Surprise! Newspaper ad revenues may rise

      Newspaper ad revenues will increase, according to Borrell Associates, an ad research firm.

      "We are forecasting that by 2014, newspaper income will be up a total of 8.7% over the 2009 figures, to slightly more than $39 billion," said Colby Atwood, the firm's president.

     Atwood said that newspapers are getting better at selling ads, using improving and still big ad sales staffs to contact local advertisers. And their own web sites, advertising on which Borrell doesn't include in its newspaper numbers, will likely generate more revenue over time.

Is the era of free online news over?

     Rupert Murdock, declaring that the era of free online content is over, tells the Guardian that all his news properties will be pay-only by the end of the year.

     Here's a typical quote: "Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

      Wanna bet how long it takes the rest of the industry to follow -- at least how long it takes anyone actually intending to continue publishing.

Internet ad spending falls again.

Indicating once more that it's the economy, stupid, a new research report shows that worldwide online advertising spending had declined again during the second quarter. Ad spending on the Internet declined 5.5 percent worldwide, but 7.7 percent in the U.S., according to Online Media Daily. This is the second straight quarter where online advertising fell.

Study shows newspaper advertising works

     I do a lot of asking for evidence that online ads work. The Sacramento Business Journal offers evidence -- that newspapers work. Despite all the hand-wringing, etc.  Yes, the study is by the Newspaper Association of America, which is hardly an unbiased organization. But there are figures. Fifty-nine percent of consumers doing comparison shopping uses newspapers.

     I know from personal experience that's true. I drink Coke (actually, Diet Coke while the rest of the family drinks Coke Zero).  Since Coke gouges on its price in Milwaukee, I look each Sunday in the newspaper to see if it's on sale (cheaper) at 1) Pick 'n Save, 2) CVI, or 3) Walgreens. If it's not on sale (and generally Pepsi is, but Coke isn't), I pick up a couple of weeks' supply at Costco, which means driving 17 miles.  The point is, that I do use the newspaper to comparison shop. I don't go on the Internet. Just as a comparison, just now I went to Google and typed "Coke milwaukee price today." The answer: about 322,000 hits. The newspaper works -- and maybe someday, newspapers themselves will start selling this point, and smarter advertisers will realize that evidence of new media advertising superiority isn't there yet (except that it's much cheaper; just as advertising on TV at 3 a.m. is much cheaper).

Research report looks at social media today

What's the hottest topic in new media circles these days? It's social media. The public relations/research company Porter Novelli has issued a comprehensive report on today's social media that makes for very interesting reading.

Reporting on the death of journalism

    Nice tip from former Journal Sentinel critic Damien Jaques, who since taking the company's buyout offer this past week apparently has time to read other newspapers, who guided me to a story on the death of journalism from the Washington Post. Note, I didn't say the death of newspapers, but the death of journalism.

     The story, by Ian Shapira, goes through what all he had to do to produce a story, which then was basically lifted from the Post website by Gawker.com with little or no work involved. 

    What's important isn't just that a website basically cherrypicked a newspaper story, but Shapira's going through all the steps he took to produce the original 1,500-word story. And, frankly, this is journalism that isn't likely to be duplicated by websites. Think about it a minute. How often do you see a story on a website that's its own reporting and not just picking up facts from someone else's reporting.  Also, Shapira is referencingGawker.com, one of the larger national sites. 

     As a perceptive former colleague suggested this morning while talking about the more than 30 Journal Sentinel writers, editors and photographers to leave, journalism is hurt by this -- especially local journalism. For those who hate their local paper, where are they going to get local news if it's gone? The national papers will survive. But who's going to keep an eye on the county executive or your alderman or your governor without a local paper?

"He said, she said" non-journalism discussed

Meanwhile, Jay Rosen's blog offers a nice discussion of the problems of "he said, she said" "journalism" (it's not journalism at all). It's the kind of poor excuse for journalism exemplified by one of the Milwaukee TV stations that "interprets" election results by bringing on the head of the state Republicans and the head of the state Democrats.  That way, of course, we viewers are able to figure out what really happened.

Read Rosen's piece.

Welcome to George Orwell's 1984, corporate style

     Fascinating -- in a very bad way -- story of modern media. I'm linking to Salon's interpretation of a New York Times story reporting a deal between MSNBC and Fox to quit attacking each other, at the insistence of each network's corporate bosses.  It's not the first time that News Corp. (Fox) or GE (MSNBC) has interfered in news (see: reporting of the 2000 presidential election results), but this is one of the most blatant examples of a real weakness in American news media conglomeration and control by corporate interests.

     Salon correctly writes about the questions such blatant interference in the editorial independence by corporate owners raises for those of us who value a free press. Frankly, this demonstrates just how fragile our basic freedoms are.

     I was thinking of this while I watched an account on Milwaukee public television's interCHANGE program. Discussing the massive staff cuts at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, one panelist -- seemingly serious -- said all that was needed was to just build a staff of conservative bloggers and they'd report all the news. I don't care whether it's conservative or liberal bloggers but there's no way in - - - -  that a staff of partisan bloggers doing the little or no reporting currently in vogue among partisan bloggers can build an informed electorate. Repeating talking points from political groups or think tanks is not reporting. I don't want to live in a nation like Iran, Korea, or the Cold War USSR where all "news" is filtered through censors. And I don't care if they are government, religious, or corporate censors. It's a bad thing. Reading about it, such as the Times or Salon pieces, is a good thing.

      Meanwhile, Politico quotes the Los Angeles Times as casting doubt on the story, citing the MSNBC attacks on Glen Beck of Fox this week for his remarks calling President Obama a racist.

TiVo data shows people skip commercials up to 84% of the time

Data from TiVo shows that television ads lost as much as 84 percent of their audience. We've always known that the ability to fast-forward over ads really cuts down viewership. But I find myself watching some of the ads just because they look good (kudos to creatives). Last week, I was watching a new weird show on BBC America -- "Being Human," an intriguing show about ghosts, vampires and werewolves -- when I found myself twice being fooled by the commercials that looked much like the show. It's another good concept to make commercials look enough like the program that you stop the TiVo fast-forward to watch the commercial. TiVo is incorporating its data into what it calls "power ratings," that it says reflect actual audience.

Another intersection of old and new media

     The intersections of new and old media continue to cause consternation. Case in point today, a Reuters blog concerning the publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette whose circulation is rising, in his estimation, because he has erected a firewall between the print and online material, charging online-only viewers for access to his newspaper's content. Let me repeat that -- his circulation is increasing.  Frankly, I've long wondered why newspapers don't try to drive readers to the print version just as they work to drive readers to the online version. I well remember once when the Journal Sentinel had a columnist prominently displayed in its Friday Cue section whose column appeared as in blog form two other times a week.  I wondered why it didn't leave the Friday column offline, while advertising to those who really liked her work that there was another column/blog available only in print.  Why give everything away?

     My prediction: By a year from now, most newspapers will be charging for online access. And a lot of us will be paying, if it's reasonably priced.

Media stocks jump; Dow Jones offers better news

Shares of media companies jumped Monday, and Dow Jones reports that it's because analysts don't believe the doomsday scenario. I don't subscribe so I haven't read the whole article, but the lead is here. Not subscribing says something about me (maybe it's related to the price of the Journal Communications stock I own), but it sounds like the story is worth ferreting out.

The Sunday newspaper and the Post Office

There's yet another blog out today suggesting the demise of newspapers, at least the Sunday paper. What interesting here is that blogger Jeff Jarvis actually knows something about the business, unlike most of the "new media" people who think they do, and he ties the Sunday newspaper with the postal service. An interesting viewpoint.