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Posted 6:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paid Content: The Debate Rages On
Rich Gordon on whether paid subscriptions are the future
Steve Outing, Bruce Annan, and Gordon Borrell are the latest to weigh in with opinions about whether paid content is a key part of the future for online publishing. Steve argues once again for a consortium of news sites to create a "travel pass" that allows customers to access multiple sites for a single price. Bruce thinks paid content is inevitable. And Gordon argues that paid content revenues will be minimal. I'd like to throw out a couple of thoughts-in-progress. First, people won't pay for "news" — even high-quality news from a whole bunch of providers. The word "news" is hard to define, but what I mean here is the kind of stuff that fills up most newspaper pages and broadcast news programs. Many people like to be well-informed about the events of the day, but they don't see a need to pay for online content that keeps them well-informed. Furthermore, I agree with Gordn that free online content doesn't cannibalize traditional media — in fact, it drives readership and viewership of newspapers and television news. So what will people pay for? Two ideas: targeted information that relates to their career, passionate interest, or pocketbook, or services that make their lives easier.
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Posted 6:43 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Broadband Economy: Part II
Steve Klein on the infrastructure of the 21st century
Don't count Washington Post editorial columnist Robert J. Samuelson among those who believe that a national broadband infrastructure is integral to an immediate economic boom. In an op-ed column, Samuelson argues just the opposite of Karen Kornbluh, a fellow at the New America Foundation and former deputy chief of staff in the Treasury Department. (See my Tuesday item on "Broadband and the Economy.")Samuelson writes that this country needs a really good $500 billion technology about as much as it needed another good 5-cent cigar, to quote Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall back in the Wilson administration. On the heels of the Excite@Home bankruptcy, which resulted in close to a million AT&T Internet users losing their broadband service, broadband's unfulfilled promise is more apparent than ever. Writes Samuelson: "Let's be clear: It isn't dead. About 10% of U.S. homes get broadband, up from almost none in 1998. Historically, this rate of adoption compares favorably with other new consumer electronics products. Getting to 10% household penetration took 12 years for color TVs, 8 years for cell phones, and 4-1/2 years for CD players, according to figures compiled by the Federal Communications Commission. But broadband hasn't lived up to the hype. ... For now it won't salvage the economy."
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Posted 9:22 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NYTimes.com's Tolkien Feature Raises Eyebrows
Steve Outing on "sponsored content" ethics
The website of the New York Times has produced a nice online package celebrating the upcoming film, Lord of the Rings (based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy books). It's packaged a bunch of archived content that the Times published over the years — such as reviews of Tolkien's books published between 1938 and 1954, film trailers, slide shows of Tolkien art, first chapters of the books, and Tolkien discussion forums. What's not immediately evident is that this is not a routine editorial project. It's a "sponsored feature" where the content was selected in concert with the sponsor (the film company). New media maven J.D. Lasica discusses this in his New Media Musings weblog.The notion of the Times presenting its own archived editorial content within a sponsored feature — and allowing the sponsor to select the content published — raises some ethical questions. The main page carries a "Sponsored Feature" logo disclaimer; the page looks just like a normal editorial Web page. But click on a link to one of the old book reviews, and the disclaimer disappears. This has generated some spirited discussion and some criticism of the Times' ethics in the Online-News discussion list. The central concern is that the Times let an advertiser select content — clearly a no-no under most circumstances.
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Posted 8:38 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NASCAR.com Considers a Pay Model
Steve Klein on online sports content
Turner Sports Interactive is revving up its NASCAR.com before the auto racing circuit revs up again in February. The idea, says site general manager Drew Reifenberger, "is to transition this into an entertainment medium," according to a story by Michael Hiestand in USA Today.But the site may be revving up the money engine, too. Since 53% of site users say they sometimes go online as they watch races on TV, NASCAR.com will provide more race-time online features, including allowing users to listen in to drivers and to call up specific video highlights. The coverage was free last season, but it could cost something in 2002. "We haven't figured out our pricing model yet," says Reifenberger. The site will continue its animated video series, "The Kellys," and expand its fantasy games because "the sport is perfect for fantasy leagues." Whether auto fans will pay, however, may also belong in the realm of fantasy.
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Posted 8:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Blogging Away at Full Speed
Carla Passino on weblogs in European media
In an interesting essay, Matt Welch writes about the complacency of American media companies over the last 30 years. The quality of their editorial offerings, he says, does not compare with what is currently available through weblogs. "Something has been going on these past three months (not to mention the five years before that), yet 95% of large media companies— especially monopolist newspapers — seem utterly ignorant of it, or at best powerless to react to it."European media companies, on the other hand, have rapidly jumped on the weblog bandwagon. The Guardian (UK) was the first to harness the creative power of weblogs with its Weblog, a daily diary of the best online news. Meanwhile, Italian newspaper Repubblica launched several online and offline columns that are weblogs in nature, if not in name — first and foremost the hugely successful soccer log Il Calcio in Testa, by Repubblica Online's editor, Vittorio Zucconi. And today, Cyberpaís, the e-supplement of El País (Spain), devotes a special to the weblog phenomenon, quickly pointing out that "weblogs triumph on the Internet thanks to the freshness of their content."
I think that European newspapers are far more receptive to new editorial opportunities opened up by the Internet (compared to U.S. papers) because traditional media drove the development of online news in Europe rather than simply reacting to the perceived threat posed by the Web. What do you think?
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Posted 6:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Almost Missed Another Anniversary
Norbert Specker on wireless services
Yesterday was the birthday of the first U.S. Web page ... and another technological milestone was enacted in St. Johns, Candada, on the same day. Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in his bid to receive the world's first transatlantic wireless signal on Dec. 12, 1901. That achievement brought Marconi the Nobel Prize. A hundred years later, many U.S. wireless subscribers find transmission quality has not moved much further than the crackling sounds received in Newfoundland on that long gone winter day, USA Today reports. Is this the real reason behind slow development of mobile services that are omnipresent these days in Europe?
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Posted 3:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NYU Launches ReadMe, a Welcome Voice
Josh Fouts on a new entry in online journalism world
Just when you thought U.S.-based online journalism was in its final death throes, up pops a new site with quality content and design. ReadMe is a new site created and run by New York University journalism students. The first issue, quietly launched with little fanfare on Dec. 12, offers a selection of interesting interviews with personalities in the online journalism world like MSNBC's Jeannette Walls. There is also an excellent portrait of business ideas that went well — Net-native contenders like Jeff Merron's Sportsjones.com.In these dark days, the birth of such a site is a welcome reminder — to this writer at least — that the content that made the Web special was largely the trappings of blood, sweat, and inspiration. And this site is certainly inspired.
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Posted 1:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
News Archives Ideally Suited for Digital Library Technologies
Madan Rao on archiving trends
News forms a significant component of surfers' daily diet on the Web, as well as an important source for competitive intelligence on corporate intranets. News archives are well suited for harnessing digital library technologies, as well as data mining for market intelligence, according to Dr. Hsinchun Chen, a Taiwanese business professor at the University of Arizona, who spoke at the recent Asian Digital Libraries Conference in Bangalore, India. He has conducted extensive studies on Chinese news classification and statistical indexing at the United Daily News of Taiwan, which probably has the largest Chinese news content in the world. Dating back 50 years, UDN is in the process of completely digitizing its entire collection of about 20 million articles.
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Posted 1:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Local TV News Withering? The Net's Role
Steve Outing on media trends
Local television news appears to be on on its way down. As columnist Robert Feder reports in the Sun-Times today, quoting a former Chicago TV news executive, a network affiliate in St. Louis got out of the news business because it was no longer profitable. If it can happen in a major market like St. Louis, it can happen elsewhere. It's not a mainstream view that local TV news programs will die off soon, but if this does become a trend it will position newspapers and their websites to take up the slack. Since the advent of online newspaper sites, it's been possible for newspapers to compete directly with local TV news; on the Web, they can post news instantly and reach audiences at their workplaces, where Internet-connected PCs are available but TV sets often are not. The media landscape is evolving. Is local TV news a dinosaur?
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Posted 11:45 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Healthy Use of the Internet
Steve Klein on teens and the Internet
Just what do teens and young adults do on the Web? You might be surprised to learn that they go to the Web for health-related information as much as they do to download music and play games online. According to a U.S. national survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in four in the 15- to 24-year-old age group say that they get "a lot" of health information online, and nearly 40% say that they have changed their behavior because of information they found on the Web. "Confidentiality is so important, and at this point most young people have faith that the Internet offers them that confidentiality," said Victoria Rideout, vice president and director of the program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health at the foundation.
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Posted 11:40 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
And the Users Will Never Know
Katja Riefler on building of another central content unit in Germany
The Axel Springer Verlag has announced the merger of the staff of some of its newspaper websites (see my recent item) — so does the Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt. The formerly independent editorial staff of Handelsblatt.com, DMeuro.com, Wirtschaftswoche heute, and JungeKarriere.com now have to work together in a new content unit. The reason is a cost cutting effort. Economy.One AG, the company in charge of all electronic ventures of Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt, had already fired one-fifth of its staff in July — among them nearly the whole management. The new central unit consists of the departments "News," "Companies," "Stock Market and Money," "Career and Success," and a technical division. All departments will contribute modules to each website, but each department is also responsible for one of the branded websites. According to Peter Poppe, the new chief editor, all four websites will keep their unique character.
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Posted 7:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
First Web Page Looked Like This ...
Steve Outing on history of the Internet
In an earlier item today, Steve Klein mentioned the anniversary of the first U.S. Web page. But there was no link to the actual page, and reader Andrew Elston implored us to find it. As you might expect, it's not terribly exciting viewed by today's standards — just some basic text links. Here's a page that describes the first Web pages created at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center by Paul Kunz. If you really want to dig into this historical topic, try this document by archivists who sought to find and analyze SLAC's historical Web records.
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Posted 7:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Winnipeg Free Press Site Goes Subscription
Norbert Specker on online news business models
The Globe and Mail reports of another newspaper site tying its online access to the paper subscription. Starting on Dec. 17, only the Can$210.60 ($358.92 outside Manitoba) subscription for the Winnipeg Free Press will allow access to the paper's website's full content. Still available to non-paying visitors are the areas that make real sense on the Web, such as classifieds, job and car listings, and obituaries. Associate editor John Sullivan says the move is partly motivated by the fear of losing print subscribers. Fear is such a bad adviser, isn't it?
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Posted 6:59 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
U.S. Online Subscribership Drops for First Time in 21 Years
Vin Crosbie on U.S. online usage
Another flag of the dot-com era has fallen, according to Telecommunications Reports International's Online Census Report. The number of U.S. residents subscribed to online services fell to 67.9 million in the third quarter of 2001, from 70.7 million the previous quarter. It was the first decline in U.S. online subscribership in the past 21 years, according to the report's managing editor, Amy Fickling. Only cable modem and DSL subscriberships, among the six Internet access methods tracked in the TRI report, showed any sizeable increases. The Internet TV market, with only 812,000 U.S. subscribers, suffered a 33.6% decline. Besides consumer frugality, a contributing reason for the overall U.S. Internet subscribership decline might be the disintegration of the free dial-up Internet access companies. According to the report, such companies had 14.8 million U.S. subscribers at the start of 2001, but only 4.85 million by the end of the third quarter. Many former subscribers to free access might have decided to stay offline.
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Posted 4:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is the Web Going TV?
Katja Riefler on daytime management for content
CBS Marketwatch has already tried this with advertising: On Friday from 2 p.m to 5 p.m., the site belonged to Budweiser. Now the first German website is testing daytime management for news. At the knowledge portal Wissen.de ("knowledge.de") you can watch the "Story of the Day" from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.; the next three hours belong to "Infobox"; and so on through the whole day with a unique Flash program for each day of the week. The purpose of some of the content is simply to impart knowledge, others advertise TV productions. CEO Matthias Winter is sure to attract new users and advertisers through this radio- or TV-like format that has been in place for a few weeks. First usability testing showed that young users are especially fascinated. Because Wissen.de belongs to Bertelsmann, the company has access to a lot of material and the rights to use it. Make sure to have the Flash 5 plug-in installed to see the presentations.
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Posted 9:10 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
MightyWords, Not Mighty Business Model
Steve Outing on the latest online content failure
The online content industry continues to suffer casualties. The latest is MightyWords, which announced it will close down on Jan. 12, 2002. MightyWords is a Web content marketplace that sells digital versions of content — mostly written articles. The original concept allowed anyone to sell their content on the MW website and MW kept half the sales price. It specialized in selling content that was in between the length of a magazine article and a book, such as research reports and whitepapers. The company's mission was to distribute content that was not available from traditional publishers. It later changed its model and only sold content from well-known authors and limited it to business and technology topics. That, too, was not a business model strong enough to survive the current downturn. MW was spun off from business/technology e-bookstore FatBrain.com in 2000.
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Posted 8:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
An Internet Anniversary
Steve Klein on the history of the Internet
Here's a trivia question for a 21st century version of Trivial Pursuit: Who created the first U.S. Web page, and when was it posted? Believe it or not, today marks just the 10th anniversary of the first U.S. Web page, which was created by Paul Kunz, a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Kunz's page, writes Janet Kornblum in USA Today, gave scientists easy access to SLAC's database of physics papers.World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee demonstrated Kunz's Web page in front of scientists at a conference in France. "It was a very dramatic moment," Kunz writes. "I realized without that last piece in the demo people would have forgotten about the Web before they got home." Instead, they went home and told all their colleagues, who started creating their own pages. The rest is, well, the Internet.
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Posted 5:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It Is Happening Now
Norbert Specker on online business models
Not everybody in online media looks sour these days. Here is an upbeat note from AOL Time Warner's Robert Pittman on the future of the medium. "They will pay you money to make their life easier," he says. That is a quote on consumers that goes far in any part of the business. Pittman positioned average revenue per user at US$53 and aims at a potential of $230. Heard often and still true: you build a relationship with the user and sell that relationship to advertisers. However, as half of AOL's income is derived from subscriptions, the advertising income does not have to carry the heavy portion as with most news sites.
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Posted 3:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Usenet ... the Whole Thing
Steve Outing on Google's latest addition
The search engine Google has introduced its new archive of Usenet newsgroups — going back 20 years and containing 700 million newsgroup postings. This is not only a valuable Internet historical tool, but also potentially a useful resource for journalists. Yes, there's a lot of junk in newsgroups, but there's also some valuable information on thousands and thousands of topics. Use this new archive when you need background on a specific topic or person; it's a good starting point and occasionally a source of information that won't be found anywhere else.
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Posted 2:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'NY Times v. Sullivan for the Internet'
Rich Gordon on an important court ruling
A decision by the New York State Supreme Court makes an important statement about online journalism. The Bank of Mexico (Banamex) sued Narconews.com, a website devoted to covering the drug war, alleging that the site's reports about Banamex's president were false and libelous. The court dismissed the case, reasoning that on matters of public importance, journalists can be found guilty of libel only if their actions meet the legal definition of malice. Which means that in New York, at least, online journalists have the same legal protections against libel lawsuits as their traditional media counterparts. These protections were established by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case called New York Times v. Sullivan.
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Posted 12:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Broadband and the Economy
Steve Klein on the infrastructure of the 21st century
If we have learned anything about the deployment of broadband access over the past few years, it would be that there is not sufficient demand given the cost to create a viable marketplace. Broadband access always seems to be on the horizon, promising everything from video-on-demand to interactive games to quick-and-easy e-commerce transactions. But how many websites have gone out of business waiting for the Great Coming?Yet broadband remains the second coming of the Internet, according to an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Karen Kornbluh, a fellow at the New America Foundation and former deputy chief of staff in the Treasury Department: Broadband "is integral to the improvement of the American economy." Kornbluth suggests that the government needs to play a more active role in broadband deployment, as it has done with the development of other essential infrastructure like railroads and phone service. If the cost of deploying broadband connections exceeds what consumers are willing to pay, Kornbluth writes, "the answer is for the government to provide a subsidy, targeted at sparsely populated regions of the country, at low-income users, or both." She adds: "The broadband network — the infrastructure of the 21st century — lies beneath our feet. A good economic stimulus plan would start the process of bringing this resource to the surface."
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Posted 11:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not as Much to Talk About
Steve Outing on the state of online news
Fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Vin Crosbie has been an active member of the Online-News discussion list (now part of Poynter.org) for many years. (I serve as the list's host/administrator.) He noted the decrease in discussion on the list recently, and documented it: This November, there were only 34 posts; in November 2000 there were 105 messages posted; and in November 1999 there were 71. He tracked other months and found similar patterns. Obviously, the online news industry is severely depressed, and lots of people have left the field and moved back to traditional media. Those of us left are perhaps too depressed to talk much. As Crosbie quips, "Is it because the party is over and no one wants to stay and wash the dishes?" Actually, now would be a great time to ramp up discussion on Online-News among the survivors — to discuss strategies for pulling out of the online news/media recession.
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Posted 6:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New AP Stylebook for Online
Steve Outing on a new journalism resource
Coming soon! The Associated Press in February will release a new stylebook and resource guide focusing on the Internet, "The Associated Press Guide to Internet Research and Reporting." As Wayne Robins reports for Editor & Publisher today, the book is edited by Norm Goldstein, the style guru who edits the offline "AP Stylebook," the style and usage bible for the majority of news people around the world. The book will cost $15, is available in paperback format, and is 176 pages. A major part of the book will be devoted to how to use the Internet as a reporting tool.
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Posted 4:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam ...
Steve Outing on the electronic scourge
I'm sick of spam. You're sick of spam. But it's proliferating and there's yet no solution. Now, in addition to junk e-mail, junk instant messages, and junk faxes, here comes word of spam being targeted at mobile devices. As The Guardian reports today, spams are also being targeted at the tiny screens of mobile phones. The latest development is that spamming marketers are targeting children under 13 — because in the UK, at least, one out of four youngsters has a mobile phone. The phones are so ubiquitous that one executive quoted in the Guardian article expects ownership among 9- to 10-year-olds to be well over 50% after this holiday season's gift phone purchases. Until now, phone text messaging had been targeted at the 16- to 34-year-old demographic.
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Posted 12:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Much Convergence Is Sound?
Katja Riefler on an extraordinary cost-cutting attempt
The Axel Springer Verlag (ASV), one of Germany's biggest publishing houses, is on a cost-cutting trip. Probably as part of its strategy to cut 10% of its work force over the next two years, the company recently announced that 25-30 staff members of "Ullstein Online" will be laid off. Ullstein Online produces the websites of the regional Berlin newspaper Berliner Morgenpost and the tabloids B.Z. and B.Z. am Sonntag. Now they will be merged with the online staff of Hamburger Abendblatt (a regional paper) and the national daily Die Welt. Springer also announced on Thursday that the print editions of Berliner Morgenpost and Die Welt will share a common editorial department in the future. The chief editor of this new content unit is already appointed.How the mixing of apples and oranges online and offline will be accepted by the users is an open question. But Springer's newspaper and multimedia chief, Dr. Mathias Döpfner, who will become chief executive of the group in January, seems to love to challenge his luck and to be confident of making a fortune. Döpfner declared to Handelsblatt that Bild.de, Germany's most visited newspaper website, will start charging early in 2002: "First we will be charging for exclusive content, for example an interesting interview with the Russian president Vladimir Putin or an attractive game. In a second step there could be a monthly subscription fee."
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Posted 12:42 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Are You a White Collar Spammer?
Vin Crosbie on "negative option opt-out" e-mail
The e-mail arriving from an otherwise reputable publisher states, "From time to time VNU Business Publications, publishers of Editors & Publishers (sic), would like to send you information about valuable new services, products and special offers from our preferred business partners that we feel will be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive these e-mails please click on the unsubscribe link below." Known as negative option opt-out, this tactic is an attempt by publishers and marketers to circumvent the fact that recipient consumers haven't given permission to be sent ads by e-mail. It's a tactic pioneered by disreputable spammers and is illegal in many European Union countries. If your company uses this e-mail list tactic, ClickZ's e-mail marketing columnist, Jeanne Jenning, explains why "you are jeopardizing the long-term viability of the list and your company's reputation for short-term gain."
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