Newspapers going kaboom

Hearst newspapers in San Fran and Seattle are poised to make make huge shifts to online-only. I am curious about how this will pan out. Read the article

Scripps Launches Web Site For Shuttered Newspaper

From Media Daily News - IN WHAT MAY BE A first for American newspapers, a new Web site is being launched to continue the reporting of an expired print newspaper--The Kentucky Post, closed by E.W. Scripps at the same time as its sister publication, The Cincinnati Post. In another twist, the new Web site--KYPost.com--will be hosted by WCPO-TV, a Scripps television property in Cincinnati, drawing heavily on the station's video news for online content. The ad-supported site will focus on breaking local news, traffic advisories, sports scores and schedules, and weather in northern Kentucky communities, including user-generated content. It will be directed by managing editor Kerry Duke, previously the project editor for the paper's print edition. | Read full article

A Recipe for Newspaper Survival in the Internet Age

From Slashdot - I've spent seven years working as a writer and editor for Slashdot's parent company. During this time I've been to at least a dozen mainstream journalists' and editors' conferences where the most-asked question was, "How do we adapt to the Internet?" You'd think, with all the smart people working for newspapers, that by now most of them would have figured out how to use the Internet effectively enough that it would produce a significant percentage of their profits. But they haven't. In this essay I will tell you why they've failed to adapt, and what they must do if they want to survive in a world where the Internet dominates the news business. | Read full article

ewmark Denies Craigslist Is Killing Newspapers

From Slashdot - Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld has an interview with Craig Newmark about the history of Craigslist and it's growth over the years (it's now expanding into foreign-language markets — it recently created several Spanish sites in Spanish cities). He also disputes the notion that Craigslist is responsible for dismantling newspapers' revenue models. Rather, he blames niche-classified sites like autotrader.com and Monster as well as newspapers' unrealistic profit expectations in the new media world: 'Newspapers are going after 10% to 30% profit margins for their businesses and that hurts them more than anything. A lot of things are happening on the Internet that never happened before because the Internet is a vehicle for everyone. The mass media is no longer only for the powerful, and that's a huge change for the entire newspaper and news industry." | Read full article

Wall St. Journal to End Fee for Web

From The New York Times - Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, said today that he intended to make access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free, trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue.

“We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million, having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth,” Mr. Murdoch said, referring to The Journal’s online readership.

The News Corporation has signed an agreement to acquire Dow Jones & Company, and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. A special shareholders meeting is scheduled for Dec. 13 in New York. | Read full article

Film Still Popular Among the Pros

From The New York Times - Photojournalist Chris Usher usually relies on digital technology. When he wants something special, though, he reaches for a film camera.

''I shoot just as much digital as the next guy out of necessity,'' Usher said. ''I use film probably a third of the time, on personal projects 100 percent of the time. There's a richness and a depth of field that becomes more prevalent when you're shooting film as opposed to digital. It has a tangible feel to it.''

Even as the digital revolution is transforming photography, more than two-thirds of professional photographers in a survey released Wednesday said they still prefer using film for certain tasks, praising its ability to add an almost organic quality to pictures. | Read full article

Online Ad Platform Launches For Community Newspapers

From Online Media Daily - WHEN IT COMES TO HYPER-LOCAL media, the undisputed champs are community newspapers. Now, three associations representing more than 500 community papers have signed on to roll out a new online display and classified ad platform, CoolerAds.com, developed by Kaesu, Inc., a three-year old firm based in Budd Lake, NJ. The Mid-Atlantic Community Newspaper Association, the Free Community Papers of New England and the Independent Free Papers of America still need to get their individual members on board, but Kaesu cofounder Joe Nicastro said that more than 50 papers are already participating. | Read full article

Free Newspapers Lead Way Online in Europe

From MediaShift - As big newspapers struggle with shifting business models, a new breed of free newspapers have have found their niche in many parts of the world. According to the Newspaper Innovation blog, 36 million free papers are distributed daily in 49 countries. As newspaper subscriptions lag, advertisers turn to these papers that have a captive audience of commuters desperate for a way to while away their time. | Read full article

Chicago Tribune's Triblocal.com Spawns New Print Papers

From Online Media Daily - IN A REVERSAL OF THE hyper-local formula, which last month saw Washington Post Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) start rolling out narrowly targeted news sites in communities already served by regional print editions of the daily WP, the Chicago Tribune on Thursday launched two weekly print editions spawned by its four-month-old venture in hyper-local citizen journalism, triblocal.com.

The new papers, covering Chicago's West and Southwest suburbs, include photos, stories and other contents posted by readers on the Web site, as well as content from Triblocal's own editorial staff. Published by the Tribune's Chicagoland Publishing Company subsidiary, the papers will be distributed with more than 23,000 copies of each Thursday's Tribune in the communities of Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, Elburn, Maple Park, Orland Park, Orland Hills, Tinley Park and Homer Glen in the Southwest suburbs. | Read full article

Hearst-Argyle Joins Online High School Sports Players

Editor's Note: This is reminiscent of the LJWorld.com amateur sport efforts of several years ago...

From Online Media Daily - AMERICA SEEMS TO LOVE HIGH school sports, and high school students certainly love the Internet--so it's no wonder that high school sports Web sites and social networks are a hot item in these back-to-school days.

The latest entrant in the category, High School Playbook, comes courtesy of Hearst-Argyle Television, which has launched the site in seven of its 26 television station markets. The seven stations are accessible through the main Web site at www.highschoolplayback.com, and are also providing High School Playbook features through dedicated YouTube channels. | Read full story

Hearst Uses Startup Mentality in Revamp of Magazine Sites

From MediaShift - Hearst Corporation has a long and storied history as a media conglomerate, starting from the days of old-school media baron William Randolph Hearst and his twin inventions of the penny press and sensational journalism, all the way through its current form as a diversified private media company.

In the online arena, it has been more successful as an investor in Internet startups through Hearst Interactive Media (investments include iVillage, Brightcove, Sling Media, and XM Satellite Radio) than through websites related to its own magazines, newspapers or broadcast outlets. For a long time, Hearst’s magazine sites were outsourced completely through iVillage.

But once iVillage was sold to NBC Universal in May 2006, Hearst decided to invest more heavily in its Internet presence, and created a new division, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, dedicated to in-house website production and integration. While this was a late date to start running magazine adjunct websites, long a staple at other publishers, Hearst had the advantage of creating an Internet startup mentality within a big corporation, with little of the legacy systems of a Web 1.0 operation. In the past year, the division has hired more than 100 people (half of whom are in technical or production jobs), and has launched revamped sites for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Seventeen. | Read full article

Paint-By-Numbers: Why Newspapers Are Screwed

From Silicon Alley Insider - It's easy to say that the New York Times and other newspaper companies are screwed, but sometimes it helps to actually run the numbers. Do you know why they're screwed? It's actually not the cost of paper, ink, trucks, printing plants, and other physical distribution expenses. Rather, it's the cost of content creation.

Senior New York Times reporters believe they are underpaid, and, relative to other highly educated folks at the peak of their professions, they sure are. But relative to the online revenue they generate, those talented reporters, columnists, editors, and researchers actually cost a fortune.

Newspaper content generates way more revenue in the physical world than it does online, because offline it can be packaged with classifieds and display ads and actually sold. In the online world, meanwhile, it has to be given away, and because classified ads are now run by classified sites and newspaper sites are only one of dozens of places where people get news, the advertising opportunity is comparatively tiny. | Read full article

AOL: A Mistake to Go Free? (NYT and DJ Take Note)

From Internet Outsider - With everyone speculating about what will happen when TimesSelect (NYT) and Wall Street Journal Online (DJ) go free, it makes sense to check in on the last major wall-removal story: Time Warner's (TWX) AOL. Was AOL's move a good one? Or should it have hung on and watched its subscriber base slowly dribble away?

Answer: It was a good move. AOL certainly sacrificed some near-term cash flow, but, critically, it has retained (or replaced) the lost subscribers in the form of unique users. If AOL hadn't made it's email available for free, meanwhile, it likely would have lost most of these subs forever. Also, even as AOL's subscription revenue plummeted, the company has preserved its cash flow, which is far more important.

What hasn't happened, which would have been nice, is that unique users and pageviews haven't swelled as the rest of the world learned that AOL is now free. This said, they also haven't collapsed, which was a distinct possibility. | Read full article

Study: Online Local Search Booming, But Print Still Strong

From Online Media Daily - TMP DIRECTIONAL MARKETING, A LOCAL search and yellow pages agency, releasing results of a comScore-conducted study, said a third (33%) of consumers still consider print Yellow Pages to be their primary source of local business information -- and more than 90% of all searchers believe print directories are "still a valuable source for shopping information."

Still, a majority of users (60%) go to the Web first for their local searches--with 30% of all users tapping general search engines like Yahoo or Google, 17% choosing Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), and 13% local search sites like Citysearch. | Read full article

Online Newspaper Readers a "Sophisticated Audience"

From Research Brief - According to the Newspaper Association of America, more than 59 million people (37.3 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites during the second quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 7.7 percent increase over the same period a year ago,.

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated nearly 2.7 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to slightly more than 2.5 billion during the same period last year. And, more than 60 million people visited newspaper Web sites during May 2007 that month, more than any month on record.

NAA President and CEO, John F. Sturm, said "... readers are visiting newspaper Web sites in record numbers for in-depth news and information as well as hyper-local information... These sites ... (offer) thought-provoking blogs to complement the journalistic excellence that makes newspapers a community's most trusted resource." | Read full article

Google to Expand Program, Giving Newspapers a Lift

From The New York Times - NEWSPAPERS reeling from major losses of advertising revenue to the Internet are getting a lift from the company that helped lure advertisers away: Google.

Google plans to announce today a significant expansion of its Print Ads program, in which advertisers purchase ads in newspapers through the Web. The company introduced a limited test program last November in which 50 newspapers sold ads to 100 selected advertisers through Google’s computer system.

But now, more than 225 newspapers are participating, and hundreds of thousands of Google advertisers on the company’s main advertising system, AdWords, are eligible to buy ads from those papers. | Read full article

Lowdown on Loudoun: Hyper-Local For Upper Crusts

From Online Media Daily - LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA IS PROBABLY best-known in the Internet world as the home of AOL. As of Monday, it is also the home of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive's "experiment" in hyper-local Web publishing--LoudounExtra.com.

Caroline Little, WPNI CEO and publisher, said that other DC communities for potential future hyper-local sites have yet to be determined, but that Loudoun was "a good place to start," since "it's a county with a real local identity" and "very fast-growing." ...

One of the print paper's long-time advertisers, DC-area retailer Long Windows, has come on board as the launch sponsor for LoudounExtra.com. The window replacement company has "bought out most of the site for several months," noted Little. | Read full article