Thursday, January 29, 2009

Photo Shoots & Reality: What does it take to capture business executives?

Behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot for Inc. Mag. shows how much is staged to "capture" reality. Look, it can't be easy. Most executives sit at a desk, typing on their computer or talking on the phone -- hardly an image that will help illustrate a story, especially a profile of an executive. In fact, most of what executives' days would be rather boring from a photo perspective.

What's interesting is the process by which photo editors have to stagecraft reality -- I won't say manipulate, but, um, enhance reality -- to make it suitable to accompany an article.

In this case, showing Markus Frind and his girlfriend playing a board game in bed -- which apparently they do -- while she hits him with a pillow, spreading feathers all over the place. Apparently, that's not something they do -- hold pillow fights -- esp. because Frind is allergic to feathers. All in all, probably harmless stagecraft (feather allergies notwithstanding), but worth appreciating/understanding. We have a client about to engage a professional photographer to take photos of top executives, and it's probably worth keeping in mind to have some light-hearted photos, not just "business executive at work" photos.

Mark Anderson & Tech Trends for 2009

We listed our predictions for the media in 2009. Mark Anderson's trends, discussed on the BusinessWeek video (below) are some of the most interesting tech trends I've heard for 2009.

One tech trend piece, dated for 2009, was written by an editor who should know better -- but most of the trends could have been written in 2007. There was nothing new in it (and I won't name the editor or tech publication by name). In contrast, Anderson's were quite intriguing.

Tech Predictions for 2009

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Why Paper May Survive as a Delivery Mechanism

Jay Moonah, a Toronto-based digital strategist and musician, argues in that print journalism will survive. I think print journalism will survive for special issues (print editions of The New York Times the day after Obama's election and inauguration sold out, and even were sold on eBay), but am not as optimistic as Moonah. 

On the other hand, an op-ed, "News You Can Endow" in today's Times makes a point that I've been trying to make about online-only mode. The authors, by David Swensen (the author of “Pioneering Portfolio Management,” is the chief investment officer at Yale) and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst at Yale, cite a 2008 research report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Company:
“The notion that the enormous cost of real news-gathering might be supported by the ad load of display advertising down the side of the page, or by the revenue share from having a Google search box in the corner of the page, or even by a 15-second teaser from Geico prior to a news clip, is idiotic on its face.”
And that's the problem with online-only mode. It addresses some of the problems facing print newspapers, but does not solve all of them.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Boston Globe & GateHouse Settle LinkGate

A victory for GateHouse Media is a step backwards for the rest of the Internet.

The New York Times agreed to settle a lawsuit from GateHouse, which said that Boston.com (a unit of the Times) had infringed on GateHouse's copyright by automatically including headlines, excerpts and links to GateHouse content. Boston.com and GateHouse both offer localized town websites across Massachusetts.

Boston.com was not reprinting GateHouse content, merely putting pointers to the relevant GateHouse website.

But because of the fierce hyperlocal competition between the two, GateHouse decided to sue.

In getting the settlement from the Times, GateHouse has won this battle.

However, it's a pyhric victory for GateHouse and the rest of the social media world.

The reason: as blogger, author and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has said on his excellent BuzzMachine blog: Media organizations will need to focus on what they "do best and link to the rest (that) will be a foundation of the future architecture of news. This is a necessity of efficiency – no one can afford to waste resources on commodity news – but also a necessity of the link economy, for it is through others’ links that original journalism will get attention and audience and the opportunity for monetization through advertising. Linking to journalism at its source - rather than matching it or rewriting it, as we have done - will become an ethic, a moral imperative of the new journalism.

GateHouse could easily find itself needing to link to content from other sources -- which would be within their rights to complain about infingement from GateHouse.

The other thing that's ironic is that most organizations are trying to incr ease the number of inbound links to their site to drive traffic. Those links from Boston.com might have been a source of traffic to GateHouse websites.

As for the Times, its spokesperson made it clear that this agreement with GateHouse did not set a new policy for Times.com properties. Seems as if, with all its current cash-flow problems, the Times at least "gets it."

Prediction: The Associated Press will Consider Substantial Changes to its Model in 2009

A number of papers have given the AP notice that they want to cancel their participation in the AP. Most of these are smaller papers – like the Bakersfield Californian, Idaho Falls Post Register, Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World – seeking to renegotiate down the fees they pay. But some big papers like the Tribune Co. (parent of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune) and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (no relation) have also given notice.

On the one hand, many papers seem to rely on wire service coverage even more in 2009, thanks to closing bureaus in Washington, DC, and foreign capitals. On the other hand, the renewed focus on local coverage means that one article appearing multiple times no longer makes sense. After all, when searching on a topic on Google News, how many links to the same article do you need?

All this means is that the AP needs to re-evaluate who it serves and how it serves them.

Monday, January 26, 2009

2nd Prediction for 2009 Proves Correct: Magazine closings

According to the New York Times' Stephanie Clifford, "January has signified the death of at least 14 magazines, including Country Home, Arthur, Vital Source, Map Magazine and Teen."

The article, With Magazines Folding, One Finds a Surprising Bid, reports that the publisher of Hardcore Gamer tried selling his magazine on eBay for $42,000 -- and may have succeeded.

Meanwhile, on Jan. 9, we issued a series of predictions in which we predicted a difficult 2009 for magazines, including more secondary magazines closing this year. Seeing that 14 have either announced they are closing or have closed is a pretty tough way to start the year. That doesn't include the number of print magazines that have or will shift to an online-only model.

Do You Suffer from SNF -- Social Networking Fatigue (NSF)?

Social networking will continue to grow in 2009, but expect a social networking backlash to start.

After all, with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, how many ways do we need to connect to the same people?

We’re feeling social networking fatigue (SNF) based on getting contacts on two different sites from someone we don’t know.

Meanwhile, the challenge for some sites, like Twitter and Plaxo, is that they have yet to monetize their communities, user base, etc.

How long can Twitter survive without generating a revenue stream? The backlash will also affect sites designed to help with lead generation but contain wrong information. There are a number of such sites like Spoke.com, Lead411, JigSaw.com. Spoke.com included a number of people as Birnbach employees who actually work at an acquired client of ours; that’s the most egregious, but most of these sites contain misinformation. (Since they’re for lead gen, we have not corrected most of the mistakes we’ve found.)

Friday, January 23, 2009

Prediction Rupert Murdoch Will Make More Changes to the Wall Street Journal in 2009

So far, Rupe has not corrupted the Journal entirely. (The dire predictions from News Corp critics have not been fulfilled.)

Despite initial murmurs, don’t expect the Journal to give up its lucrative online subscription fee; in fact, it just raised the fee last year.

We don’t see much value for readers of the new WSJ Magazine; it seems like a high-end lifestyle concept in search of advertisers.

However, the foray into lifestyle journalism helps the Journal encroach on the New York Times, and expect that to continue.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Prediction: Jeff Jarvis Will Be Right about the Media Predictions He's Made

Here are some of his predictions I think are very smart (and wish I had said first). In his BuzzMachine blog article, “A scenario for news,” Jarvis predicted several interesting things we thought worthwhile to cite:

  • News will emerge from networks…No one believes that a 35-person staff can cover Philadelphia as the 300-person newsroom did; they will have to collaborate with the community, with, we hope, a network of a thousand or thousands. Some people will freely contribute to the news network’s efforts, recording school-board meetings for podcasts, say.
  • Editing will change. Editors will become more curators, aggregators, organizers, educators. Their jobs will be less about controlling a flow than encouraging and improving creation.
  • Do what you do best and link to the rest will be a foundation of the future architecture of news. This is a necessity of efficiency – no one can afford to waste resources on commodity news – but also a necessity of the link economy, for it is through others’ links that original journalism will get attention and audience and the opportunity for monetization through advertising. Linking to journalism at its source - rather than matching it or rewriting it, as we have done - will become an ethic, a moral imperative of the new journalism.
  • Specialization will take over much of journalism. We’ll no longer all be doing the same things - commodifying news – but will stand out and contribute uniquely by covering a niche deeply. Local newspapers, I believe, must specialize in being local and serving local communities.
  • News will find new forms past the article, which will include any media, wiki snapshots of knowledge, live reports, crowd reports, aggregation, curation, data bases, and other forms not yet created.
Check out Jarvis' BuzzMachine.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Daily Deal Changes to Bi-Weekly Deal

Just got an email that the print publication once known as the Daily Deal has fully shed the "Daily" part of its name. The Deal (the name under which is has been publishing for a while) is going bi-weekly (that means every two weeks for those confused with semi-weekly, which means twice a week).

The Deal could have said it was shifting to semi-monthly, which is twice a month, but perhaps monthly seemed like a long time period after once being daily.

A competing financial publication, FinancialWeek, is taking a different approach: still published weekly, it moved to an online-only model earlier in the month.

Clearly both financial magazines are being impacted by layoffs among their subscriber base as well as declining advertising.

No doubt both will survive -- with The Deal likely to shift to online-only -- but they won't be the last financial mags to make a shift this year.

E-Books to Take Off in 2010

The Kindle will continue to sell to early adopters, but it’s still more like a beta of what’s ahead: bigger, more colorful screens, easier ways to share articles to other users, even a text-to-speech or audio book option so you can throw your book in the car. We expect e-books to become bigger in 2010.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Online Reputation Management Will Be More Important in 2009

Online reputation management will become more important and much more in-demand function due to the proliferation of sites and ways that people can post information, reviews, etc. about their experiences.

For some companies, including Dell and Comcast, online reputation management becomes part of the customer service function.

In fact, while understanding and working with social networking sites has been the purview of PR departments and their agencies, there will likely be more of a push by sales and customer service departments and HR departments to be in charge of social networking.

In fact, because of media, customer relations and recruiting needs, all three functions (PR, HR and sales) should be working together to maintain and enhance their online reputation.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Newsweeklies...And Then There Was One...

“News has become a commodity. They already know the news. We’re not in the business of telling people the news,” Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time, told the New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena.

Very startling acknowledgment.

According to the article, "The Popular Newsweekly Becomes a Lonely Category," "Newsweek may be poised to" make substantial changes this year: "Executives have said it will strive to be a “thought leader,” competing more with The Economist than with Time — in other words, a big stride in the direction it was already headed. The strategy includes a major reduction in circulation and operating costs and a focus on an elite audience to attract advertisers."

Here's some further analysis by Perez-Pena:

Unable to compete with the immediacy of television, cable and then the Internet, newsmagazines have been moving for decades in the direction of analysis, commentary and news-related feature articles. That trend has accelerated in recent years, driven by financial pressures. The magazines’ editorial staffs are about half as big as they were in the 1990s, and they have shuttered many of the bureaus they once had around the world.

They still produce some deep, original reporting. But these days, they are more likely to offer a comprehensive survey of a subject to present an argument or offer a prescription — like Newsweek’s recent cover article on why President-elect Barack Obama may come to embrace Vice President Dick Cheney’s view of executive power, or Time’s on how a trillion-dollar stimulus package should be spent.

Friday, January 16, 2009

More Organizations will Jump onto the Twitter Bandwagon in 2009

However, many will encounter the same problems as with corporate blogs:
o How often to maintain them?
o Who should maintain them?
o How do you measure a successful program?
o What’s the proper balance between communicating the company’s interest vs. being so self-serving that no one “follows” them?

We recently saw a Twitterite whose job is audience development for a major media outlet whose tweets consisted only of featured articles in the publication. The person had 1,612 tweets, but only 44 followers. In comparison, the magazine’s official Twitter feed has more than 12,000 tweets, and more than 600 followers. It’s a lot of effort with not much payoff. What companies need to understand is that Twitter and social networks are about engaging in conversations.

Broadcast Media Will Continue to See Significant Changes in 2009

Niche is the new normal, especially for broadcast. Due to the proliferation of social media sites, people are more likely to subscribe or search for news and information specifically targeting their interests. As Portfolio magazine says: “There's something for everyone, but nothing for everyone.” This will make it difficult for marketers to reach broad audiences, with only a few events each year – like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards – that reach across demographics and interest groups. In fact, that’s why Birnbach Communications predict that Jan. 20th will be the single biggest media event this year – everyone will cover the Obama inauguration.

Increasingly, people will access TV shows with their computers as opposed to watching the shows when they air. For example, there were 1.4 million viewers of the Couric-Palin interview on YouTube and more than 4 million of the SNL skit – that’s the power of YouTube and Hulu.com. NY Times’ David Pogue already suggested consumers could save money by disconnecting cable, and logging onto the Internet instead to get network feeds and local news coverage.

Local cable/TV operators will have a bumpy road because of a significant double whammy: Both advertisers and viewers are fleeing. Local broadcasters will need to find a way to cut costs – which means more layoffs – while stemming the tide of departing viewers. One way may be to follow the lead of NBC, which realized that airing the new Jay Leno show five nights a week at 10pm is cheaper than airing five original 60-minute dramas (even with Jay’s $30 million salary). Local TV may find that whatever time they have can be best/inexpensively filled by talk shows.

Boston Globe Plans 5th Cut in Newsroom

More bad news at the Boston Globe, according to an article today, experiencing its 5th newsroom cut since 2001. But the first newsroom-only cut. This time, as many as 50 full-time newsroom employees -- which includes Boston.com, the Globe's website. This is the first time Boston.com employees are eligible for a buyout.

In 2000, the Globe had 552 full-time jobs. Before the buyouts take place, the Globe & Boston.com had 350 and 29 news employees, respectively.

That means the Globe will have 329 positions total, down approx. 200 jobs from 9 years ago. Clearly the Globe has been shrinking the size of its daily paper to reduce costs, but that has coverage implications.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hyperlocal is the new local -- Part II

As I've mentioned before, local coverage continues to be the name of the game for regional news organizations.

But
yyperlocal will evolve in 2009, with news about communities operating within a local market being the forefront of hyperlocal coverage.

Local competition in the online space will heat up. Circulation figures for local weeklies probably will remain stable, but online competition will increase. In New England, Boston.com is competing more aggressively with Gatehouse Media’s WickedLocal.com – to the extent that the latter is suing the former for having too many pointers on Boston.com to WickedLocal.

Online Sites Will Not be Immune to Advertising Slowdown

Online newssites are not immune to the ad slowdown.

According to ValleyWag, the Gawker-owned Silicon Valley gossip site, “LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.”

Expect more layoffs from this part of the sector.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

2009 to Bring Fewer New Magazine Launches -- at Least in Print

Expect to see fewer launches of new magazines, and to see some struggling media to call it quits in 2009. Remember that circulation is irrelevant to the publisher’s decision to discontinue a magazine if its ad pages/revenue drop. Over the past 18 months, some magazines with circulations in the hundreds of thousands closed because the advertisers stopped buying space.

Mainstream Media (MSM) Will Experience at Least Five Changes in 2009

  1. Dozens of secondary newspapers and magazines will shift to an online-only model in 2009. Already this year, FinancialWeek announced that it is shifting over this month. The benefits of the online-only model include substantial savings now that they no longer have to print, mail and deliver content (to newsstands and homes). The downside: they lose three revenue streams – display and classified advertising from the print edition as well as subscription fees – and now rely on online advertising to fund their operations. Online subscription fees have worked for only select media – even the New York Times couldn’t make a fee-based plan work. Expect some surprises as some larger market papers find themselves in real trouble (for example, the Times' cutting its dividend). Addendum: The day after we posted this, the Times reported that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a good, large-market paper in a two-paper town, may go online-only or shut down within 60 days.
  2. Traditional media that continue to publish print editions will update their formats to include more maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats, along with shorter articles. These print editions will also be shorter, with some papers – including the Denver Post and Boston Globe – having shed stand-alone business sections. The same holds from magazines. As Fortune tech reporter, David Kirkpatrick wrote on Twitter: "an indicator of the sorry state of the economy – and the magazine industry: the new issue of Time – a mere pamphlet." (Don’t forget: Time and Fortune are published by the same company! And Fortune’s current issue is pretty thin, too.)
  3. These smaller floating business sections are not likely to achieve their publishers' goal because the sections are more difficult for readers to find and these sections provide less coverage of business at a time when the economy is in turmoil and undergoing seismic shocks -- a time when people need to more closely understand what's happening and how it impacts them. These smaller sections will also be less interesting to advertisers, too, because readers may easily skip over them.
  4. The value of content is changing. Traditionally, the value of the entire newspaper or magazine was worth a lot. Now, individual articles (available often by RSS feeds, Tweets, Google or other search engines) are worth more than the newspaper as a whole because technology has enabled us to consume only that which really interests us. It’s more efficient this way, but paging through a newspaper ensures you get a broader sense of what’s going on. It’s a more niche world.
  5. Stringers and citizen journalists will become more important. Because of staff cutbacks and bureau closings, MSM may not be able to find and send reporters or crews to cover breaking, important news outside their immediate region. The tragic shootings in Mumbai is an example where MSM, including some of the biggest names in journalism, relied on first-hand local reports. For example, CNN uses footage from iReport, and has been posting citizen video footage since Hurricane Katrina. Expect this trend to continue.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The New York Times Will Survive, But Will Have a Tough 2009

The New York Times will be faced with two obstacles as it seeks this year to solve its Boston Globe problem, since the Globe is losing an estimated $52 million per year:

Internal problem: The entire company is now worth less than the $1.1 billion it paid for the Boston Globe. (As of Jan. 6, its market cap is $1.09 billion; it had been less than $900 million in Nov. 2008). It’s difficult to write off that much money, but the company has taken other drastic steps such as cutting dividends to conserve cash and taking out a mortgage on its new headquarters. How much is it worth to them to unload the Globe?

External problem: Even at a distressed, Times-financed purchase price, who will want to takeover the Boston Globe? After all, if the Times can’t make the Globe profitable, who can?

In terms of the Times itself, the challenge is that its attempt to sell online-subscriptions failed several years ago. It’s going to need to find ways to increase the value it provides its advertisers, such as its new ad across the bottom of the front page. That said, we don’t think the Sulzbergers will sell the Times, as the Bancroft family sold the Wall St. Journal to News Corp.

Seattle's Newspaper Environment May be Post Post-Intelligencer

According to the New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena, there's bad news for Seattle, one of the remaining two newspaper towns. In the article, Perez-Pena reports, "Hearst said that if it could not find a buyer (for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), it would either shut the paper entirely or make it an Internet-only operation with a much-reduced staff."

The decision could be made within 60 days.

Interestingly, until now, the Seattle Times was considered to be the paper more at risk.

Check out the article: "Hearst Looks to Sell or Close Seattle Paper."

If Newspapers Move to Online-Only Mode, What Should We Call Them?

When the majority of newspapers all shift to online-only mode, the term "newspaper" will be outdated.

We may still have journalists publishing news online under logos of recognized news brands, but they won't be newspapers since they won't actually be printing their news on paper.

We will need a new definition of news organization.

We suggest calling them “newssites” (based on the soon-to-be outdated newsstand).

Calling them “dailies” is so last century, given the 24/7 online news cycle.

Monday, January 12, 2009

New York Times Finds New Revenue Stream

Demonstrating the seriousness of its finances, the paper of record, The New York Times has recently cut its dividend and mortgaged its new headquarters.

The latest step: selling ads on its front page -- something the Wall St. Journal started first.

Read more about it here, "The Times to Sell Display Ads on the Front Page."

Can CNN Develop/Launch a Wire Service to Compete in Tooday's Market

CNN is rolling out a new wire service to compete with the Associated Press. Here are some key points:
  • CNN has 3,000 journalists worldwide.
  • CNN already runs an internal wire service for its bureaus and CNN.com.
  • CNN Wire could offer columns written by some of the of its high profile anchors.
  • Some papers have already started running CNN Wire articles.
  • For newspapers, still photography is important, but CNN Wire could offer streamed video.
  • CNN already dropped Reuters in 2008, and dropped the AP this month.
  • The AP has more than 3,000 journalists in more than 100 countries.
  • The AP is reducing the fees its charges its clients, saving clients about $30 million.
You can read more about it here: "CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers."

Friday, January 9, 2009

Top 14+ Media Trends for 2009

At the start of each year, we look at the media trends that we think will have the most impact. Here's our list of more than 14 trends we think significant.

We've also cited in #14 a few from media critic Jeff Jarvis from his BuzzMachine blog, in particular his article "A scenario for news." BuzzMachine is a very interesting blog, and we highly recommend it.

1. We will need a new definition of “newspaper” as many shift to an online-only format, thus losing the “paper” part of their business. We suggest calling them “newssites” (based on the soon-to-be outdated newsstand). Calling them “dailies” isn’t appropriate either, given a 24/7 news cycle.

2. Mainstream Media (MSM) will experience at least five changes:

o Dozens of secondary newspapers and magazines will shift to an online-only model in 2009. Already this year, FinancialWeek announced that it is shifting over this month. The benefits of the online-only model include substantial savings now that they no longer have to print, mail and deliver content (to newsstands and homes). The downside: they lose three revenue streams – display and classified advertising from the print edition as well as subscription fees – and now rely on online advertising to fund their operations. Online subscription fees have worked for only select media – even the New York Times couldn’t make a fee-based plan work. Expect some surprises as some larger market papers find themselves in real trouble (for example, the Times' cutting its dividend). Addendum: The day after we posted this, the Times reported that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a good, large-market paper in a two-paper town, may go online-only or shut down within 60 days.

o Traditional media that continue to publish print editions will update their formats to include more maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats, along with shorter articles. These print editions will also be shorter, with some papers – including the Denver Post and Boston Globe – having shed stand-alone business sections. The same holds from magazines. As Fortune tech reporter, David Kirkpatrick wrote on Twitter: "an indicator of the sorry state of the economy – and the magazine industry: the new issue of Time – a mere pamphlet." (Don’t forget: Time and Fortune are published by the same company! And Fortune’s current issue is pretty thin, too.)

o These smaller floating business sections are not likely to achieve their publishers' goal because the sections are more difficult for readers to find and these sections provide less coverage of business at a time when the economy is in turmoil and undergoing seismic shocks -- a time when people need to more closely understand what's happening and how it impacts them. These smaller sections will also be less interesting to advertisers, too, because readers may easily skip over them.


o The value of content is changing. Traditionally, the value of the entire newspaper or magazine was worth a lot. Now, individual articles (available often by RSS feeds, Tweets, Google or other search engines) are worth more than the newspaper as a whole because technology has enabled us to consume only that which really interests us. It’s more efficient this way, but paging through a newspaper ensures you get a broader sense of what’s going on. It’s a more niche world.

o Stringers and civilian journalists will become more important. Because of staff cutbacks and bureau closings, MSM may not be able to find and send reporters or crews to cover breaking, important news outside their immediate region. The tragic shootings in Mumbai is an example where MSM, including some of the biggest names in journalism, relied on first-hand local reports. For example, CNN uses footage from iReport, and has been posting citizen video footage since Hurricane Katrina. Expect this trend to continue.

3. Expect to see fewer launches of new magazines, and to see some struggling media to call it quits in 2009. Remember that circulation is irrelevant to the publisher’s decision to discontinue a magazine if its ad pages/revenue drop. Over the past 18 months, some magazines with circulations in the hundreds of thousands closed because the advertisers stopped buying space.

4. Online newssites are not immune to the ad slowdown. According to ValleyWag, the Gawker-owned Silicon Valley gossip site, “LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.” Expect more layoffs from this part of the sector.

5. Local coverage continues to be the name of the game for regional news organizations. Hyperlocal is the new local, with news about communities operating within a local market being the forefront of hyperlocal coverage, some say.

  • Local competition in the online space will heat up. Circulation figures for local weeklies probably will remain stable, but online competition will increase. In New England, Boston.com is competing more aggressively with Gatehouse Media’s WickedLocal.com – to the extent that the latter is suing the former for having too many pointers on Boston.com to WickedLocal.

6. Broadcast media will continue to see significant changes:

  • Niche is the new normal, especially for broadcast. This will make it difficult for marketers to reach broad audiences. In fact, that’s why we predict that Jan. 20th will be the single biggest media event this year – everyone will cover the Obama inauguration. On the other hand, according to Portfolio magazine: "There's something for everyone, but nothing for everyone." It's partly due to the shift to cable and the Internet.
  • Increasingly, people will access TV shows with their computers as opposed to watching the shows when they air. For example, there were 1.4 million viewers of the Couric-Palin interview on YouTube and more than 4 million of the SNL skit – that’s the power of YouTube and Hulu.com. NY Times’ David Pogue already suggested consumers could save money by disconnecting cable, and logging onto the Internet instead to get network feeds and local news coverage.
  • Local cable/TV operators will have a bumpy road because of a significant double whammy: Both advertisers and viewers are fleeing. Local broadcasters will need to find a way to cut costs – which means more layoffs – while stemming the tide of departing viewers. One way may be to follow the lead of NBC, which realized that airing the new Jay Leno show five nights a week at 10pm is cheaper than airing five original 60-minute dramas (even with Jay’s $30 million salary). Local TV may find that whatever time they have can be best/inexpensively filled by talk shows.

7. More organizations will jump onto the Twitter bandwagon. However, many will encounter the same problems as with corporate blogs:

o How often to maintain them?

o Who should maintain them?

o How do you measure a successful program?

o What’s the proper balance between communicating the company’s interest vs. being so self-serving that no one “follows” them?

We recently saw a Twitterite whose job is audience development for a major media outlet whose tweets consisted only of featured articles in the publication. The person had 1,612 tweets, but only 44 followers. In comparison, the magazine’s official Twitter feed has more than 12,000 tweets, and more than 600 followers. It’s a lot of effort with not much payoff. What companies need to understand is that Twitter and social networks are about engaging in conversations.

8. Social networking will continue to grow, but expect a social networking backlash to start. After all, with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, how many ways do we need to connect to the same people? We’re feeling social networking fatigue (SNF) based on getting contacts on two different sites from someone we don’t know. Meanwhile, the challenge for some sites, like Twitter and Plaxo, is that they have yet to monetize their communities, user base, etc. How long can Twitter survive without generating a revenue stream? The backlash will also affect sites designed to help with lead generation but contain wrong information. There are a number of such sites like Spoke.com, Lead411, JigSaw.com. Spoke.com included a number of people as Birnbach employees who actually work at an acquired client of ours; that’s the most egregious, but most of these sites contain misinformation. (Since they’re for lead gen, we have not corrected most of the mistakes we’ve found.)

9. Online reputation management will become more important and much more in-demand function due to the proliferation of sites and ways that people can post information, reviews, etc. about their experiences. For some companies, including Dell and Comcast, online reputation management becomes part of the customer service function. In fact, while understanding and working with social networking sites has been the purview of PR departments and their agencies, there will likely be more of a push by sales and customer service departments and HR departments to be in charge of social networking. In fact, because of media, customer relations and recruiting needs, all three functions (PR, HR and sales) should be working together to maintain and enhance their online reputation.

10. The Kindle will continue to sell to early adopters, but it’s still more like a beta of what’s ahead: bigger, more colorful screens, easier ways to share articles to other users, even a text-to-speech or audio book option so you can throw your book in the car. We expect e-books to become bigger in 2010.

11. The New York Times will survive, but will have a tough 2009.

o The Times will be faced with two obstacles as it seeks this year to solve its Boston Globe problem, since the Globe is losing an estimated $52 million per year:

§ Internal problem: The entire company is now worth less than the $1.1 billion it paid for the Boston Globe. (As of Jan. 6, its market cap is $1.09 billion; it had been less than $900 million in Nov. 2008). It’s difficult to write off that much money, but the company has taken other drastic steps such as cutting dividends to conserve cash and taking out a mortgage on its new headquarters. How much is it worth to them to unload the Globe?

§ External problem: Even at a distressed, Times-financed purchase price, who will want to takeover the Boston Globe? After all, if the Times can’t make the Globe profitable, who can?

o In terms of the Times itself, the challenge is that its attempt to sell online-subscriptions failed several years ago. It’s going to need to find ways to increase the value it provides its advertisers, such as its new ad across the bottom of the front page. That said, we don’t think the Sulzbergers will sell the Times, as the Bancroft family sold the Wall St. Journal to News Corp.

12. Rupert Murdoch will make more changes to the Wall Street Journal in 2009. So far, Rupe has not corrupted the Journal entirely. (The dire predictions from News Corp critics have not been fulfilled.) Despite initial murmurs, don’t expect the Journal to give up its lucrative online subscription fee; in fact, it just raised the fee last year. We don’t see much value for readers of the new WSJ Magazine; it seems like a high-end lifestyle concept in search of advertisers.

13. The Associated Press will consider substantial changes to its model.

o A number of papers have given the AP notice that they want to cancel their participation in the AP. Most of these are smaller papers – like the Bakersfield Californian, Idaho Falls Post Register, Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World – seeking to renegotiate down the fees they pay. But some big papers like the Tribune Co. (parent of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune) and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (no relation) have also given notice.

o On the one hand, many papers seem to rely on wire service coverage even more in 2009, thanks to closing bureaus in Washington, DC, and foreign capitals. On the other hand, the renewed focus on local coverage means that one article appearing multiple times no longer makes sense. After all, when searching on a topic on Google News, how many links to the same article do you need?

o All this means is that the AP needs to re-evaluate who it serves and how it serves them.

14. Journalist and media critic Jeff Jarvis will be right about a number of the predictions he made.

o Citing content from others will continue in 2009 – it’s part of what makes Twitter useful. In his BuzzMachine blog article, “A scenario for news,” Jarvis predicted several interesting things we thought worthwhile to cite:

§ News will emerge from networks…No one believes that a 35-person staff can cover Philadelphia as the 300-person newsroom did; they will have to collaborate with the community, with, we hope, a network of a thousand or thousands. Some people will freely contribute to the news network’s efforts, recording school-board meetings for podcasts, say.

§ Editing will change. Editors will become more curators, aggregators, organizers, educators. Their jobs will be less about controlling a flow than encouraging and improving creation.

§ Do what you do best and link to the rest will be a foundation of the future architecture of news. This is a necessity of efficiency – no one can afford to waste resources on commodity news – but also a necessity of the link economy, for it is through others’ links that original journalism will get attention and audience and the opportunity for monetization through advertising. Linking to journalism at its source - rather than matching it or rewriting it, as we have done - will become an ethic, a moral imperative of the new journalism.

§ Specialization will take over much of journalism. We’ll no longer all be doing the same things - commodifying news – but will stand out and contribute uniquely by covering a niche deeply. Local newspapers, I believe, must specialize in being local and serving local communities.

§ News will find new forms past the article, which will include any media, wiki snapshots of knowledge, live reports, crowd reports, aggregation, curation, data bases, and other forms not yet created.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Online-Only vs. Hardcopy -- and at least one reason hardcopy should surivive

It's clear that the online-only model is the wave of the future of journalism.

You save costs on printing (inc. newsprint itself as well as the printers themselves) and distributing (postage or delivery people).

You can cover late-breaking news and sporting events that run past 11pm. You can update your electronic front-page faster so that you're not scooped for an entire day, but by a few minutes.

But right now, electronic coverage does not have the same impact as print. You can scan the headlines on newsstands -- but you won't be able to do that when all the newsstands close.

Printing up articles even in color doesn't yet convey the same thing as the actual printed copy. (Perhaps that's because printing from newspaper's websites still can be ugly or include ads or leaves out photos.) Can you imagine Truman holding up a printout of the Chicago Tribune proclaiming, "Dewey Defeats Truman"?

You may think I'm a printophile -- which I guess I am -- and that's why I'd sad to see traditional media shift to the online-only model.

But it's interesting to note that, despite the fact that more people access newspapers via the Internet than read hardcopy editions of those newspapers, so many lined up to purchase hardcopies of the NY Times on Wed., Nov. 5, to keep a commemorative copy of Obama's historic victory. Some people paid as much as $250 on eBay for the Times.

If hardcopy isn't valued anymore, why didn't all those folks just print out the Times' article on the election that day?

The answer: printer paper doesn't have the same impact/gravitas as printer paper.

To that end, I would expect that in the future, online-only newspapers will seek to print special hardcopy issues to mark future historic events. (How they'll be able to turn-around and distribute those issues when local printing presses will have been shuttered is a question for those more versed in logistics.)

The Most Popular Radio Format? It wasn't what you thought

At least, it wasn't what I thought it would be. I've lived in the Northeast, and always knew there were some country music stations even in big urban settings. I just never guessed how popular overall the format has been. So perhaps my assumption says something more about me than about the radio business.

That said, until last year, country music had been the most popular radio format in the US, according to a New York Times article, "For Conservative Radio, It’s a New Dawn, Too" by Brian Stelter.

In 2008, news talk radio surpassed country music for the first time.

It's an interesting article, noting interesting implications. Well worth reading.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

More Companies to Engage on Twitter in 2009

One of the predictions we'll be issuing later this week is that more organizations will jump on the Twitter bandwagon.

Social media guru Chris Brogan posted "50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business."

His blog gives permission to repost as long as credit is provided, so here are the top 20 ideas:

First Steps

  1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
  2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
  3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
  4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
  5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
  6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
  7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
  8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
  9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
  10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

  1. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
  2. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
  3. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
  4. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
  5. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
  6. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
  7. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
  8. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
  9. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
  10. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.
For more, click here: "50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business."

Monday, January 5, 2009

FinancialWeek Transitions to Only-Only Model

Another year, and another magazine is shifting to online-only.

The latest vic -- um, innovator: FinancialWeek, henceforth known as FinancialWeek.com.

This is the first of many such announcements, I bet, that we'll see this year.