Facebook officials say new design helps advertisers

For a long time I've been waiting for evidence that online branding advertising works. Click-troughs work, although evidence is spotty on that, but I've not seen any evidence that branding work.

Facebook officials are claiming that their new design will "boost sharing activity and create new opportunities for advertisers." The idea is that the timeline will allow advertisers to link to products my friends "like" and are purchasing. We assume that will push me to buy (in fact, Facebook officials said a friend's "liking" a product increased the chances I will use it by 51 percent). Still no hard evidence.

Wall Street protesters turn to dead-tree technology

Interesting choice for the Wall Street protesters who felt their story wasn't getting told. They started a print newspaper. Certainly they've had plenty of new media "ink," lots of videos on YouTube, blogs and other electronic publicity.

But, when it came to generating buzz, they turned back to print.

70% of Americans read or visit newspaper sites weekly

A couple of years ago Marquette's Communication College sponsored a visit from a media "futurist" who said that newspapers had something valuable going for them that other media missed. It was, she said, the trust of their audience.

I remembered her comment while reading of the latest National Newspaper Association survey that indicated 70 percent of American had read either a printed newspaper or its online version in the past week. That's a pretty high number, but believable because it supports data passed along by individual newspaper companies.

The NNA said the high reader/viewership is "because newspapers still represent the most trusted source of news in America"

The survey also supported by observation -- go into any coffee shop and look at the people reading newspapers and scanning online news sites.

Some clues to newspaper success

Some studies are more valuable than others. Results from a 50-state tour of newspapers, I think, is very valuable. Husband and wife journalists Paul Steinle and Sara Brown took the tour, and reported their findings at a panel at the recent SPJ conference.

“Print is not dead,” Brown said. “We didn’t talk to anybody who believed that newspapers would be dead in the next 10-15 years.”

They didn't come away with any grand plan to insure success, but noted some qualities that work. Among them: Market size matters. Local news and watchdog reporting are indispensable assets.

Brown said that among the more successful smaller papers, the couple found several key characteristics that included a strong emphasis on local news, an ongoing commitment to watchdog reporting, fostering community dialogue and being a good organizational citizen through public service initiatives.

Suddenly, e-books are hot items

Newspapers have been incredibly slow in adapting to the digital age, but we're beginning to see progress. One application that shows potential is for newspapers and other media publications to adapt their content into virtually instantaneous (and inexpensive) e-books.

It clearly makes sense for news organizations that are generating a lot of content to compile them into e-books, which are generally shorter, cheaper and quicker to produce. Recent e-books have been produced by Huffington Post, The New Yorker, ABC News, The Boston Globe, Politico and Vanity Fair.

Let's see if the Journal Sentinel produces one celebrating the Brewers' climb toward a pennant.

PolitiFact franchises growing

Let's give the Journal Sentinel its due: it was ahead of the curve with its adopting the controversial PolitiFact ratings. The system was created by the St. Petersburg Times, which franchised it to the Milwaukee newspaper and four others.

Although its ratings have been attacked by virtually everyone (it's too easy on Republicans was one charge; now some Republicans say it's too hard on them with Democrats criticizing claiming that now that the recall elections are over, it tells the truth -- once again proving that the media can't win), it's been so popular that the system is now expanding its franchisees nationwide. It's a good idea, and I'm glad to see it growing.

Media companies -- but not advertisers -- embrace mobile technology

Several years ago I was at a conference where one of the new media types dominating the speaking roles was extolling his newest toy -- an early version of the smart phone. "This is the future," I remember him saying, holding up a phone with a tiny stream of text. I don't want to read my news on that tiny screen; it'll take all day to read a story, I remember thinking.

Flash forward and here I was sitting in a doctor's office reading the Guardian newspaper's lead story on a tiny screen. It still was slow and inefficient, but mobile has made it's place in the new media world in which we live.

A new report by Online Media Daily indicates that publishers are quickly adapting with more than a quarter of them offering mobile applications -- a doubling in the last year. The problem, as it is with all digital media, is advertising presence.

Online Media says that ad presence remains very low, which makes sense giving the small screen. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offers tiny ads at the bottom of the screen, but tiny is the operative word. They barely show up, and still are offensive giving the small amount of real estate available.

It's an evolving technology (and the smart phone is vastly inferior to the tablet as a vehicle for media), but where I once disdained the very thought of trying to make sense of such limited text options, I now use it. So who knows what the future might bring.

Newspaper industry shrinkage expected to continue

Continued consolidation. Fewer reporters. Fewer papers. Fewer owners. More money. That's a forecast for the newspaper industry from Dean Singleton, NewsMedia executive chairman who has long predicted extreme industry consolidation.

In an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, Singleton said he had that vision 15 years ago when his company wasn't in the top 10 nationally in circulation. Today, it's number two.

Singleton said he didn't expect the industry to die -- just continue consolidation.

This media merger has broad implications

Should we care about a merger of sorts between newspaper chains that don't have outlets in our hometown? The answer, of course, is yes when it's a merger between two of the nation's largest remaining chains, Journal Register Co. and MediaNews Group. As widely reported, especially in this context-setting piece by Nieman Journalism Labs, where two independent companies are forming a third company to manage the two others. It's a vastly different business model that's worth watching.

Speaking of business models, the new company's CEO, John Paton, also CEO of the Journal Register, is an outspoken opponent of paywalls and MediaNews Group has more than two-dozen paywalls already erected. Paton says it's too early for him to decide what to do with the existing paywalls.

Social media editors take on another task -- debunking

Social media editors and reporters are all the rage these days with good reason. They expand a medium's reporting ability infinitely as well as engaging the readers. However, they are serving more and more as debunking editors, this Poynter Institute report says, with a new charge of not only separating the true from the false, but an obligation to let the world know about the false.

As we have moved from a slow and careful analysis of reporting before publishing to rapid posting of information, often without review of even a second person, inaccuracies are swarming the media universe. They post a particular problem for media attempting to be among the first to publish information.

Journalism on the go more than ever

As this essay by Alex Salkever on Streetfight, a blog devoted to reporting all things hyperlocal, says, the move by the Washington Post to close all but a couple of its bureaus shouldn't be surprising given the changes in the industry. It's a fundamentally sound decision aimed at cutting unnecessary costs, which (hopefully) will be spent increasing reporting. Unfortunately American businesses have a poor track record on this strategy. For example the insurance industry started these moves years ago with the result seeing declining numbers of agents along with declining service and declining profits.

Still, today's reporters can do their work in the field using basic backpack journalism equipment, which does cut costs dramatically. I look for more of this.

A question of priorities -- and losing readers

Don't take this as a criticism of Duane Dudak, the very hard-working TV and movie critic for the Journal Sentinel. Instead, it's a commentary on the times and, in my view, one huge reason the JS is losing subscribers.

While a new TV season isn't quite as big as it was when the four networks ruled, it is still a time when people change their habits, building their lives around new, interesting-looking television shows. It was a huge time of year two decades ago with the old Milwaukee Journal devoting not only more than a page in the Sunday paper, but huge stories daily giving readers not only a good overview of the new season but show by show reviews. Back then, the Journal alone had two full-time television writers along with one full-time movie critic. Duane carried the load alone for the Sentinel, but his season preview was pretty comprehensive.

These days, it's back to Duane handling the job single-handedly and the result showed up in today's JS -- a listing of show premiers with only a sentence or two for new shows. Can I plan my fall's viewing from this? Not really since I don't know if any of the new shows interest me. (For example, " 'Up All Night,' sitcom about new parents with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett; "Free Agents," romantic comedy about mismatched co-workers, with Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn (NBC)" tells me almost nothing.)

As I said, it's not Duane's fault, but the money-pinching management moves to cut staff and paper use have eliminated so much content that it invites readers to go elsewhere. And I have to question their judgement. A new television season deserves at least as much space and effort as one story in the never-ending series of Asian carp invasion stories.