It's all in how you look at it (magazine circulation division)

Once again, we read of declining circulation of print products -- this time it's magazine newsstand sales that are off 10 percent over a year ago. Ad pages are off nearly 26 percent. Paid circulations are flat.

So is the sky falling? Let's turn it around a bit and state the news this way: Despite the worst economy since the Great Depression, unemployment more than 10 percent and much less content (26 percent cut in ad pages means a whopping hit in editorial content as well), AND lots of free content (including on the magazines' own websites), 90 percent of readers are still purchasing magazines on newsstands while paid circulation holds steady.

Sounds a lot better this way, aina?

Post columnist predicts the future of tablets

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein talked with viewers about the iPad. A lot of ideas were touched upon in this online discussion. I was struck by this prediction "Thin, light portable tablets are going to be HUGE in everything. Reading books and newspapers. Playing games. Keeping up with e-mail and stuff when you are on the move. And when you get to the office or home, you'll put the tablet into some holder, hook it up to a keyboard or mouse, and it becomes the screen for your "computer."

Blogging? It's for old folks.

Proof that social media continues to evolve is a report from Pew Research that blogging is becoming passe among teens. While blogging dropped among teens (down to 18 percent), the use of social media continued to rise (73 percent), indicating that teens are shifting from blogging to other forms of media. Blogging held steady among those older than 18. The Pew report has lots of statistics about teens and computers.

Harris poll offers bad news for newspapers

Let's get the bad news out of the way early: a new Harris poll for Adweek Media found that newspaper readership is down to 43 percent who read newspapers (either in print or online) each day, and it's half that for the 18-34-year-old demographic. One in 10 Americans say they never read a daily newspaper.

The news is equally for newspapers thinking about charging for content with 77 percent saying they wouldn't pay for online.

On the other hand, 72 percent say they read at least once a week and 81 percent at least once a month.

Paywalls jump back into the news (not that they've ever gone)

Paying for media content is one of the major undercurrents of virtually all stories about media these days. There are two significant ones today.

The New York Times is reporting that Apple plans to pitch its new tablet device, which will be introduced officially tomorrow, as a way for publications to charge for content. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Meanwhile, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says paywalls like those proposed by Rupert Murdoch could lead the industry to a "sleepwalk into oblivion." He's talking about rigid paywalls, seeming supportive of charging for specialized content while keeping much of your news site free. That's a model that I believe has a good chance of working.

Rusbridger echoes a lot of what I tell students about prospects for journalism. "If you think about journalism, not business models, you can become rather excited about the future. If you only think about business models you can scare yourself into total paralysis," he said in a talk. Read the comments on the Guardian site. They add a lot of insight (at least some of them do).

Can Times get away with a pay wall?

Media leaders and experts weigh in on the New York Times' announcement that it will start charging for content. Interesting viewpoints with most of them commenting on how cautious the Times is in this move.

Will Apple's new product revitalize old media?

Given that we don't know much about it, I've avoided posting about Apple's newest product, which is to be introduced January 27. But there's an excellent story in today's Wall Street Journal headlined "Apple Sees New Money in Old Media" that caught my eye for obvious reasons.

The gist of the story is that Apple's new product, widely expected to be a tablet, will "reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television. . . ." The Apple tablet will be the delivery method for all sorts of old media, revitalizing them since their content would be valuable just as songs are sold on iTunes.

The story says Apple's business plan is to make money by making the content valuable unlike, say, Google's plan where the money comes from Google advertising and content really doesn't matter (or in the case of the Kindle, gouging content providers).

I've long believed that paper versions of newspapers and magazines are easier to digest information from than a website, which generally requires you to drill down to figure out what's in a story rather than the paper version where we quickly scan it. Seems to me that Apple's product has the potential to replicate that experience. It's just a matter of waiting for the actual product to see.

What's going wrong at the Washington Post?

Building on the fiasco last year of its plans for "off the record" salons, The New Republic offers a long take on the Washington Post, the gist of which is that the newspapers is off the track and lurching from one idea to another. It's a scary thought for those who like newspapers.

In essence, the story tells a tale of missed opportunities, misjudgement, and just plain poor management (something that puts the Post in company with most newspaper companies). Though filled with inside-baseball style references, the story is very instructive of what's been happening to the entire old media world.

FTC examines Facebook privacy

I predict a continuing rise in questions about Internet privacy even as media look to increase its use of the Web for targeting consumers. The latest wrinkle is that the Federal Trade Commission apparently is looking into the Facebook privacy settings controversy.

Basically, allegations are that Facebook is tracking every move made using its site, whether users delete them or not. Questions are also raised about a new iPhone application that transfers phone contacts to Facebook as "friends," a feature that I'd never use (do I really want my plumber, attorney, M.U. Public Safety, and a host of restaurants as "friends"?).

Stay tuned. There's going to be more of these questions as media and Netizens push the envelope.

Chapter 11 draws another media group

Yet another big media group has filed for chapter 11 reorganization. It's MediaNews, publisher of newspapers in Denver, Oakland, San Jose, and Detroit.

Can nonprofits save journalism?

Will nonprofits be enough to continue the long journalist tradition of muckraking? ABC News raises that question, answering with a solid "maybe." The short answer is that nonprofit journalism has had some hits, but questions remain about its sustainability (similar to just about everything else in journalism these days). It's a nicely-done story, and I hope it has a happy ending.

An original thinker rethinks the Internet

One of the signs of maturing in the Internet and new media is that we now are getting serious, thoughtful approaches to what is happening. One of the best came yesterday (sorry, I was too busy to post it then) in the New York Times when John Tierney wrote about Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget, a "manifesto" against "hive thinking" and "the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity."

This is significant because Lanier's one of the original thinkers who, in the '90s, was correctly anticipating the growth of ideas on the Internet, believing that "open source" idea-sharing would lead to a revolution.

Unfortunately, Lanier writes today, that revolution has taken some ugly turns, promoting not free thinking, but "hive thinking," where we find others who think just like ourselves and reinforce our views to the exclusion of new ideas.

The Internet fosters the spread of information, but we've seen all too much misinformation spread and, Lanier believes, we've become much more willing to forgo original thinking in favor of just adopting technology as a cure-all. And I apologize to him for overly-simplifying his arguments. Read the post, then read the book.