Search results matching tag 'American Media'

How can newspapers make money on the web?

255762 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Ex-Washington post digital chief, Caroline Little, has been talking in Amsterdam having a stab at answering the question about how newspapers can make money online. It is a tough question with no easy answers, but her advice is quite right when she says the winners are going to be those people trying new stuff.

Speaking at the World Digital Publishing Conference in Amsterdam, Little, who advises The Guardian in the US, started by saying that despite impressive gains in audience and advertisers, newspaper websites do not produce revenue comparable to that of print newspapers despite their enviable reach.

Sad truth all those quite excellent websites, with video, and community do not pull in the cash. It makes an unhappy coupling as in this climate print circulations are shrinking and investment rising in digital – but without the rewards.

Little, who spoke at the AOP 2007 conference, cited the New York Times and The Washington Post, which are at the top of the heap in terms of their percentage of online revenue as part of overall revenue but it is still not enough and there is no ready-made solution.

That said Little has tips that are worth remembering and apply not only to newspapers, but to any online publishing business and chief among those is that while news websites share the same journalistic values as the newspapers the web is a different medium with different rules and that means trying new things. Here she adds a great piece of advice – not everything will work so do not be afraid to fail because as she puts it "fear of failure can be debilitating".

Little's four areas digital growth:

Multimedia storytelling

For a newspaper, storytelling options have long been limited to text, photography and graphics. The rise of the Web has added a number of new tools to this equation: video, audio, photo galleries, panoramic photos, blogs, etc. Now, we can approach a story with a different mindset, one that says, "what's the best way to tell this story?"

Database journalism

One often hears about the web's endless news hole. The endless news hole, of course, is largely a myth. You can only publish as much good journalism as you can produce, and that takes skilled reporters and editors. And most papers have fewer reporters and editors than it did a few years ago. But what that endless storage space is perfect for is databases that can useful to your readers. Washingtonpost.com has been very active in this area. For example, congressional voting database going back to 1991 and a searchable list of U.S. war dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reader engagement.

Here are a few things you need to know about your readers: some of them act like jerks, many of them won¹t like the journalism you produce, and the angrier ones tend to be more active. But the upside is huge. When given a chance to participate in the conversation, readers come back. A lot.

Distribution (as key as content)

In this new world of media fragmentation, media companies cannot control the format in which readers consume our journalism. That's scary, but also a huge opportunity. We now have the chance to get our journalism in front of readers while they're driving via audio podcast or radio, while they¹re watching their televisions via set-top boxes or video podcasts, or while they¹re standing on a street corner looking for a restaurant via cell phone or iPod. And we can push journalism to them via RSS, email newsletters and widgets.

The White House race is just a re-run

255762 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:59:00 GMT

I know who wins the race for the White House. It's the Democrat, that Matt Santos, you know, the first Hispanic to run for president of the United States who beats this old white guy with health issues?

Okay so that's the plot to the final series of one of the most brilliant television shows of the last decade, also known as 'The West Wing', which is revisited in part by BBC Four tonight.

The programme picks up on the similarities between that dramatised White House presidential race in which the long-shot candidate played by Jimmy Smits came from nowhere to win the Democratic Party nomination.

He takes on the sitting Vice President Bob Russell (or Bingo Bob as we remember him) and the former Vice President John Hoynes to face off against late sixty something Republican Senator Arnold Vinick who is a dead ringer for John McCain.

The similarities are there for all to be seen. Okay Santos was Hispanic and Barack Obama is black, but there are of a similar age and both were/are making break throughs in political life.

In 'The West Wing' race the ending was a fairytale one that saw Santos enter Camelot accompanied by his campaign manager and chief of staff Josh Lyman.

In the show tonight Hollywood historian Dr Ian Scott from the University of Manchester, who was a consultant for BBC Four on 'President Hollywood', describes how former Al Gore speechwriter Elie Attie became a writer and producer on 'The West Wing' and approached Obama aide David Axelrod in 2004, asking about the background and life of his boss.

That apparently set in train a sequence of events which predicted the real-life events as they unfolded two years after the final season of the series had been screened.

"After Attie heard Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, he was convinced the prospective Senator's tone, style and rhetoric should be the basis of the Matt Santos character. There have always been strong links between Hollywood and Washington conceived through film.

"But at the moment this is even more unusual and pertinent as Senator Obama's campaign is so similar to the campaign of the fictional Matt Santos in the final season of The West Wing. While it is true that Hollywood has often been accused of simplifying debate, they have nevertheless been crucial in opening up wider social and cultural awareness."

The real life script looked to have been running just as the script of 'The West Wing' had with Obama on course for a historic win, but then something else historic happened with the naming of Sarah Palin to the McCain ticket. That has shaken up the race like no one could have guessed.

My guess is that it would not have done so quite as powerfully if Hillary Clinton had been the candidate vice presidential name on the Obama ticket rather than Joe (where have you been for two weeks) Biden. But that boat has definitely sailed.

Talking of which have you seen Tina Fey's sketch as Palin standing alongside fellow comedienne Amy Poehler as Clinton? Brilliant.

Sadly they foolishly cancelled 'The West Wing' so we never got to see what a Smits led TV presidency would have held in store for us. Shame, but then Martin Sheen's Josiah "Jed" Bartlet was always going to be a hard act to follow.

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"It's like a really bad Disney movie"

255762 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:45:00 GMT

An interview with Matt Damon on Sarah Palin to watch here, it's very funny. He's worried what she thinks about dinosaurs and there's the actuarial tables to think about (boy do they make for worrying reading - don't worry, I think John McCain will be just fine).

Damon is also struck how much the vice presidential republican candidate reminds him of something from a really bad Disney movie (probably called 'Slapshot Mom') where the hockey mom from Alaska becomes president and takes on the Russian president in a show of nerves and like wins...oh wait a second.

If he could get together with Sarah Silverman in a kind of reprise of their first internet hit ('I'm fucking Matt Damon') they would have a sure fire hit on their hands. Maybe something along the lines of 'OMG she's fuckin' president.

Digital struggles at Washington Post

255762 — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:06:00 GMT

The appointment of a new outside editor at the Washington Post is causing ructions as the paper tries to catch up with its rivals on the digital front and deal with the tough newspaper market.

The Post has appointed not just an outsider, but 24-year Wall Street Journal veteran Marcus Brauchli who was squeezed out of the paper's top managing editor job in April and replaced by Robert Thomson.

He brings with him what a lot see as one of the best models for print and digital integration from The Wall Street Journal where he was managing editor.

And the Post while it has made progress in recent time on the digital front it has a way to go. It has for instance two very distinct news operations with a separate newsroom, in Virginia, which has caused battles of stories with print and digital fighting for dominance.

His appointment is The Washington Post, one of the US's most influential newspapers, is thought to have been pushed for by publisher Katharine Weymouth (granddaughter of Katharine Graham) part of the Graham newspaper family and in line to succeed her uncle and CEO Donald E. Graham.

In a statement, Weymouth said that Mr. Brauchli's experience at The Journal would "help us navigate the new world of media".

It is a tough one to negotiate. As the Observer reported at the weekend in the first three months of this year, print ad sales at American newspapers saw their biggest drop since records began in 1971. It was the eighth quarterly drop in a row as advertisers spent 14% less than they did in the previous year.

The desire to focus more on the website is clear as while the Post is the US's seventh- biggest newspaper its website, which that pulls in more than nine million unique visitors a month, is the third biggest, but a long way behind market leader the New York Times with 20m uniques followed by USA Today on 12m. The Wall Street Journal Online is fourth, but then that is a subscription website, but still has 6.9m.

All it has to do now is work out like everyone else how you convert that wad of traffic into ad dollars to make up for the loss of print readers. The paper's circulation is down by almost 130,000 since 2000 to 673,000.

And it is a pressing problem as despite being one of the world's most famous newspapers it only made a profit $1.2m in the first quarter on revenues of $206m down from a profit of $15m last time.

That is a huge and worrying fall, but if you employ an editorial staff of around 700 you can easily see where a lot of that goes. Its staff has already fallen by 200 over the last decade and you can guarantee that the new editor will be tasked with further cuts to fit the paper out for what is sure to be a leaner digital future as the rest of the US newspaper industry including market leader the NYTimes is finding.

The $400m dollar radio man

255762 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:30:00 GMT

Forget Jonathan Ross, US radio shock jock (and celebrated junkie) Rush Limbaugh (Guantanamo Bay: "a tropical retreat from the Jihad") has signed a $400m deal to continue broadcasting his right-wing bile until 2016.

Clear Channel signed the deal this week with its celebrated radio host, who pulls in an audience of between 14m and 20m who catch the show at least once a week on one of the 600-plus radio stations that host it. He is more popular than John McCain.

More than that, no other radio host comes close in America to this man and, in a tough climate, it means that when you put his syndicated show on your station you can guarantee the ad dollars. This has also led stations to model their broadcast around him, hoping that if they come for one they will stay for all. Forget Fraiser Crane and his refined liberal mutterings.

Limbaugh is known for his liberal-bating, tough-justice, Republican take on the world that has seen him come out with such gems as "Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream"; "The difference between Los Angeles and yoghurt is that yoghurt comes with less fruit"; and "I must be honest. I can only read so many paragraphs of a New York Times story before I puke".

The last is ironic, because he is to be profiled in The New York Times magazine this weekend.

He is also famous for saying such things as "If you commit a crime, you're guilty"...except when it's him.

Limbaugh famously got away with it, when he could have been sent to prison for a few years after being arrested in 2003 for illegally buying thousands of prescription painkillers, including OxyContin.

No surprise, like a lot of rightwing bigots he's full of ***. Can deal it out, but can't suck it up. The Drug Policy Alliance made a nice little flash video at the time asking viewers whether they would "Lock Rush Up Or Leave Him Alone For His Illegal Drug Buys?"

In The New York Times profile, which has gone up early on its website, it reveals that Limbaugh is planning to buying a new G550 jet and is making an estimated $38m.

It sounds very corporate, doesn't it? That's because it is, which has helped make him so successful.

In the NY Times piece, he describes himself as a "business man" and "a defender of corporate America".

It is a kind of message that seems to play well not only to his listeners but to advertisers as well. He won't rant about pollution or slate SUVs ("Global warming is bogus") or lay into corporations.

Did you ever wonder why there were no liberal equivalents of guys like Limbaugh? It's because advertisers don't want to be associated with shows where their very existence comes under attack.

You would think his elevation would be good news all around for the Republicans as they face a tough election against Obama not so. While he might not like the Democratic candidate ("He's saying nothing better than anybody in my lifetime ever has"), and was under recently for repeated playing a derogatory and racially charged song called 'Barack the Magic Negro (to the tune Puff the Magic Dragon), he hates McCain as well and thinks he will be the death of the GOP, which adds more spice to what is already shaping up to be a riveting US election.

Scrap the news bring on the advertising

255762 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:33:00 GMT

If things were not already bad enough in the US newspaper business Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times, wants to slash 500 pages of news each week from the newspapers and up the advertising editorial ratio. Thanks, now you mention it I will take some news with my advertising.

There have already been hundreds of job cuts and Tribune boss, property billionaire Sam Zell, has announced more.

It's the same old same old, but oh wait it's much worse. It seems the only way to save the patient already ravaged by terrible diseases such as Craigslist (wouldn't want to catch that one) is to lop off a limb. Of course, that will work.

The 500 pages of news each week will be cut from a dozen papers that also include The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant. The aim is to hit a 50-50 editorial advertising split. This does not include classified advertising and special ad sections. At The Los Angeles Times alone it will see news cut by 82 pages a week with smaller reductions at other papers, which will save cash and see more newsroom jobs go.

It will apparently deliver - according to the New York Times, which has suffered its own cuts - a "thinner, flashier, more local newspaper, with a smaller newsroom staff". It is yet another approach to a problem of shrinking newspaper circulations. It sounds like a desperate one though.

It is one of those issues where it is impossible to find any middle ground. Editors will be up in arms, but will advertisers be happy with a weakened editorial product and damaged brand? And for that matter what about the readers? How will they take it?

Well apparently they will hardly notice claims Mike Simonton, senior director at Fitch Ratings in Chicago. He says most readers would hardly notice a modest decline in the volume of news, or if staff-written articles were replaced by those from wire services like The Associated Press or Reuters.

I'm sure there's a little truth to that, but a paper filled with material (quality though it might be) from the wires is not actually a newspaper (I can go to Google News and get that) and people will notice. In an industry facing a meltdown hard choices need to be made, it's just if you take it too far going back is hard.

The Murdochs and Obama

255762 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:36:40 GMT

Poor Hillary Clinton has been under fire from Rupert Murdoch's New York Post throughout her Presidential bid, despite relations once being quite good, and now a clue has emerged why, as Elisabeth Murdoch is holding a fundraiser in London for Barack Obama.The Post has been bashing Clinton, recently taking great joy in hammering her over "mis-speaking" about a trip to Bosnia. The paper ran an article, datelined Sarajevo with the headline "Low blow lie".

The paper, which half-heartedly endorsed Obama in a lesser of two evils kind of way, told voters not to vote for Clinton in a unpleasant editorial back in January- saying her presidency would represent: "a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency. Does America really want to go through all that once again?"

It then presented Obama as the lesser of two evils, but warned its readers that: "For all his charisma and his eloquence, the rookie senator sorely lacks seasoning. Regarding national security, his worldview is beyond naive; America must defend itself against those sworn to destroy the nation.

"Again, we don't agree much with Obama on substantive issues. But many Democrats will."

You can tell it feels for those poor Democrats, but at least what the Post had to say about Obama is true enough: his worldview is scarily naive, but I guess if you say the hope enough you can brainwash even yourself.

Anyway, the New York Times reveals that Elisabeth Murdoch, who runs independent producer Shine, is holding a fundraiser at her London home this month for Obama.

Liz Murdoch is running the event with some London luvvies and other expats including Gwyneth Paltrow and David Blood, who runs an environmental investment fund with failed former Vice-President Al Gore.

Although apparently Matthew Freud has said that not much should be read into his wife's role as a host. "I don't think you can interpret the event as anything other than she is enthusiastic about Obama's campaign."

The odd thing is that across the rest of the Murdoch empire there are plenty of Clinton supporters, according to an analysis done by the NY Times.

Staff at News Corporation gave Clinton more than $100,000 in donations compared with about $80,000 for Obama.

Clinton supporters include James Murdoch, who contributed $3,450, although that was in 2006 when The NY Post endorsed her reelection in 2006 to the Senate, and Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, who is a major fundraiser for Clinton.

Also Gary Ginsberg, Murdoch's chief spokesman, is a former assistant counsel in the Clinton administration.

But as the paper concludes, Murdoch is above all things a businessman and a pragmatist, a political scorpion at that, as his previous support for New Labour and Tony Blair has shown and his support is only worth the paper that people vote on.

The 'Red Phone' ad rings for Hillary Clinton

255762 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:11:19 GMT

A slightly chilling but spot on ad dubbed the "red phone" ad, which asked Americans who they would they want to answer the phone ringing in the White House at 3am, is being credited with helping Hillary Clinton pull back in the Presidential race again.
"It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep, but there is a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something is happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it is someone who already knows the world's leaders and knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep, who do you want answering the phone?"

Having spent weeks on the back foot as the media once again swung behind Democratic rival Barack Obama, Clinton has bounced back this week and looks this morning to have won the Democratic primary polls in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, as voters spoke and said loud and clear who they wanted to answer the phone.

There is a second vote in Texas yet to come -- the results of caucus meetings -- but it is again, as in New Hampshire, a significant turnaround for Clinton, although Obama did win something last night, taking Vermont.

It's true that Hillary Clinton trails with 16 states and 1,391 delegates compared with Obama's 24 states and 1,477 delegates, but the tide is turning and the race will go all the way to the wire and primaries in April.

The last week has been bad news for Obama, with allegations of double-talking over Nafta, saying one thing to voters and another to Canadians (I thought that always happened anyway?) and getting hit by a very effective ad campaign that asked the question that when it comes down to it, when something bad happens, who do you want to pick up the phone?

Watching some of the political ads, the speed with which they are produced, and how quickly opponents fire back is part and parcel of the US Presidential campaigns, but this time around, with the web playing such a role, that has been true as never before. These ads are everywhere.

Clinton's team made this spot for Texas, but that didn't matter, it was seen everywhere. Obama's team were, of course, at the plate in no time flat and swinging with the assurance that their response would make it out of the park.

The Obama spot called into question Clinton's solid support for the Iraq War and painted him as someone who had made all the right choices in identifying Afghanistan as the battle to fight, but it didn't cut it on the night.

Oddly enough, he is using the same language against Republican frontrunner and winner last night John McCain, which is a tactic that could well backfire.

Primary result and how the media missed it

255762 — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:08:58 GMT

Oh to be a pollster or media pundit this morning. I have been watching agog as the US media whipped itself into a frenzy over Barack Obama (sorry JFK Mk II) and write off Hillary Clinton, one of its favourite pastimes.
All day yesterday the numbers seemed to get bigger and bigger as a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll put Barack Obama 13 points ahead of Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.

Every poll seemed to say the same and media pundits rejoiced as headlines such as "Obama set to crush Clinton in primary" and " Clinton's White House hopes unravel" appeared all over the wires.

In the end what did we get? Not the reverse, but a welcome victory for Clinton as New Hampshire voters defied expectations and edged out Obama by two percentage points.

Obama seems like a decent centrist politician whose main qualites at this point are youth, inexperience and the endless use of the word "change", which is employed in vague and amorphous sentences that also employ the word "hope".

Leading liberal media commentators love him. They have gone gaga and, in some cases, lost all touch with reality instead preferring political fantasy. A lot of his support seems down to the fact that he comes with a clean slate. A lot is because he is not Hillary Clinton, whom the likes of the New York Times can not forgive for backing the war in Iraq.

The usually "super-sour Maureen Dowd" in The New York Times said Obama offers Americans "a cool, smart, elegant, reasonable, literary, witty, decent West Wing sort of president".

A West Wing presidency? You see where the liberal fantasy comes in. I loved that show as much as the next liberal lefty. Jed Bartlet was the best president ever ('The West Wing' one of the best written shows ever), but sadly that was a TV show.

The embracing of Obama has come at a high price for Hillary Clinton. In The Times yesterday David Aaronovitch picked up on something that appears to be increasingly apparent as this 2008 presidential race has developed: namely that misogyny appears to be even stronger than racism.

This is echoed again today in The Guardian in Michael Tomasky's piece 'The Clinton rebellion' on how women voters won it for Hillary Clinton last night in New Hampshire and how the media missed the real story because it was blinded.

"I think it was mostly a rebellion by women voters against the media. Most major media outlets had written Clinton's obituary and could barely conceal their joy in doing so. And voters, especially women voters, said: not so fast.

"I've seen this happen before. In the fall of 2000, she debated her opponent in the race for the New York senate seat she won that year. The opponent, Rick Lazio, strode over to her podium and wagged his finger in her face. The media loved the moment, thought Lazio looked tough and declared him the winner.

"But over the next couple days, it emerged in polling that people, especially women, thought Clinton had won the debate. The media missed what had really happened, and reported with glee on Clinton's alleged comeuppance."

Dirty Des goes to New York

255762 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:30:24 GMT

Richard Desmond has gone to New York and he's having a go at everybody. He's even calling Sir Martin Sorrell short.
Desmond is surely one of those men who never just has a bee in his bonnet, but an entire hive.

As well as gratuitously laying into Sorrell (the two had a bit of a bust-up in February with legal papers flying back and forth as WPP sought £5.7m payment for work done on the launch of OK! in the US with Desmond counter-suing) with the rude but obvious, Desmond has been picking his targets as they come into range.

American Media (tabloid publisher of The Star, et cetera) chief David Pecker? Oh he's "shifty".

In an interview with Advertising Age, Desmond accused Time Warner of "putting out a lot of shit" about OK! in its defence of rival magazine People magazine.

Desmond is feeling a little sensitive that sales of OK! in the US are going to be a little below expectation. So what about that?

"You can tell all those wankers to fuck off because these are the figures."

As for the advertisers OK! is attracting, they should thank their lucky stars.

"The people who are advertising with us, which there aren't many, are getting the bargain of a fucking lifetime." posted by Gordon @ 9:59 AM 2 comments links to this post