What's Time charging for?

It looks like Time is going to be following an idea I have been espousing for some time. A brief quote from a Time spokesman on a blog called "All Things Considered" includes this description of the company's plans: "Our strategy is to use the web for breaking news and ‘commodity’ type of news; (news events of any type, stock prices, sports scores) and keep (most of) the features and longer analysis for the print publication and iPad versions."

In other words, the free Internet material will be the sort of "news" that can come from anywhere with exclusive material protected for purchase either from print or iPad versions. Of course, comments on the blog ask the usual "Why would I want to pay to get what I can get elsewhere" questions that proliferate among new media devotes, but the Time plan (and others, such as Murdoch's newspapers) isn't offering news you can get elsewhere behind a paywall. It's up to Time and the others to make us want to pay to get it (as we do now for all sorts of material, see my Internet and cable bills for examples).

Paying for articles at Time

Has Time magazine joined the Internet paywall world? Nieman Journalism Lab notes that nearly every story on the current issue of Time carries this phrase: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010 print and iPad editions of TIME,” but without any links to the full story, just referring viewers to the print and iPad editions.

One comment on the Nieman site says the is "stupid," "Paywalls are bad enough, but making your digital version only available on one format is just plain dumb." But, putting only part of your stories on free sites makes sense to me. It's a strategy that I expect to see followed more and more as established media attempt to rebuild profits. Other commenters note that Time has pulled its archives from most aggregators, including Nexis.

The medium is indeed the message

Ken Swafford of Slate offers his take on why printed books will never be replaced by ebooks. The reason, based on reading of Marshall McLuhan as well as his experience, lies in the way we perceive words, or "delivering technology" in McLuhan-speak. We perceive words on screens differently than on paper, Swafford says, and the difference is important. The medium is indeed the message.

No more Mr. Nice Guys?

Tom Shales writes in the Washington Post that the end of Larry King on CNN means the end of "the nice guys." King, Shales, says, represented a time when television was more civil and friendly. Shales takes a number of shots at the "incivility" of cable television talk. Can't disagree with him.

Printed books faster to read

Some of my suspicions turn out to be true. One is that I wondered if one could read an ebook as rapidly as on paper. The answer? No. According to a study by A.C. Neilson, it takes significantly more time to read a book on a Kindle or iPad than on paper. The iPad was significantly better than the Kindle 2, which, in turn, was much better than reading it on a PC.

For newspapers, both good and bad news

The good news is that 57 percent of U.S. Internet users visited newspaper sites in May.
The bad news, according to Media Daily News' Eric Sass, is that it demonstrates how the industry has not yet figured out a way to monetize the sites. My view is that continues to demonstrate the industry's lack of imagination. We're living in an age of new forms of journalism. Too many newspaper companies seem to be just running out the string. Reminds me of how the owners of Pabst Brewing leeched off it for years (story about newest Pabst owner; story giving a bit of earlier history). Basically they cut and cut and cut, dropped R&D, dropped advertising, and just let the market die. Sounds familiar, huh?

Online paper turns to print

I'm teaching in Italy during June, but news that a San Francisco online news startup is turning to print wedged its way into my life of biscotti and chocolata at a cafe.

The San Francisco Public Press is printing a 20-page newspaper with an 8-page pullout. It says that this move will set the nonprofit publication apart. It's not sure about the future. Few of us are.

Media world watches Murdock move

It's getting to be fish or cut bait time for the newspaper industry, and it is paying a lot of attention to plans due to be announced in the next couple of days by the Murdock empire to erect a pay wall at the venerable Times of London. The Times is planning to announce prices and procedures for forcing online viewers to pay for content.

New media folks, of course, all say it will be an abysmal failure. Most newspaper publishers are hoping that it works since they'd like to get more income from their online product. It involves a balancing act: Will enough viewers pay to offset possible declines from advertising revenues. The bottom line, of course, is that online advertising revenues aren't high enough to pay for quality journalism.

New report mixed for newspaper advertising

Moody's, the financial firm, issued a private report about the future of newspapers. There are several stories available on the Internet, including from Media Post, that give parts of the report. It's interesting to see the emphasis since the Moody's report says that newspaper advertusing is stabilizing, but just for a year.

Dead as a mackerel

I'm sitting here having breakfast in an outdoor cafe in Cagli, Italy. Along comes this article on Techcrunch.com titled "Is Print Media Doomed Worldwide or Just in the US." Basically, as seemingly always at the new media sites, the conclusion is "You bet. Dead as a mackerel." Even here in Italy. So I look around the cafe tables. Twenty-two people. Seventeen reading newspapers and the others talking with newspapers laying in front of them. Dead as a mackerel, I guess.

Research shows differences between new and old media in coverage; not news but important

Fascinating and important new research released by Pew Research demonstrates the differences between new and old media in the sort of things they follow -- and they aren't what you might think they are.

Pew says it "has gathered a year of data on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages and seven months’ worth on Twitter. We also have analyzed a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube."

Top findings, Pew says, "Most broadly, the stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press. But they also differ greatly from each other. Of the 29 weeks that we tracked all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube shared the same top story just once. That was the week of June 15-19, when the protests that followed the Iranian elections led on all three."

Newspaper sites continue to grow

Want a tip on hot Internet sites? Try newspapers. Media Daily News is reporting a steady rise ("up 10% from March, 12% from February, and 15% from January") of unique visitors to newspaper sites this year. My take? It's trusted content, baby. The new media folks are always screaming about the latest "hot" site (which generally dies quickly), but newspaper sites offer trusted content, and that's worth a lot. It's a shame more newspaper managements can't see this.