), so I'm taking advantage of that and the summer weather. There will be no E-Media Tidbits items today, as the editor (me) and weblog writers take this day off. We'll be back on Wednesday.

Monday, August 13, 2001

Posted 11:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Salon Will Still Die

Steve Outing on predicting webzine's future
MSNBC.com columnist Christopher Byron says in today's opinion piece that Salon.com's recent $2.5 million raised in new funding is only enough to stave off the inevitable demise of the site for a short time longer. He makes a good case that even if Salon is able to get itself into the black (not a good bet, at that), the profits are likely to be so slim that it may never make a good business. Good journalism, clearly yes. But a lousy business.

Posted 10:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Honey, They Shrank My Magazines!

Steve Klein on magazines and their Web sites
Imagine my surprise today when two long-missing magazine subscriptions showed up in my mailbox in smaller physical formats and new frequency patterns. Business2.0, which had gone bi-weekly during the halcyon advertising days of yore, is a monthly again (although resuming with an August/September issue). A combination of its former Internet-and-business self and eCompany Now under the Time Inc. banner, the "premier edition" of that union is 214 pages — twice what it had shrunk to by July 10 and half what it had been at its peak — and a more compact 8-by-11 inches. The magazine's Web site has "fresh articles daily" and an archive of articles from its two predecessors. By the way, does anyone remember that Business2.0 had an even earlier life as .Net? Brill's Content has morphed from a monthly into a quarterly that is a little over 7-by-9 inches in size. Subscribers can access the Web site for free; subscriptions otherwise cost $39 a year for the site, which features breaking news about the media industry.

Given all the changes, I'll be receiving Brill's Content well into 2002 and Business2.0 into 2005! Of course, by then, they'll both probably be called something else in some other format.


 
Get 3 free issues of WRITER'S DIGEST magazine

Posted 7:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

The Ax to Fall at AOL

Steve Klein on online media layoffs
The layoffs keep coming. Jim Hu of CNET News.com reports that AOL Time Warner is expected to announce layoffs in its online unit "to meet its aggressive financial goals" and that the cuts could total up to "several hundred" employees. AOL employs about 16,000 people at its Dulles, Virginia, campus. Last January, the company laid off more than 700 employees in the name of cost cutting.

Posted 11:50 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Examining the Clickstream

Rich Gordon on different types of Web users
The latest edition of Strategy+Business (a quarterly magazine from Booz-Allen & Hamilton) includes a fascinating article (PDF download) on how people actually use the Web. Based on an analysis of clickstream data from Nielsen/NetRatings, the article segments online user sessions into seven categories:

The authors use this data to make recommendations related to e-commerce, but the article will be quite relevant to content sites as well.

Posted 10:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Online Advertising Isn't Drying Up

Vin Crosbie on the myth of online advertising's evaporation
Although the print and broadcast advertising drought that's causing traditional publishers and broadcasters to lessen the flow of funding into unprofitable Web site operations is real, any drought in online advertising is a myth. eMarketer recently compiled research companies', banks', and brokerages' estimates of online advertising growth for Year 2002. It should be a banner year for banner ads: