tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174Wed, 15 May 2013 06:47:25 +0000Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinctionhttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)Blogger834125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-948357020104808602Wed, 08 May 2013 12:00:00 +00002013-05-08T05:00:10.576-07:00In the never-ending quest by marketers to put the right offer in front of the right consumer at precisely the right time, inner space is becoming the next frontier for mobile commerce – and a major opportunity for newspaper publishers.  Inner space is the precious geography inside a store, where marketers have their last, best chance to persuade consumers to buy what they are selling. Here’s whyhttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-publishers-can-win-at-mobile.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/ZWwkx12FWIg" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-4003792676478487533Thu, 02 May 2013 12:00:00 +00002013-05-02T22:29:31.153-07:00 A series of changes in recent years in the way newspapers count their subscribers masks a deep, ongoing and troubling plunge that has cut print circulation by 41.6% at the nation’s biggest papers since 2005.  Print matters because it still produces approximately three-quarters of the revenues at the typical newspaper, according to Jim Conaghan, the vice president of research at the Newspaper http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/05/print-circ-fell-42-at-top-papers-since.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)7<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/Sg4WuWlLS4w" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-7890065680469938375Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +00002013-04-22T08:24:32.489-07:00With an entire city on lockdown and the whole world watching, crowd reporting on the drama in Boston last week reached critical mass. Now, we are facing a critical mess.  Armed with iPhones, empowered by Twitter and amplified by the high-tech witch hunt known as Reddit, perhaps more self-appointed citizen “journalists” than ever broadcast whatever came to mind in an instant, unencumbered by suchhttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/04/citizen-journalism-ran-amok-in-boston.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)6<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/AWW6L2no5s8" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-4631592287545359972Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +00002013-04-10T17:45:32.144-07:00 The case for paywalls would seem to be compelling:  Stanch the decline in print circulation, get paid for producing valuable local content and tap into a fresh source of sorely needed revenue at a time advertising sales continue to shrink.   All good?  Not necessarily. The reason to worry about paywalls is that they severely limit the prospects of developing a wider audience for newspapers at ahttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-paywalls-are-scary.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)15<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/_3tFPxF9CMg" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-2246997478398941573Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:15:00 +00002013-04-10T17:44:53.983-07:00 Advertising sales, the predominant revenue stream for the newspaper industry, dropped for the seventh year in a row in 2012, falling to less than half the record $49.4 billion achieved as recently as 2005. More on that in a moment.  But first, let’s put things in perspective by comparing the meteoric rise of Google, the definitive digital media company, with the epic collapse that has cut the http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/04/newspaper-sales-skid-for-seventh.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)3<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/0u57JmbBBqo" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-2663567586738802597Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:08:00 +00002013-03-21T08:39:58.070-07:00 In nine years of calibrating the health of the news media in the United States, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism never has painted a bleaker picture of the performance and prospects of the press than it did in the annual report issued on Monday.  So, why is Matthew Yglesias of Slate smiling? More on that in a moment. But first, here’s a sampling of what Pew had to say:    Signs of http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/glory-days-of-journalism-no-yes-no-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)9<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/GVL0lD6JMAM" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-7767418201646879130Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:00:00 +00002013-03-11T07:35:40.195-07:00 Last month, I talked about how newspapers often squander their scarce resources by running stories that are longer than they ought to be.  Today, I’d like to suggest what editors can do with all the space they save by not taxing the time and patience of their readers. The way to make room for fresh and relevant coverage, as suggested previously here, is to use graphics instead of words; to stophttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-newspapers-should-cover.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)7<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/HoRGtE5CSmM" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-8718841211312975099Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +00002013-03-05T10:30:35.348-08:00 From Best Buy to CVS and from Kroger to Macy’s, the biggest buyers of newspaper advertising have launched sophisticated smartphone apps to establish increasingly direct and profitable relationships with individual customers.  These efforts should give publishers the shivers, because this new channel represents a major threat to the retail lineage that constitutes half of what’s left of the http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-retail-apps-should-worry-publishers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/ozyWZ_2okvs" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-2002947342532240865Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-03-04T05:00:15.936-08:00 On March 4, 1978, the presses fell silent for the last time at the Chicago Daily News, an iconic and crusading newspaper that was unable to adapt to changing times. The following article, which originally appeared here in 2005, is reprinted as a reminder of what happens when a paper runs out of readers, revenues and ideas. "It's fun being the publisher when things are going well," squeaked thehttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/so-long-again-chicago-daily-news.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/UHOZvomAdjk" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-8430843341368146656Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-03-01T07:15:52.514-08:00 It’s hard to overstate the velocity and magnitude of the shift from mass to target marketing in an era when, as ComScore reports, 50% of mobile users have smartphones and 37% of digital page views occur on mobile screens instead of desktops.  But don’t take my word for it. Instead of attempting to characterize the disruptive impact of these changes on newspapers and other mass media, I am http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/were-working-hard-to-get-out-of-paper.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)8<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/wANsw6FN_Ys" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-8281963277455499767Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:11:00 +00002013-02-26T13:12:05.285-08:00 When the New York Times Co. bought the Boston Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993, many of the nation’s newspaper publishing companies happily would have paid the same price for the same opportunity.  With the Globe now on track to be sold for a tenth (or, perhaps less) of the value it commanded a decade ago, it is safe to assume that no traditional newspaper publisher will be in the scrum of http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-traditional-publishers-wont-buy_25.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)1<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/u-Ay7RHLSYo" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-3540104422722000622Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:01:00 +00002013-02-26T13:21:58.357-08:00 When the New York Times Co. bought the Boston Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993, many of the nation’s newspaper publishing companies happily would have paid the same price for the same opportunity.  With the Globe now on track to be sold for a tenth (or, perhaps less) of the value it commanded a decade ago, it is safe to assume that no traditional newspaper publisher will be in the scrum of http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/02/when-new-york-times-co.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)0<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/gFCr1GjC_xg" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-3405578347781110363Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-02-06T07:15:02.538-08:00Several years ago, the Washington Post convened a series of focus groups to learn why most individuals under the age of 45 did not subscribe to the newspaper – a problem persisting to this day throughout the overwhelmingly print-centric industry.  It’s not that people didn’t like the Post, reported the American Journalism Review in an article describing the research project in 2005. The problem http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-digital-natives-dont-like-newspapers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)10<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/ZHK4B5Hvyyc" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-8767182296964749920Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-03-18T07:24:08.554-07:00 The rapidly expanding adoption of mobile couponing is poised to become a major challenge to one of the most profitable and important revenue streams remaining for newspapers: preprint advertising circulars.  The good news for publishers at the moment is that newspapers carry 90% of the printed coupons issued annually by consumer-products companies in the United States, according to a mid-2012 http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-mobile-coupons-could-clip-newspapers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)5<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/V86P_YOrrV8" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-7989495647777412741Mon, 28 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-28T08:10:47.507-08:00 The news cognoscenti gasped when the Columbia Journalism Review recently reported that the nation’s leading newspapers aren’t writing as many long stories as they used to. But I think most stories are still way too windy. In a moment, I’ll tell you why, as briefly as I can. First the background:  Tallying yarns topping 2,000 words on Factiva, CJR found the number of long-form stories at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/most-newspaper-stories-are-still-too.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)5<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/P_QGk56rg5Y" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-5407243276959895014Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-17T13:56:55.554-08:00 The population of people reading newspapers has aged dramatically in the last three years to the point that nearly three-quarters of the audience is aged 45 or older, according to my analysis of survey and census data.  When I performed the same analysis using the same methodology in 2010, only half of the newspaper audience was aged 45 or higher, reflecting a rapidly growing rejection of  http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/newspaper-audience-aged-severely-since.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)5<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/mY_r4FdCn18" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-448360058360964544Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-09T08:40:08.580-08:00 The smartphone has emerged as the hottest shopping accessory since the brown paper sack, the latter of which, as a matter of law, now costs a dime if you don’t bring your own environmentally sustainable tote into the supermarket in my part of California.  With nearly one out of five consumers now consulting their mobile gizmos when making a purchasing decision, smartphone shopping represents a http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/smartphone-shopping-perils-publishers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)1<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/AvTiMMSC_PU" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-6825680297575447815Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-09T09:46:44.625-08:00 Although the sales of new vehicles hit a five-year peak in 2012, automotive advertising at newspapers was on track at year’s end to decline for the ninth straight year – and likely headed to the lowest level since 1979.   The continuing slump in auto advertising at newspapers, which has persisted in spite of a healthy rebound that powered new vehicle sales to 14.5 million units  in 2012, is http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/auto-recovery-leaves-newspapers-behind.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)1<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/z7Ybuw892U8" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-1570303814094142750Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-03T07:58:29.666-08:00 Part two of two parts.  The first part is here.  While more than half of newspaper advertising has vaporized since peaking at $49.4 billion in 2o05, the share prices of five out of the nine publicly held publishers impressively outpaced the broader stock market in 2012.  Yesterday, we looked at the winners and losers among the publishing sector in a year when the average share price of http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-investors-embraced-newspapers-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/Zh-NHdGgpTc" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-947431838072472010Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +00002013-01-03T07:57:59.803-08:00 Part one of two.  Second part is here.  After getting shellacked in 2011, a number of newspaper stocks rebounded sharply last year, with five out of nine publicly held publishers handily outpacing the broader market.  On average, newspaper stocks rose 20.8% in 2012, as compared with a 13.4% increase in the Standard and Poor’s index of 500 shares. But the average doesn’t properly reflect the http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/01/many-newspaper-stocks-beat-market-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/tfCD3w_rkTw" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-4677737991131208326Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +00002012-12-20T17:22:57.780-08:00 Reflecting the apparent acceleration of a troubling and long-running trend, the share of digital advertising earned by the nation’s newspapers plunged precipitously in the third quarter, according to an analysis of new data released this week.  While total U.S. digital advertising expenditures surged 18% in the third quarter of this year to a record $9.3 billion, online advertising at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/12/digital-ad-share-dives-sharply-at.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)4<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/IA4xmCtiCOo" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-7967872971042249412Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +00002012-12-05T09:05:49.214-08:00When the iPad debuted in 2010, I began urging newspaper publishers to defend and extend their franchises by developing innovative products to attract new audiences and new revenues on this transformational platform. But I always got the same question:  Who else is doing it? For a year, I didn’t have a good answer, because publishers either ignored the most rapidly adopted electronics product in http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/12/5-tips-for-developing-new-digital.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)5<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/_I5zy82yPMk" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-3725558318538946922Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +00002012-12-03T09:53:53.663-08:00 For those in blissful oblivion or simple denial, the Columbia Journalism School has issued a valuable essay describing how digital technology and empowered consumers are eroding the commercial institutions that historically supported journalism.   As a backwards look at how the contraction of the legacy media business has affected – and will continue to impact – journalism, the essay makes for http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/12/whats-next-for-press-they-dont-know.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)4<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/6D8CIwQid9A" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-3726508860799276761Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +00002012-11-26T15:09:27.124-08:00 With total ad sales sliding 5.1% in the third quarter of this year, newspapers have set what must be some sort of record in the annals of American business by having their primary revenue stream fall for 25 quarters in a row.  In 75 months of unremitting declines, the industry’s consolidated advertising sales have plunged from an all-time high of $49.4 billion in 2005 to what I estimate will behttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/11/online-sales-are-flat-lining-at.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)15<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/Bn3Su37dT4M" height="1" width="1"/>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9604174.post-7637647927706191668Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +00002012-11-19T05:00:01.526-08:00 In 2008, the Internet and newspapers were tied in the number of people who turned to each them for news about the presidential election.  This year, the Internet absolutely buried newspapers as the preferred source for campaign news. The dramatic shift in the relevance, authority and influence of newspapers on this most consequential of news stories was revealed in a comprehensive post-electionhttp://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/11/web-election-audience-overtakes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Newsosaur)2<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/vLgh/~4/6NAiyr4GqbM" height="1" width="1"/>