Content Bridges

All About Troopergate: Live from Alaska, It's ADN.com

kdoctor — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:26:23 -0700

Who'd a thunk it? Alaska is an epicenter of the final stretches of this Presidential campaign. Luckily, the McClatchy-owned Anchorage Daily News is on the beat and offering deep and wide coverage, complete with timely video and great organization of the story's twists and turns.

On Friday, the Alaska Legislature's report on Gov. Sarah Palin's involvement in what's come to be known as Troopergate is due. The Daily News' voluminous coverage is accompanied by an sum-up introductory video, done by reporter Kyle Hopkins, who does a good job of summing up the story in less than four minutes. Hopkins' key video was recorded on Aug. 13, a longish press conference involving Palin and her counsel, at which time it became clear that the office of fired Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan had taped calls coming from the Governor's staff, urging Monegan to fire trooper Mike Wooten, the Governor's former brother-in-law. I first wrote about the video on Sept. 1. It's up on the website, with this note from Hopkins.

"Here's the first part of the press conference. Sorry about the way this video looks. I was holding a little camera while taking notes."

No apology needed. This is great work, a non-theoretical, real-life example of how newspaper reporters' documentary -- and analytic -- role can be enhanced with video. On the same page, ADN.com actually has a Palin video pulldown, with seven Palin videos in total. All Northern Exposure jokes aside (and Daily News Editor Pat Dougherty's admonition not to stereotype Palin noted), journalists and political junkies alike will find the Daily News coverage thoroughly helpful as the report is made public and is bound to consume the weekend news cycle.

As if that weren't enough, the Daily News has also done a comprehensive job of covering Alaska's other big story -- the prosecution of very senior Sen. Ted Stevens.

Lastly, worth noting: The paper's Alaska Politics Blog, a good and current read, anchored by Hopkins and reporters Erika Bolstad and Sean Cockerham

Kudos on a job well done, using the new tools of the day.

Persistent Interviewing 101: Jeremy Paxman vs. Michael Howard

kdoctor — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:30:15 -0700

To yesterday's post on US journalists anemically shying away from "follow-up" questions (Tom Brokaw gets a B- for that, graded on a curve, for last night's debate), I got several good e-mail comments.

My favorite, from a colleague in the UK, reminded me of the famous Jeremy Paxman interview with Michael Howard. Paxman is the longest-serving "presenter" on the BBC's Newsnight program, and a tough interviewer. In this legendary, May, 1997 interview, Michael Howard, who had just left his post as Home Secretary, was asked the same question by Paxman not once or twice, but 12 times.

Remember Katie Couric's recent "not to belabor the point"? Paxman trots out a few more ripostes:

"With respect, you haven't answered the question."
"I'm going to be frightfully rude."
"I note you are not answering the question."

Should be required viewing in J-schools....and maybe newsrooms.

That excerpt. The full eight-minute interview, here. Enjoy.

NYT IHT Move is Just a Piece of the Global Puzzle

kdoctor — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:28:03 -0700

The rapid-fire decisions keep coming at The New York Times Company. And not a moment too soon.

We see that the Times has decided to put the International Herald Tribune website to sleep, a slumber that makes a lot of sense. Back in June, the Times had signaled the change, but now it's going to happen.

As I wrote then ("Finally, the Times Moves to Re-Brand the IHT (In Part) ), it's a long-overdue move. We can cite several good, supporting reasons, but there's one that looms larger and larger: The Times needs to leverage its best-in-the-business brand worldwide, to greatly pump up the amount of revenue it is driving from outside the US.

Only about 4% of Times Company revenues come from outside the US currently, the company says. Just think about it: there are about twice as many English speakers outside the US as in in it, 900 million worldwide. As we see the Guardian, the BBC and the Economist all making US inroads, we can see that the Atlantic is a mere historical pond. Well-educated, higher-income English speakers from Manchester to Mumbai to Melbourne are all potential readers these days.

The opportunity's been there, but the maturation of the web makes them much more gettable, by desktop, cell phone and soon, TV. Most importantly, there's at least one other company that sees the same potential: the Times' new archnemesis, Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. He's pushing together his business brands -- Wall Street Journal, Marketwatch, Barrons -- driving efficiencies and distribution, and soon he'll connect those dots among newspaper and cable/satellite properties worldwide.

One key part of this puzzle is optimizing the monetization of non-American readers. Vivian Schiller, NYT.com GM, estimates that 18-20% of the the NYT.com site's readers come from outside the country. Serving them the right ads -- targeting by their interests (behavioral targeting) as well as their hometowns -- will be key in wringing out new revenue. I think we're closer to the beginning of that process, but the IHT decision is one step in getting there.

Mark Potts provides some good IHT history, here

Couric's Palin Interviews Shows Ad Metrics Are a-SKU

kdoctor — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:20:32 -0700

So how do we judge the impact of Katie Couric’s string of interviews with Sarah Palin? Certainly, we can see the value of journalistic questioning – “hey, I don’t think you answered my question, sweetheart” – especially as compared to the often-anemic performance of journalists throughout the campaign.

The impact of Couric’s interviews may turn out to be a turning point in this campaign. If they do, the Couric Effect will be well noted politically and journalistically. What's missing is a good discussion of the money metrics behind such journalistic moments.

It wasn’t the broadcast airing of the Sarah Palin interviews that grabbed public attention – it was the viral, emailed-around-endlessly impact of them, cascading from Wasilla to West Palm Beach, drawing guffaws and incredulous stares on both Wall Street and Main Street. Long-time Knight Ridder editor Walker Lundy’s highest compliment about a front-page story was that it was a “Hey, Martha,” grabber, exclaimed across the breakfast table. Well, the Couric interviews were “Hey, Martha” moments, welcome relief from the pundit babble.

How, though, do we measure that effect?

Bill Carter's coverage in the New York Times showed the problem.

"Still, the “CBS Evening News” gained only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week — and it was actually down from the same week the year before. The newscast averaged just under 6 million viewers for the week, up from 5.44 million the previous week. A year ago Ms. Couric’s program drew about 6.2 million viewers. (CBS was also a distant third last week behind ABC, which won with 8.07 million viewers, and NBC, with 7.98 million.)
The CBS newscast didn’t even record its highest audience totals last Wednesday and Thursday, when the interviews were broadcast. Monday was the network’s best-rated night of the week."

So broadcast ratings – the traditional measure of value and the way advertising is sold – were down. As the Times pointed out, though, web views were off the charts:

"1.4 million times on YouTube, while the parody of the interview on “SNL” was streamed more than 4 million times on NBC.com, viewed in full more than 600,000 times on YouTube and in shorter clips many more hundreds of thousands of times".

My own quick arithmetic shows that the real Couric-Palin interviews (SNL aside) have now been viewed more than 8 million times, though only about 15% of those were on CBSNews.com. CBSNews.com comes up first on Truveo, but farther down the list on YouTube. (Of course, CBS exacerbates the problem; try finding the still-much-viewed interviews on the CBSNews.com home page; when will legacy media get their basic placement and promotion act together?) The rest have been put up on YouTube by various non-official "sources." You could call it piracy.

The days of this piracy may be limited. Look no further than another election video hit, the Tina Fey Saturday Night Live parodies of Sarah Palin. On these, NBC claims to have kept 99% of those views on its own site. How?

The ability of YouTube, Dailymotion, Veoh, and Microsoft's Soapbox to track unauthorized clips and automatically remove them is the game changer, according to [NBC General Counsel Rick] Cotton. Executives from some of the big entertainment companies have been critical in the past of YouTube's efforts to protect copyright material, but now they say YouTube's filtering and take-down systems have dramatically improved.

So let's look at the economics.

Let's estimate that CBS can charge about a $30 cost-per-thousand rate, a good average for a pre-roll on a nationally branded interview. If CBS had monetized each of about the 1.5 million viewers on its own site with a pre-roll (it runs spots before some news videos, but not each one), it would have earned about $45,000. If CBS could have monetized all 8 million or so views, that number would increase to $240,000.

Let's compare that to what to what CBS earns on air. We can estimate that Katie Couric's third-rated newscast charges about $40,000 for each of its 16 or so 30-second ads, or about $640,000 in total for each night’s show. (On average, 30-minute programs carry eight minutes of commercials.)

So if CBS News had adopted NBC's principles -- I'd bet it soon will -- we can compare that potential $240,000 somewhat to the $640,000. Big comparison caveat, of course. The Couric-Palin interviews, though, were a once-in-a-year coup. Everyday news videos will earn far less.

Print publishers are familiar with the dilemma: In broadcasting, as in publishing, each legacy viewer is still worth a lot more than a transient internet user. Still, the spread appears to be narrowing in some interesting ways — if legacy media can get better and better at monetizing their own expensive-to-produce content.

One last point about valuing “content” going forward.

Broadcasters are using to valuing content by show, or 30-second segment – not by attaching value to individual pieces of content, like the Couric-Palin interviews. Newspapers are using to valuing content by day or by edition, not by individual story. Those metrics made sense in the analog era.

Going forward, though, I think we’ll be in a universe of units. Some news stories, some video clips and some podcasts are much more valuable than others. A minute few move markets. Some we can’t help but share with our few thousand closest “Friends” on Facebook. Others just break the tedium of the day.

On the Internet, each unit of content can be demarcated as a separate item, with a unique identifier, a Content SKU, perhaps. Then as it traipses around the digital universe, often with ad attached, its monetary value will be a lot to easier to judge. Journalistic value? That’s more askew than ever.

It’s like we’re living in the aftermath of a journalistic Big Bang, still picking up the pieces and learning to label them.

Why Do the Undecided Get to Play a Decisive Role?

kdoctor — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:10:18 -0700

Okay, you've lived in this fair country of ours for the last couple of years. You're sufficiently interested in the affairs of the country that you are willing to venture into the halls of Nashville's Belmont University to participate. You've then probably heard something about the candidates, who have been running, it seems, for the better part of this decade. But, you're undecided?

That's right, undecided after more than 500 days of electioneering, of candidates exhausting the electorate, their own vocabularies and, sometimes, their patience. Polls show that something less than 10 percent of our fellow citizens are "undecided". Frankly, I worry about them. Are they irredeemable Myers-Briggs "Ps", able to see all sides.....until the sides ultimately pass away, enabling them to decide, in the immortal words of Harvey Cox, without deciding?

Okay, different, or slower, strokes for different folks. But, why, are these the folks who are somehow "representative" of us? It's the great undecided who have been selected to participate in tonight's Town Hall.

If I recall back to one of the (many) primary debates, it was the YouTube-sponsored ones that elicited some of the most interesting, out-of-the-box (not to mention out-of-the-Beltway questions). I note that the organizers have elicited questions from MySpace contributors. I hope they will be used.

Whoever asks the questions, we've seen so far, may not be the biggest question. The biggest question is who can ask a follow-up question? That's the lesson of this campaign so far, and why Katie Couric's interviews stand so far head and shoulders above the rote rigamarole we too often hear from the campaigns. Someone, the questioner -- or tonight, Tom Brokaw -- has got to say, as nicely or directly as they want: "You didn't answer the question. Here's a second chance."

That's what journalists are supposed to do, whenever they get the chance.

Reeling Into Self-Commoditization

kdoctor — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:18:00 -0700

Thumbing through the dead-tree edition of the Mercury News – quick exercise these days -- looking for weekend movies, I was struck with this thought. Forget commoditization; we’re now into the age of self-commoditization.

My movie tout sources used to be five. Joe Morgenstern is my first Friday read in the Wall Street Journal. He’s been wrong about one movie in four years ("Smart People"), and his writing is a sublime pleasure. I’ll check into MetaCritic or Rotten Tomatoes, just to see high scorers across the country, to make sure we’re not missing anything. Our son Joe is a film festivalgoer; we keep his emailed reports. Fresh Air’s roster of critics is worth a listen.

And, there used to be the Mercury News. Bruce Newman’s work was solid, his taste usually good and his take on the world consistent. Now as the Mercury News reels back to its early days, pre-Silicon Valley, rearranging beats as if musical chairs is being played in the newsroom, local critics have become an endangered species, reassigned to the amorphous “general assignment” and beyond.

Merc readers see Newman’s byline occasionally. Usually, though, it’s reviews-by-wire-committee. Newspapers have access to dozens of reviews from their wires, and too many of them, like the Merc, pick those reviews as if they were one-offs.

Take this weekend’s Merc reviews. Nine reviews. Seven bylines. Stephen Holden, New York Times. Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer. Christy Lemire, AP. Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel. Robert Philpott, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. John Anderson, Washington Post. Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times.

All have their talents, but I don’t read any of them frequently enough to trust their judgment.
Sure, I can buy the argument that imperiled newspapers can spend their money on better things than their own film reviewers, given that film is largely a national medium. But why not pick among the best reviewers --- the web makes that incredibly easy – and give their readers the consistent, known-over-time voice and judgment they want to know?

Instead, newspapers have taken yet another franchise – film reviewing – and turned it into a commodity.

I've noticed a similar phenomenon with restaurant reviews. Again, as readers, we want a consistent -- and experienced -- voice. Sheila Himmel, the Merc's longstanding critic, took one of the earlier buyouts. Now we see a succession of bylines, many committing the cardinal sin of sprinking the word "delicious" throughout their reviews -- a sure sign they have insufficient food vocabulary to serve. Again, another franchise going, going, gone, as Yelp, Urbanspoon and others have become more timely and useful.

Recall all we’ve said about news – especially national and international news – being commoditized, available anywhere and everywhere, with readers agnostic as to source or byline?

Well, newspapers are now doing that with film reviews – and much other wire content, I fear. Commoditization is one thing; self-commoditization is quite another. It’s time, as newspapers re-section, re-jigger and re-think, to keep the reader in mind. In reviews, that means consistency in voice, in judgment and in byline.

iReports Are Not "Journalism"

kdoctor — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:57:47 -0700

Good Morning Silicon Valley's John Murrell makes a simple, but vital, point in connecting the dots in the latest Steve Jobs health scare speculation. He describes how a CNN iReport got it wrong, and how the report sent the stock diving, before spawning another ill-informed web debate about "citizen journalism."

John's post is worth a read. Here's a key passage:

"We need, however, to get one thing clear: No matter how their sponsors spin it, iReport and its ilk are not citizen journalism. They are not journalism of any sort. They are unfiltered bulletin boards of rumor, gossip, speculation and unverified accounts, and they have a base-level credibility rating of zero. The practice of journalism has well established principles involving accuracy, thoroughness, fairness and accountability, and well established practices involving vetting stories through layers of trained skeptics. When journalists fail to meet these standards, the price is paid in credibility. A site like iReport, with its open invitation to "tell the stories we're not used to seeing," is an outlet for citizen participation, not a venue for citizen journalism, despite the CNN logo. All it takes to be a "reporter" is an anonymous log-in. We may never know if "johntw" was simply a misinformed naif with a hair-trigger for rumor, a greedy trader making a crude attempt to move the market, or a bored griefer getting his jollies by watching everyone scuttle about like startled cockroaches. Unless there's something the SEC decides to look into, he pays no price because, unlike a journalist, he has no concerns about credibility."

It is a booming, buzzing confusion out there. The web is the greatest facilitator of free and unfettered speech in history. After a more than a decade of the free-for-all, it is time to provide some clarity, within the industry and for viewers and readers. In this case, CNN's journalism, increasingly powerful as print competition cuts back its coverage, is put in an awkward place, as readers confuse the CNN brand, unclear what is professional journalism, what's edited CNN-approved journalism and what's at best poorly informed drivel. Reader contributions have a place in this brave new world, as long as they prominently labeled for what they are -- and aren't.

APT Launches. Now Let's Track the Yahoo Bump

kdoctor — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:50:02 -0700

Open your windows, and you can almost hear a muted "Yahoo!," wafting out of the windows of many newspaper buildings across the land this week. "Yahoo!," as in the long-awaited launch of the ready-for-newspaper-integration ad platform has begun. Though I have doubts that this is the cavalry coming finally to save the beleaguered newspaper industry, it clearly should mean some long-needed supplies -- in the form of advanced targeting technology -- are on the way. Kind of like replacing balky cannons with laser-sighted rifles.

Now renamed APT, after responding to Collective Media's contest of the AMP name, and introduced by Mad Man honcho Don Draper, or actually actor Jon Hamm in his civilian guise (great "Fresh Air" interview of Hamm and on the Mad Men ad show phenomenon, here), the new platform is launching at two pilot properties. The Media News-owned Mercury News and the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle go up first. Then other properties in those two chains join in. Wave 2's in 4Q of this year. Then, Wave 3 in 1Q and the waves keep rolling out into the deep end of 2009. Properties are added roughly in the order that their companies joined the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium.

Two big points about APT's launch stand out:

Now it is time to track and report the The Yahoo Bump. If you talk to company CEOs, or listen in on their (increasingly) occasional conference calls with financial analysts, you hear "Yahoo", "Yahoo", "Yahoo", coming up repeatedly in response to the questions of where growth is going to come from. Admittedly, most companies don't have many bright spots to report, so the First Coming of the Yahoo Ad Platform has been handy.

But now, the question: how big a bump will Yahoo provide? Overall online revenue increase will be one indication of the Yahoo Bump. Even better, it will be good to have more companies break out their online-only ad revenue, publicly, something few companies do. McClatchy recently said it had almost reached the 50% point, at which online-only revenue will surpass bundled (with print classified, largely) revenue. The New York Times also tells me that for NYTimes.com (not the company overall), online-only is a majority of digital revenue. Few other companies, public or private, have given an indication of those numbers. The reason they are important: Crossing over the magic 50% line is essential to creating a booming online business going forward, as challenged bundled advertising inevitably is dragged down by the vicissitudes of the print business.

2. The Yahoo Bump won't make up for lost print revenues. It's a nice pipedream to believe that one supercharged digital line going up will magically erase the pain and lost revenue of the limp print line going down. The numbers, though, just don't support it. The industry overall is still dependent on print for 92% of its revenues in the US, having failed to make a sufficient digital transformation. So as we've seen the turndown in revenues -- 2.4% by NAA's own reckoning in the first half of 2008 -- we see literally billions going out the door. That's about $3 billion for the first six months. The Yahoo Bump should be worth, well, tens of millions, properly executed. But that's millions against billions.Those are important millions, though, the building blocks of the new digital businesses

Beyond those two big points, here's what we know -- and will track -- about APT and the newspaper industry:

Early experience with Yahoo's BT system, done manually pre-platform, has been good. Houston (Hearst), Milwaukee (Journal Sentinel) and Atlanta (Cox) have all gone to town with it. They're selling audience, better targeting of it (300+ audience types will be targetable through the new system) and making some money. One has reached the million dollar mark already.
The spoils go to the trained. Public focus on APT has focused on the technology. Its BT base is the essential sauce. It is the massive sales re-training of sales managers and salesforces, though, that will separate the big winners from the also-rans, as APT rolls out. Training has never been a strong point of newspaper companies, so the Yahoo-related sales training -- conducted in Sunnyvale and newspaper HQs around the country -- probably constitutes the most major massive sales training the industry has ever seen. Some companies have hired up, moved out salespeople who can't cut it and got their long-time print reps (with long-standing local sales relationships) up to speed. Others face the persistent cultural problems of changing habits and sales pitches.The first step is the training; the next is acting when some results are below expectations.
That sales training is a boon to newspapers -- and Yahoo. By one calculation, when APT is fully deployed, almost 10,000 newspaper-related sales people across the country, selling off it. That's a lot of feet on the street. For Yahoo, it's a way to get a huge sales staff, without having to pay it or manage it directly. While technology's great and self-service is a major innovation, feet on the street are an essential third leg on the modern ad stool. Those sales people will be out selling local Yahoo inventory -- Yahoo users identified as local (whether in News, Local, Finance, Sports, etc.) -- and when they do, Yahoo's take is 50% of the sale.
The newspaper opportunity is two-fold: Yes, newspapers should be able to increase their rates on inventory on their own local sites, as BT's increased effectiveness pushes up clickthrough rates. Early indications are good, with some buys going out at 50%+ and more. Secondly, though, newspapers are now able to sell Yahoo inventory have greatly increased the amount of stuff can sell. The amount of increased inventory varies market by market, but ranges from 2 to 4 times the amount of inventory newspapers have available on their own sites. The 50% share to Yahoo is high, but if the rates are high, it's a good new revenue stream for newspapers.

The ability to sell Yahoo inventory may finally open up newspaper eyes to selling other companies' local inventory. As I've written, the Yahoo News Consortium is a good idea, but newspapers shouldn't place all their eggs in the Sunnyvale basket, especially as Microsoft pecks away at its edges.Why not take the same philosophy and offer feet-on-the-street local sales to Google, MSN, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, News Corp, ESPN and more. It's a massive undertaking, but whoever owns the best local salesforce -- abetted by technology -- stands to win in the new game.
The deal makes data, and data comparison, real in an unparalleled way. Newspaper companies' use of data, from Omniture on, is wildly uneven. Some companies, like Tribune Interactive, are ahead of the pack, really digging deep into data, managing networks and maximizing yield for their inventory. Others barely dig into the numbers. The newspaper/APT system will produce lots of data -- and allow some comparison across markets. Suddenly, under-performance will be more visible, and presumably, acted on more quickly.
Data comparison means companies will be better able to compare sales initiatives. Take Hearst and the New York Times Regional Group, both of whom are in the consortium, and are equity partners in QuadrantOne, guaranteeing about 10% of their inventory to the latter. They (and affiliate QuadrantOne members) will be able to compare Yahoo-related yield to the yield of QuadrantOne, which is powered by Collective Media.
And, finally, full circle back to content. APT targets audiences and some audiences pay off better than others, think per fi, travel, health, all those areas in which lots of money moves. As newspaper companies see what sells -- and then see how deficient they are in much of the content that high-rate audiences want -- they'll inevitably start producing or buying more niche content. Again, data will drive the business, and change the face of newspaper editorial decisions.

9 Questions on GooglyHoo: WAN, the EU, ACAP, Joe Nocera and the Consortium

kdoctor — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:51:49 -0700

You got your East Coast news. You got your West Coast news.

Something about the cratering US financial system going on out there on the isle of Manhattan, sources tell me. Meanwhile, here on the Left Coast, it's round 74 of Google and Yahoo. GooglyHoo is giving lots of people a case of the hives, an itching reaction in search of a rash.

The latest scratcher is the World Association of Newspapers. Today, it denounced the proposed Google/Yahoo search "cooperation" deal as anti-competitive. For good measure, its statement released lots of frustration about newspaper companies' diminished standing in this new world order in creation. In part, WAN points out that of the $48 billion in online advertising revenue that Google has collected since 2001, less than one-third of that has been shared with online publishers. Those big numbers are of course the ones that hurt, more than the cost-per-click impacts of GooglyHoo.

So nine quick questions on the boiling Google/Yahoo cauldron:

1. Who gave the pile-on signal? Now, according to Bloomberg, the EU is joining the fray, asking for a few Yahoo and Google documents (no, not Google Docs). That makes the Department of Justice, eleven states and the EU. No word yet from Bruce Sherman.

2. Why is the inquiry only about Google's search dominance? Yes, it controls 70%+ of the paid search market, but it's goals are clearly global ad dominance. It has made forays into print newspaper, print magazine and broadcast advertising. It bought YouTube, becoming a major video ad player. It bought DoubleClick, planning a major move into the display market. So on the sell side, it will be able to offer integrated packages of advertising -- a little search, a little display, a little pre-roll -- to ad buyers. While today, much of advertising buying is segmented by type, I've got no doubt that there's a Starship Enterprise console out there in the ad buyer's future, with audience targetable, using various types of advertising through a single interface. Without legal roadblocks, today, you'd have to bet that the console would be branded "Google." Shouldn't DOJ ask P & G, GM and Walmart (all companies that have criticized the Google/Yahoo proposed combo) about Google's wider ad role?

3. Didn't Joe Nocera nail it in his Saturday New York Times column, describing the experience of one company, Sourcetools, as it first won big and then lost big in the Google ad world? The AdSense/AdWords stuff makes so many heads hurt; telling the story (journalism!) through one company's experience is a great analgesic.

4. Does it help or hurt newspaper companies? That kind of depends on whether they are bigger buyers of AdWords or bigger displayers of AdSense. There's little doubt that the further monopolization of paid search will lead to higher pricing -- there's not sufficient alternative inventory to buy of significant scale. So if you are buying AdWords, they should cost more. But if you're a big AdSense partner, like the New York Times, your share of the take should increase as well. We don't know the particulars of each affiliate deal, but would hope that newspaper companies could get a fair packaged deal from Google. And yes, having Yahoo out there as somewhat of a paid search competitor, has made the chances of getting a better deal better.

5. Will it make a big difference to Newspaper Consortium members? Apparently not much. The Consortium members, almost half of US papers by circulation, take Yahoo search as part of their wider participation. For their participation, they get a contracted minimum payment, and sources say that earned ad payments haven't reached the minimums yet, generally. So, if GooglyHoo does increase pricing of ads, earned revenue should increase, but wouldn't result in actual new dollars falling into newspaper company pockets, at least for awhile.

6. The US Newspaper Association of America is a WAN member, but has been so far quiet on GooglyHoo. Is that because some US publishers think they'll be winners out of a GooglyHoo tie-up, some think they'll be losers, and some just don't know?

7. Isn't this more about the transfer of ad wealth than pricing? If you look at the big numbers, the US news industry was down $3 billion in the first half of 2008 compared to 2007. You can make the big-picture case that that most of that money is going to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a few other non-newspaper-owned places on the web. From my reading, it looks like newspaper companies used to pull in about 20% of the national ad pie in the US, pre-web, a percentage that of course is dropping annually. More significantly, newspaper company share of internet advertising is no more than 15%, and probably closer to 10%, if we were to untangle bundled ads. Yes, cpc pricing is at the base of this, but it's this larger transfer of wealth that's behind the current fuss.

8. How much of WAN's angst has been caused by Google's lukewarm response to ACAP? UK and European publishers have pushed ahead with their Automated Control Access Protocol, a program to better control and protect editorial content as it moves through the web ecosystem. In theory, publishers can express "terms and conditions" for use of their content by web bots. As with all such systems, they only work if they are near-universally used. And if the biggest search company in the world won't play, ACAP can't really catch on. Google keeps talking with ACAP, but won't commit.

9. How much of a competitor is Yahoo anyways? Jonathan Weber, who publishes the excellent New West site, makes a compelling case on Times Online today that Yahoo has long faded an as effective competitor.

More "9 Questions", here

Slate’s New SAGA Points to The Big Money

kdoctor — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:52:03 -0700

Ask Jim Ledbetter about his new site’s driving idea, and he’ll tell you that, in part, it really just comes down to four companies. It’s the “SAGA manifesto" approach to business journalism, a term Ledbetter, editor of Slate’s new The Big Money site came up with, together with Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg.

SAGA? Try Starbucks, Amazon, Google and Apple. It’s in part hyperbole, of course, but it makes the point: business news coverage should depend on your audience. Slate’s target audience for business coverage: well-educated readers in their 20s and 30s.

“The Big Money”, launching Monday, will go well beyond those four companies, of course, but the itch to niche should be well-scratched. It builds on a strong Slate audience, a group of well-informed, high-demo and skeptical readers, and thus tries to find a new pocket in the increasingly competitive world of online business news.

Online business advertising is a top performer, earning three to five times and more the rates of online general news. On a global level, it’s a battle of titans: News Corp (Dow Jones, Marketwatch, Barrons), Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, the New York Times, Financial Times, Time Warner (Fortune, CNN Money, Money), Business Week, Forbes. Not to forget the non-content-producing big portal money sites: Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, AOL Money, and MSN Money, Slate’s erstwhile cousin.

Tuesday, we'll also see the re-launch of WSJ.com and later this month, the New York Times adds more fuel to the business news arms race as it expands business and tech.

That’s a lot of money chasing a lot of money. The US Interactive Advertising Bureau shows business and finance as the second largest category for revenue, representing 15% ($3.15 billion) of online advertising in 2007. Further, according to Ad Age, financial advertisers are spending almost one in five (17%) of their advertising dollars online.

(As as I wrote a few months ago, it’s a gravy train disappearing on the horizon for local newspaper companies. Just as web online business news markets are exploding, business news staffs are being hacked dramatically. The logic: print business news sections are among the lowest read, so with newsprint cuts they’re losing section front status, and most, importantly, space. The resulting logic: Who needs business reporters? Incredibly short-sighted for the online future of the business.)

Slate is just looking for some spare change from that burgeoning market, and starts with Infiniti and American Express sponsorships. The launch is a smart move, though a small, measured one, as Ledbetter – an Industry Standard and CNN Money vet – puts the site on the map with just four staffers, and a growing list of contributors. The site’ s deputy editor is Elinor Shields, former managing editor of The Huffington Post. That staffing is modest given the goal Ledbetter told me he has for The Big Money: to be “a game changer for the sector."

The move makes sense for several reasons:

• Online news sites have got to go where the money is. Business and tech is one of the top verticals.

• The site focuses on comment and analysis, not breaking news. Slate can’t compete in breaking news, but it can bring its take on business news to a pre-qualified audience. Business writers Daniel Gross and Farhad Monjoo, late of Salon, already have a following. While they are staying in Slate’s Business and Technology section – I find that confusing – they’ve set a Slate take on business, a take that seems consistent with The Big Money’s approach. Though The Big Money has its own URL, it’ll be linked off Slate, and that’ll help pump traffic.

• The timing is right. No, not just because the economic meltdown has lots of meaning to everyone at this moment, but because the intense political season – a key driver of Slate readership – is drawing to a close. While the Presidential campaign has seemed interminable and newly Palin-hot, the end is near. An Obama win would mean getting on with the tough task of governing, hugely meaningful but less a magnet for readership. A McCain victory? Well, my sense is that the depression experienced by most Slate (and Huffington Post) readers will be so profound that readership will drop off, at least for a while. So Slate’s starting The Big Money, just after Arianna’s launched or expanded business, entertainment, living and soon-to-be-ubiquitous "green". Ledbetter estimates that about 10-15% of Slate’s current traffic is business-related, a number that should rise.

Further, the new product gives parent Washington Post Co. another way to experiment with business, an experiment that we could rejiggered for the mother site.

So what will we see in The Big Money, which borrows its winking name from the third book in John Dos Passos' USA series, once a dominant presence in America’s literary canon? Among the launch content:

• Blogs: Two big ones to start. One born of the SAGA conceit, Feeling Lucky, all things Google. It’ll be written by Chris Thompson. There’s a lot of room within that singular topic, and I’m curious to see how The Big Money finds a take worth reading, which Ledbetter describes as “how this company has transformed our lives.” The Daily Bread focuses on the food biz; we can expect a lot on Starbucks, Whole Foods, slow food and the like. It’ll be written by Dan Mitchell, who also blogs for BNET. (My initial post said Mitchell had left BNET, not true.)

• Social Responsible Investing Stock Screen: Want to invest but stay away from alcohol peddlers, polar cap destroyers, arms dealers and labor exploiters? This stock screen might be for you. “It’s less a piece of advocacy than an important area for lots of people,” says Ledbetter, who sees value beyond investing, for consumers, job searchers and journalists. Should be fun to play with.

• Today’s Business Press: This feature, already a part of Slate, moves into the new site, a blog-like roundup of the day’s big business stories.

• YouTube Brand Watch: This interactive feature asks readers to rate top online-only advertising. Ledbetter says the BrandWeeks and Ad Ages have long taken apart print ads. Brand Watch (no commercial affiliation with YouTube, says Ledbetter) heads for that opening.

Other than the social stock index, what you won’t see is one staple of every other business site – personal finance. Per Fi usually brings in lots of (now nervous) readers and advertisers intending to reach them.

"There's a kind of dishonesty behind it, [per fi]" says Ledbetter. "If everyone can get rich, they would."

I wish The Big Money luck. Smart people’s lack of business understanding drives me nuts. In addition, there is a certain sameness to most of the business coverage out there, and the web’s not supposed to be boring. I think it’s kind of a small start, though, especially in light of how the big boys are ramping up. With expansion, I’d like to see such additions as Slate V (an ONA finalist) for Business, with business video ripe for satire. Or Mark Fiore-like interactive cartoons. And lots more blogs, widening coverage areas within the site’s spirit. And, lastly, it wouldn’t be bad to take on such data-rich projects as the Credit Crisis, the Sub-Prime Meltdown or the decade’s Transfer of Wealth, stories just waiting to be told, with interactive web tools a great aid in storytelling.