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Rocky Mountain News closes for the 3rd time

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

The Rocky Mountain Independent has closed just two months after it started. The Independent was formed from the ashes of InDenverTimes.com – which actually still exists as a free information site, but not with any of the well-intentioned people who started it five months before the Independent.

Both of these were created by jobless journalists jilted by the February closing of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News.

The closing is sad, but predictable. The online-only effort at covering news in Denver was started for the wrong reasons (early-onset nostalgia), it had an implausible business model (premium priced news content), and it was run by the wrong people (journalists).

For the ultimate review on the subject, check out Alan Mutter’s Newsosaur blog. Everything he writes about this episode is spot-on and couldn’t be said any better.

But I will emphasize one point: Once upon a time, the news business might have been about the quality of reporting. And I know that some very strong journalism schools are still teaching that it still is. What else should they teach: mediocrity?

But it’s dead wrong. With the exception of some notable niches, content today is judged on a strictly pass-fail basis. It is either not good enough, or it is good enough.

For most media today, there is no ROI in anything that aspires to be better than good enough.

I’m not saying that great journalism doesn’t have a redeeming social value. Of course it does. It’s the bedrock of democracy; it’s the record of humanity.

There’s just no money in it.

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Trouble with democracy: It doesn’t pay well

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

If there’s anything I write about or comment on that is sure to draw a hot and negative response, it’s the insistence that journalists start to get in tune with their true market value. It’s not that I don’t see a huge social value to the work they do. I credit journalists with keeping our democracy alive. But they’ve never been paid by democracy; they get paid by a business model.

My point is twofold:

  1. Journalists have always been part of someone else’s business model. But it’s generally only in times like this, when the business models are under fire, that journalists are compelled to recognize it.
  2. While traditional media models are under siege, journalists themselves are becoming part of the solution — developing new models and new approaches to paying the true cost for news. (For example, check out Spot.us and MedCityNews.)

Today’s e-mail brought an item from one of my favorite blogs, Seth Godin’s Blog. He usually has something insightful to say about the way the world works. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen his blog address the media world directly.

His message (you should read it yourself; it’s short) is simply this: Journalists can be measured for the interest their stories generate — as evidenced by a Washington Post columnist who was let go because his blog posts didn’t generate enough traffic. In every other industry, people’s performance is measured against specific objectives.

It’s happening now with journalists — bringing them into intimate business contact for whatever business model employs them.

Coming face to face with reality can be a painful experience, but in the working world there is really nothing more important.

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Newspapers getting closer to a paid-content consensus

Monday, September 14th, 2009

In his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, Alan Mutter — a Silicon Valley CEO and a former newspaper reporter, columnist and executive — says nearly half of  newspaper publishers don’t believe they can succeed at charging consumers for content.

I think Mutter sounds like a smart guy, and his blog is great; just having stumbled across it I’ve put it on my blogroll. However, what he sees as the glass half-empty looks to me like it’s half-full. I’m pleased and impressed that just over half of newspaper publishers think they can charge for content.

As Seth Godin, another of my blogroll favorites, says: Success is mostly about your attitude. Which means the newspaper business is half-way home to figuring out how and why people are going to pay for their content. I’m not saying it’s an easy task, or that the tradeoff in revenue — advertising and classified for reader payments — is a neat-and-clean one-to-one swap. (It really doesn’t have to be; online content doesn’t come with huge printing and distribution costst, but that’s a digression). Like I said, I’m pleased to hear that half of the U.S. newspaper industry is giving itself a fighting chance at success.

As for the rest of Mutter’s blog, he’s smarter than I am, so you should just take a look at his more detailed analysis, and at the report that directed me to his blog in the first place.

http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/entry/45119/half-of-newspaper-publishers-believe-online-pay-walls-will-work/?utm_source=mbp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=textlink&utm_campaign=newsletter

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Not-for-profit news is no panacea

Monday, September 14th, 2009

In the effort to save newspapers, one idea that’s been passed around is that of the newspaper as a not-for-profit institution. The argument is that its role is so central to the public good that it can be protected as a non-taxed, not-for-profit entity.

While the argument may be compelling, I don’t think you can call it mainstream. Well-known newspaper analyst Lauren Rich Fine says for-profit newspapers haven’t done all they can to adapt to new market realities. I agree; Newspapers in the United States have been for-profit ventures for their entire existence, and just because their business model is being challenged today doesn’t mean their industry is obsolete.

But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with a news organization that does figure out how to succeed as a non-profit.

An increasing number of non-profit news organizations exist, such as MinnPost and the hyperlocal, hypermodest Heights Observer, for which I’m an active volunteer — and which is part of a growing list of other loosely affiliated Observer projects in and around Greater Cleveland. (Not all of them are not-for-profit; they have in common technology platform – Ninth Estate Software — and a singular evangelist, Jim O’Bryan, founder of the for-profit Lakewood Observer).

newspaper-balloonA not-for-profit trial balloon has been floated (and seems to be losting altitude) for the troubled Boston Globe.

Now, one of the existing not-for-profits is going the other way; Geoff Dougherty, editor of the 4-year-old Chi-Town Daily News (Chicago)  writes in his blog that the non-profit experiment is over. He says the online citizen journalism news organization needs $1-2 million a year in donations to fulfill its mission. With grants running out and grant-sources ready to move on to other projects, Dougherty indicates private donations peaked at only $300,000 — and even that amount is doubtful this year.

“We are talking with local nonprofits that have expressed an interest in acquiring the [Chi-Town Daily News] website and neighborhood reporting program,” Dougherty writes.

“Ultimately,” he continued, “we believe we will be able to fulfill the same mission we set out to accomplish with the Daily News, though with a new name, a new company, and a different business structure.”

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Posted in Blogroll, Business, Future of media, Hyperlocal Media, humor

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Why the URL is less important every day

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

I remember reading, in the early days of the Web, how large companies were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase meaningful URLs. For instance, McDonald’s wasn’t the first owner of www.mcdonalds.com.

About 9 years, ago, I tried to sell a URL that I was abandoning. I found a broker who promised to auction it off, estimating that it might be worth $15-20 thousand. The bubble burst, the auction never happened, and the URL simply expired — sitting unused until sometime in the past year when another company started using it.

The URL remains a most important locator for online information. But the importance of branding a URL — or of obtaining a URL that perfectly matches your brand — is declining.

Jonathan Richman at iMedia Connection offers 4 technologies that are responsible for its declining importance.

They are:

Search engines: The power of search is well-known. More people find websites through search than by typing in the URL;

Browsers: New-generation browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox skip the need for going to a search engine; just type a search term in the address box and they deliver search results;

URL shortening: Sites like Twitter, with strict limitations on size, force URLs to be shortened dramatically. Tools like TinyURL and Bit.ly exist to do this. Which means the URL for this page, as an example goes from http://www.themarketfarm.com/wordpress/2009/09/08/why-the-url-is-less-important-every-day/ to http://tinyurl.com/nq6d2y — which is pretty efficient, except any unique branding disappears.

The QR code: Popular in Asia and Europe, you take a picture of the QR code on your smart phone, and it will take you directly to the related website.

Overlooked in Richman’s blog, which is more detailed and well worth reading, is a fifth technology of social networking. More and more businesses are using Facebook, Twitter and other sites to attract audience; these work based on the names of companies and communities — not web addresses. So the brand of the company once again becomes more important than the brand of its URL.

The ultimate point, though, is that if you have a URL you like, don’t spend too much to brand it. And if you have a URL you don’t like, you can work around it.

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Posted in Blogroll, Business, Poutpourri for 200 Alex, Social Media Marketing

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Will marketers ever learn?

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

brainsAnother concise and dead-on blog from Seth Godin, marketing guru.

His premise: Marketing used to be easy because all you needed to do was find the money to buy a pile of ads and you could be sure to reach your target audience as well as any of your competitors.

Now, however, the Internet requires marketers to bring skill, nuance, strategy and all sorts of other rarities to the table. Will they? A few already are. As for the rest, you can apply the oldest and worstest cliche in the history of the written word: Only time will tell.

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Posted in Blogroll, Business, Social Media Marketing, Starting a business

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A new perspective on the media meltdown

Monday, August 24th, 2009

I’ve spent a lot of time describing why advertising and traditional media are on a downward curve. To be sure, the curve has been exaggerated this year by the recession. But it was exaggerated by the last recession too and there’s no doubt that traditional sponsor-based media models are like the classic rollercoaster: in between the highs and lows, the ongoing trend is down.

seth-godin-blogIn a recent blog post, marketing guru Seth Godin puts his own take on the trend. The issue in his mind is that there is a sudden attention surplus — too many people spending so much time looking for all kinds of information that marketers don’t know what to do about it. He calls these micromarkets and says the old media models couldn’t serve them; social media marketing does — though he doesn’t use that terminology

Godin and I come at this from different ends of the business, and in the end reach the same conclusions.

I’m coming at it from the perspective of the media business, where decisions are based on the requirements of the paying customer — the advertiser.

I’m not claiming the audience is ignored; I don’t believe that for a second. But the changes that we’re seeing in old-line businesses — magazines rushing to digital-only editions, newspapers trying to figure out how to charge for online content, etc. — are not at all driven by the opinions of audience. They’re driven by the spending desires of advertisers.

Godin’s perspective is consumer based: He’s observing what the audience wants — and notes the challenge for marketers who are on their way toward getting it.

His explanation strikes me as novel, true, and worth sharing: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/the-massive-attention-surplus.html.

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When you buy Zappos, what are you really buying?

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

In his blog, marketing guru Seth Godin asks the question, what is Amazon really buying when it spends a reported $847 million ($807 in stock and $40 million cash) to buy Zappos?

And then he answers it.

Amazon has plenty of shoes, plenty of technology and a world-class distribution capability, he writes. What it’s acquiring is:

  • A corporate culture that’s not the same (and where great people choose to work)
  • A tight relationship with customers that give you permission to talk with them
  • A business model that’s remarkable and worth talking about
  • A story that spreads
  • Leadership

I’d say he missed a key point: the brand. Zappos is the No. 1 brand among online shoe retailers.

Amazon has a great brand too, but not for shoes.

Amazon sells everything: shoes, music, software, consumer electronics, toys… But its brand — despite its strategy — is not that of an online department store. Amazon is a bookstore that has diversified. Its brand is all about books. That’s part of the reason the Kindle Reader has taken off so well; it’s not just a nice technology that people were ready to use; it’s a natural outgrowth of Amazon’s brand.

If Amazon introduced some innovation in shoes that was just as notable as the Kindle, I doubt it would have the same impact. But Zappos would have a chance. You expect Zappos to do stuff related to shoes; you expect Amazon to do stuff related to books.

Maybe the folks at Amazon realize that the many people who buy shoes online would rather buy them from Zappos than from a great online book store that happens to sell shoes. Perhaps they realize the most efficient way to become the leading online vendor of shoes is not to be like Zappos, but rather to be Zappos.

How Zappos became such a powerful brand is another issue. It took a lot of hard work, good planning, flawless execution and cash. But in recessionary times like these, when so many businesses don’t have the patience for branding and would rather spend their marketing resources solely on generating leads and sales, there’s a lesson in the power of a good brand. An $847 million lesson.

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Real social impact from social networks

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

If you doubt the potential of Twitter, Facebook and other social media, read this recent column by Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times. The depth of meaning here is amazing. Twitter is an outlet for the voices of freedom in Iran; the ongoing human rights situation in China creates the impetus for incredible cyber innovation; and the United States could help, but doesn’t necessarily have to do anything except watch quietly.

Social media is not just the latest iteration of the Web; it’s already embedded in world-changing events.

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Posted in Blogroll, Business, Citizen Journalism, Future of media, politics

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Selling what your customers want v. what they need

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Content marketing guy Newt Barrett turns around conventional wisdom, suggesting that instead of working to develop a unique selling proposition, you develop a Unique Buying Proposition. This is more than a semantic turn. The UBP forces you to think like your customers. It changes the question from “Why should they buy from me?” to “Why do they WANT to buy from me?”

You can read Newt’s complete case here.

Be honest: Would you spend more time buying this...

Would you do a better job buying this...

In the meantime, I’ll add this thought on selling: People will spend more to buy something they want than something they need. The corollary is that they’ll do whatever they can to avoid buying what they need, whereas they enjoy buying things they want.

So even if you’re offering business-to-business products or services, there is a benefit to communicating in a way that helps people WANT to buy what you’re selling.

... or this?

... or this?

If they feel the product has value-added benefits, some kind of cache, or is exciting and transformative, they’ll buy more readily (and tend to be more pleased) than if they buy something because it has the lowest price or simply fills an urgent need.

That’s the beauty of Newt’s concept of the UBP: It helps your prospects to see your product as something they WANT to buy.

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Posted in Blogroll, Business, Starting a business

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