Internet commenting is about to get even worse

What could be worse than flame wars and trolls?

Ohh, nothing major ....

Other than ...

Leading online content management company Disqus announcing it will be selling advertorial content into comments sections. I've already Tweeted to Disqus that it should stand by for flame wars directed at said advertorial and that I support the idea of said flame wars.

If you're a newspaper, or other website, there's a simpler solution, if you've not already done it.

It's called a ...

PAYWALL!

If you're not a newspaper, but call yourself a "media company" (used loosely?) or worse, a "content provider," then prove you believe that what you write about is of value enough to have people subscribe and ...

PAYWALL IT!

If not, stand by for deliberate flaming of you, of Disqus and of advertisers whose content is in the advertorial. Perhaps flaming of all three of you at once.

Ugh.

I take that back; I know what could be even worse.

Facebook selling advertorial into comments on our personal feeds.

Is it time for micropayment news paywalls?

Ken Doctor's piece on "superstar" journalists, stimulated by David Pogue leaving the New York Times for Yahoo (and coming off as a bit of a douche, per what Doctor assembled), following on the heels of Nate Silver also moving on, has restimulated my thinking here.

Per this old blog post, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has been bullish on the use of micropayments. And also per that post, at that time, PayPal made micropayments easier, so I know newspapers can do that, too.

Of course, this leads to "superstar" journalists, newspapers wanting more for them, but ... the worries of both newspapers and said journalists finding out they're not so well-read as thought.

I mean, that's part of what killed the New York Times' original paywall idea, Times Select. It was intended to primarily charge for columnists, who might soon find out they weren't worth what they thought they were.

But, why not do micropayments?

People set up RSS feeds for a particular person's blog; why not a particular person's news writing?

Per the Times Select debacle, the key issue, then, is setting the proper price point.

Of course, Pogue is headed to paywall-free Yahoo. And, being overpaid by Yahoo. Even if he's the core of a larger new tech section, it's an overpay. Per this story, Salon and Slate continue to lose money, and Huff Post pulled a reverse AOL by getting AOL to buy it. (Bezos took a pass on buying Slate as part of the WaPost takeover.)

Notice a commonlity? None of those folks listed after Yahoo have paywalls, either.

And, as much of a name as Glenn Greenwald is, Pierre Omidyar will likely be pounding monetary sand down a rat hole with him, too.

I mean, if you're investing in star-centered journalism, as we see online ad rates sink — call it clipping the coinage of the digital dimes, and the mobile nickels staying just that — why wouldn't you look at a micropayment system? You could set the bar low, and you could also mix it with a meter.

Yahoo could let you read David Pogue free three times a month, then charge 10 cents a pop for the next five, then 15 cents for the next five after that.

#Sully - Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, paywalls, tip jars, blogs (updated)

I'm going to tie all aspects of that headline together in just a minute. And, I've updated it to focus more on why you shouldn't shell out if you're a liberal, beyond the original angle, which was primarily about Gnu Media touting of Andrew Sullivan's "Brave New Move."

I'll start by saying this post is focused on Andrew Sullivan, and specifically on the conservative contrarian's announcement that he is leaving the Daily Beast, and striking out on his own — while asking readers for $20/yr subscriptions to the independent site, so he can make it ad-free.

Several thoughts.

First, Sully IS conservative of some sort, or something similar. Ignore his bromance with President Obama and remember he's British. His conservativism is not of an American stripe, whether Religious Right social conservativism or neoconservative warmongering (though he did do that in the past, see below), though he's not chided Obama as much as he could for his own warmongering. Of course, that's because, as he admits, Sully was originally FOR the invasion of Iraq. Hot and heavy cheerleader for it Another reason real liberals shouldn't like him that much.

Anyway, Sully's about order, preserving the state of things, and similar, to the degree that he's still a British-type conservative and not just a contrarian. (Or, he's some kind of libertarian; see below.) Picture one of those 19th-century British manor conservatives, an anti-egalitarian racialist of some sort. That's what you should think of, while then adding two scoops of American ice cream on top -- one of libertarianism (compatible with that British conservativism) and one of neoconservative warmongering -- also compatible with that British conservativism, all in the name of enlightening the darker-skinned type. (Chris Hitchens had one foot in this same world.)

Anyway, back to Sully's "Brave New World" and its Gnu Media angle for a minute.

So, why go ad free? Why not just do like Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo and other A-list bloggers and set up a tip jar system, which would make the Jay Rosens of the Gnu Media world love you more anyway?

Well, Derek Thompson at The Atlantic speculates that, on his own, Sully's contrarian enough he won't draw that many A-list advertisers, so making the pitch that his blog will go ad-free for enough subscribers turns a possible negative into a positive. It also reduced a bit of sales overhead.

Now, paying $20/yr for Sully?

I wouldn't do it. As I said, he's still some type of conservative, and liberal types who have a bromance with him because of his bromance with Obama are probably making statements aboutboth themselves and Obama. (Enough of them, surely neoliberals more than true liberals, along with Sully-type conservatives, have a bromance to the tune of $400K so far, reportedly, on Jan. 11.)

Anyway, per the picture above, and it's background (more on that below) we've got more ideas about what an independent Sully might be like.

So, to tie Jay Rosen back in... a commenter at his blog post talking about Sully's move said that he might pay the freight to see Sully unbound.

To which, I replied:

That said, Aaron, wasn’t Sully semi-unbound when he edited TNR?

Oh, yeah – an entire issue singing the praises of “The Bell Curve.”

See, Aaron, you can now save your $20.

Hence, my use of my Photoshopping from a few years back.

Further proof that Sully is a conservative of some sort? Or better yet, some sort of British-American libertarian fusion? Folks like Matt Welch of Reason commenting on that same thread. Other than gay rights, which he approaches from a libertarian angle, I challenge people to point out one authentically liberal stance of Andrew Sullivan.

Let's tie this back to Gnu Media, though. Sully admits he didn't get to the staffing size he did without partnering with a for-profit media company, first Time, then The Atlantic, then Daily Beast.

If his staffing level, etc., requires $900K and he's serious about going ad-free, and his "paywall" is going to be a New York Times one and not a Wall Street Journal one, that means he needs 450K people a year to pony up.

He may get it, but I won't hold my breath. I definitely wouldn't hold on sustaining that number.

This, then, leads to another question. Whether it's Sullivan's metered paywall or Josh Marshall's tip jars and fund drives, shouldn't you, if you are a contributor or subscriber, get some financial transparency? Shouldn't you ask for it, if you haven't been?

How much does Sully plan on paying himself? Or, since he's been independent a few years, how much does Marshall currently pay himself?

At your traditional newspaper, if it's part of a publicly traded company, much of that information, at least for executives, is publicly available. Others of it, via estimates, is available by occupational review websites, etc.

Another reason I wouldn't pay for Sully? A fair amount of what he does is nothing more than one sentence plus a link micro-mini-blogging, like Duncan Black, aka Atrios, and his Eschaton blog, which I stopped reading long ago for such reasons. A fair amount of the remainder is mini-blogging of just three grafs, maybe four. On average, I'd venture that at most 25 percent, possibly less, is in-depth blogging. And, most of that, even, is opinion. In that sense, he and his staff aren't Josh Marshall, with some degree of reporting as well as opinion.

Anyway, should this move fail, per my above comment, I would not at all be surprised to see him join Nat Hentoff at Reason.

Update, Jan. 11: Hell, I was just touching the edges on Sully as alleged journalist. Mark Ames really has the goods on him, from his gutting Clinton's attempt at national health care, to mau-mauing against discussion of Reagan's October surprise and more.

MUCH more. See details below the fold.

Public will pay for media content

A new survey says the public will pay for media content — if the need/reason is adequately explained.

"When participants were provided with a compelling justification for the paywall -- that The New York Times was likely to go bankrupt without it -- their support and willingness to pay increased," Cook and Attari concluded.

Again, take that Jay Rosen Jeff Jarvis Clay Shirky and other new media fluffers who tout "no paywalls" for selfish reasons:.

That said, the survey authors note that many people will believe the “information wants to be  free” quote out of context and misinterpreted means they should get newspaper stories for free:

Those publishers should also consider this cautionary note: a majority of The New York Times readers surveyed by Cook and Attari said they wouldn't pay for content and made good on their threat, often by switching to free providers. "The decline reported in our study is echoed in the decrease of over 3.3 million unique website visitors reported in The New York Times marketing materials between the spring of 2011 and 2012," Cook and Attari wrote.

Of course, with more and more papers adopting paywalls, that option is shrinking. The key will be AP (and Reuters and AFP) continuing to up their rates they charge news aggregators.

Back to the main thrust of the story.

Newspapers need to tell a compelling story about the need for paywalls, based on declines in ad revenue, cost of news production and other issues. That may include at least partially laying open the financial books, and explaining that some types of ad revenue, like classifieds and real estate, may never fully bounce back.

At the same time, this is an opportunity for a newspaper to increase its “community” angle, by inviting the community to see and understand more of the business model of its newspaper.

Light at end of tunnel for papers, and more new ideas for smart paywalls

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Earlier this week, I blogged about how Matthew Ingram at GigaOm appears to have a Jeff Jarvis/Clay Shirky/Jay Rosen paywall-hating burr up his ass.

Well, per Ken Doctor at Nieman Labs, that’s a good description, because Ingram, a blind follower of the Three Musketeers of Gnu Journalism (deliberately ripped off, with same snarky intent, from Gnu Atheism) details several specific ways in which he and they are wrong.

First, especially at non-daily papers, the light is not only apparently at the end of the tunnel, but profits may actually pick up next year. As a result of that, newspaper stock prices (albeit from in-the-toilet lows) are soaring.

And, yes, even some non-dailies have paywalls. The light for dailies, definitely for smaller ones, and possibly for mid-sized ones, is at least probably getting near to a flattening out point.

Second, and directly related, Doctor details the economics of paywalls. There’s a variety of ways to skin the paywall cat. Most new adopters are going with fewer freebie reads than, say, the New York Times, and also a lot less leakiness. That includes not just small companies but as big a boy as Gannett. Doctor says opt-out provisions, in which hardcopy subscribers are automatically charged at least a nominal fee for digital access, are also growing. (I hate opt-out provisions in general, including this one, but … the idea is, nonetheless, growing.)

Third, the truth is what the Three Musketeers and hangers-on won’t tell you: paywalls are growing internationally, too.

But, even there, Doctor starts with the US side of the equation:

By the end of this year, figure that about 20 percent of the U.S.’s 1,400-plus dailies will be charging for digital access. Gannett’s February announcement that it’s going paywall at all its 80 newspapers galvanized attention; when the third largest U.S. newspaper site, the Los Angeles Times, went paid (in March), more nodding was seen in publishers’ suites.

But, that’s his takeoff point to note that (as of March) more than a dozen European dailies also had paywalls.

That, then, leads to the more significant issue. Doctor notes most paywalls are neither flaming successes nor flaming failures. So, why?

So if charging for digital access — a too long phrase, but one that’s most accurate than paywall — is neither a panacea nor a tombstone on the way to the inevitable, what is it? It’s a building block, and it’s a way to re-envision the business.

And, that’s a good point. 

Isn’t that type of creative thinking and re-envisioning what the Three Musketeers laud?

Short answer? Yes, as long as it’s done for free online.

That’s because they deliberately practice a selective quoting of only one of two sentences from Stewart Brand’s famous “Information wants to be free” comment:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

Note carefully that first sentence.

Then, also per Wiki, and partially reflected on its original link, there’s the question about whether Brand meant free in terms of cost, or free in terms of access.

That, then, gets back to many critics of the Three Musketeers noting that two (Jarvis and Rosen) are paid academics, and at public, taxpayer-funded universities, no less, and therefore can easily afford to tell newspapers to let people be online leeches. Until 2010, Shirky was at the public Hunter University, so ditto on him. Let’s also not forget Shirky’s consulting for Libya’s former strongman Moammar Gadhafi, and his naivete about how autocrats could use social media to their own ends when queried about that consulting.

Update, Feb. 22, 2013: Massimo Pigliucci weighs in well on this issue. 

(Brand himself claims he's blamed for a lot of tech-neoliberalism stuff that is not his fault. The rest of that interview indicates he's lying to himself if he really believes that and lying to the rest of us anyway.)

Smarter ideas for newspaper paywalls

Matthew Ingram at GigaOm appears to have a Jeff Jarvis/Clay Shirky/Jay Rosen paywall-hating burr up his ass.

But, as I told him, his anti-paywall complaint is too narrowly focused.

One could charge a minimal general rate, plus have a freemium on top of that. Or have a metered paywall, that works like cell phones, with a minimal rate to read anything, rather than the NYT (which is so leaky as to not have a paywall) and start the meter at 0, not 10, 20 or whatever, and then ramp up rates from there. Or to be more creative, to charge more for looking at videos and stuff, take a page directly from cell phones and charge by the time spent on a page. I’m assuming that that would be easy for newspaper IT staffs to set up.

Beyond that, the real problem, of course, is that the Associated Press, largely under the leadership of the idiotic Dean Singleton, didn’t have a clue about the Internet and undercharged news aggregators for running AP material.

Since this isn’t Matt’s first anti-paywall post, in a separate comment, I said:

What’s obvious is that you, like Shirky, Rosen and other new media “gurus,” simply hate paywalls.

As for Jeff Jarvis? My left butt cheek knows more. Serious(ly), as for any specific ideas (h)e discusses, I’d Google Evgeny Morozov to see if he has some sarcastic takedown, first.

And, that’s the bottom line.

Beyond that, this is a “framing issue.” A metered paywall, a freemium wall, or anything other than a straight paywall can always be reverse-framed as a “membership” program. Hell, you can even give away PBS/NPR-type tchotchkes, if you want.

Update: Columbia Journalism Review totally agrees with me.

Mourning #NOLA, demanding paywalls

For those who haven't heard, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which survived Hurricane Katrina, and famously websiting at NOLA.com, is cutting back to just three days a week of print publication.

(Three other Newhouse papers, in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile, Ala., are doing the same.)

Sure, you’ll save a bunch of money in print costs, and on fired copy editors and graphic artists, but, speaking of graphic artists, you’re going to lose a boatload on hardcopy ads.

And, not just local ROP, but national, and national inserts. I don''t care if Newhouse is doing this based on having done it in Ann Arbor, Mich. That is a small city in Detroit's shadow. New Orleans (and Birmingham) are actual major metro areas. If you're halfway giving up on your print paper, why should a struggling retailer, say, a JCPenney, continue to insert or run ROP with you?)

And, speaking of business-side issues, Newhouse is doing this while letting the online version stay 100-percent free.

And, that’s the problem. Where’s the paywall?

That's why David Simon (of "The Wire") is right. Where's the paywall? 


But, a real paywall is needed. Not a fake one, like the New York Times one that can be busted with a Javascript workaround. (Simon was wrong to say it has a real paywall.) Nor a semi-fake like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which gives you a full 20 free articles then charges just 99 cents a week after that.

And, frankly, it's kind of sad that I and others like me know more about the business side of newspapers than do their owners, whether they're publicly traded or family concerns. It's also sad that too many of these owners are listening to the likes of Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky on opposing paywalls and other things.

I work in the fifth-worst job/career, part 3 - #advertising revenue

Last week, I blogged about the fact that a certain careers website said that journalism was the first worst job/career field right now, noting that, from the inside, that was no surprise.

Well, I'm probably going to do a few follow-up posts, looking at more specific issues.


Today, I throw out more specific ideas about advertising and circulation/paywall issues.

First, although paywalls aren't the answer, they're part of the answer. Period.

Newspapers are reporting more of their ad dollars are coming from the web, but that's because hardcopy ad dollars continue to sink, even as the country partway comes out of the recession. Newspapers need to get honest with themselves and permanently write off half of their hardcopy losses since 2007. And, that may be conservative.

Until newspapers do this, and accept this, they're not going to be able to better address the future, not just at individual newspaper levels, but at corporate levels.

As for the current disparity between traditional web ad rates and mobile-specific ad rates, reportedly as high as 5-1? Within in a decade, that difference will be no greater than 2-1, driven primarily by greater use of mobile devices, greater competition for eyeballs, etc.

Remember how much higher traditional web ad rates were a decade ago? The same things drove them down as will drive down mobile rates. More mobile-specific content, portals, and sites increases openings for ads and competition for eyeballs gets more scattered. Ergo, rates go down.

So, looking ahead to the future, newspapers need to be honest about that, too.

The Net, in its various delivery forms, has just the opposite problem as old newspaper media. You got plenty of room for editorial content, of course, but, because of ephemeral attention in many cases, there's limited "space" for ads. Plus, add in ad-block software, etc., and web rates plummeted.

I have no doubt that for both Android and iOS for Apple, somebody will invent the equivalent of ad-block programs, too. It's going to happen. Somehow. Jailbreaking of specific apps as well as mobile operationg systems will be involved, in all likelihood. But, it will happen.

The even bigger thing is that corporate chains have probably not even fully digested that 25 percent profit margins, along with hardcopy ad riches, are gone for good. I think many of them think that the much lower overhead for the Net will alleviate that. But, if Net dollars are dropping, or flat, still, and mobile dollars, while rising, are still smaller potatoes yet, that's not a "replacement." Plus, per part two of this series, as readers often demand fancier content, the overhead differential probably isn't quite so great as these owners imagine or hope.

So, back to those profit margins. Owners, and investors, need to digest that the day of 20 percent margins, even, for even the biggest dailies, are gone. Even with two more years of economic recovery, they need to get comfortable with 15 percent as "good." And, therefore, to stop laying off ever more editorial staff, cutting content, etc., while rewarding the CEOs who do that.

Think of this as the dot-com boom in reverse. The worst of the dot-com financial bust for papers is over. BUT ... not all of it is over. AND ... not all the lessons have been learned.

On circulation? A dollar is as high as even big metros outside the two coasts (and I really mean coastal California, on one hand, and the Boston-DC axis on the other) can go for several years. Ditto for the $3 mark on Sundays. That's your ceiling.

I'm glad to see a major metro like the Dallas Morning News has therefore finally gotten into the paywall spirit. I don't currently live in Dallas, so I wouldn't pay, and I don't know how much it costs. But, it was needed. That's even as, here in central Texas, the Austin American-Statesman, still free online, bleeds even more.

Of course, the AP, and now, Reuters with a largely expanded American presence, and somewhat AFP, have to be in the mix. Not all three can jointly deal with rates for news aggregators without explicit Congressional antitrust waivers, of course. But, individual papers can only do so much.

Of course, AP's long-term chairman of the board, Dean Singleton, was as stupid about this issue with AP as he ultimately was with the finances of MediaNews, running it into bankruptcy.

And, why didn't a court impose a five-year hiatus on him buying newspapers after getting out of Chapter 11? That could be a blog post by itself.

What went wrong at the Mercury News?

An early online innovator. Great reporting by the likes of Gary Webb (before the Merc threw him under the bus). A booming market. Mediocre papers in San Francisco.

So, what went wrong? That's the theme of this in-depth piece by Columbia Journalism Review. (H/t to my friend Leo Lincourt.)

My reaction? It nails the main points of what went wrong not just at the Merc, but to some degree, the industry in general:

First, I didn't realize that the Merc had, at the start, "paywalled" its website, only to abandon it later. Related to that, as Leo notes, is its failure to find "niche" reporting worthy of being paywalled, or to realize what it had in Silicon Valley. Especially after Steve Jobs' return to Apple, the Merc, even with national media "discovering" Silicon Valley, could have had the angle on premium, paywalled content. The WSJ is partially paywalled even with the New York Times in its backyard, after all.

Second, specific to the Merc, Dean Singleton is an idiot, and certainly had a hand in the Merc's demise, as he has in the AP focusing first on news aggregators and many other things that have hurt the industry. The story doesn't at all look at him, but it's too bad it didn't. (That said, Deano's injuriousness to the industry, while being Example No. 1 of not "getting" the online newspaper world, could make a separate story of equal length all by itself.

Third, per many other observers, we see the problems with newspapers trading on the NYSE and focusing on short-term profits. The stock-zooming 1990s has had its payback, with newspapers doubling down on new purchases while ignoring the destructiveness of the Net:

(General manager Dan) Finnigan explained that either they were going to cannibalize their own businesses or someone else would. 

This was at a meeting of Knight-Ridder publishers, where he tried to get them on board with investing in ...

CareerBuilder! (K-R/The Merc also took a whiff at buying into eBay.)

This was even as people were warning that newspapers should accept lower profit margins and maybe even initial losses for investments in some new technology, websites, etc.

In that way, newspapers (those publicly traded and especially those, like Knight-Ridder but unlike the NYT, with one-level stock structure) are emblematic of what's wrong with hypercapitalist America today.

That said, one commenter there, who holds up the nonprofit Poynter Institute, with its ownership of the St. Petersberg Times as a model? Dunno about Poynter or that paper, but, in the UK the Stott Foundation has admitted that, over the past several years, it's hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars/pounds on The Guardian's highly touted but non-paywalled website.

The St. Pete Times also has no paywall, which leads me to say, nonprofit ownership guarantees nothing in the modern newspaper industry, especially if you have a stupid business model.

The "cannibalization" is also another argument for paywalls. Especially at smaller, more regional papers, paywalls not only are a way to make more money off of online operations, but keep people from leaving hardcopy and its ads, which are still the largest revenue producer.

Related to that, how many industries bemoan making "only" a 9 percent profit? As noted, the Merc's margin had fallen to 9 percent by 2006. Even today, if you throw out debt service (mainly from the buying-up binges of 1995-2005) papers are still profitable; just not at 20-plus percent.

In the story, Tony Ridder comes off as a bean-counter, but one who honestly was doing so within "old newspaper" mentality.

One complaint, though. The story throws Gary Webb and his well-known reporting on the Nicaraguan Contras-cocaine-CIA connection kind of, or more than kind of, under the bus, at least by implication. On the purely editorial side, I'd have to agree with one commenter that slicing and dicing Webb was far more egregious than any of the business/editorial/Internet inter-departmental screw-ups.

Anyway, give the whole thing a read.

Five myths about news media, especially online

If you asked me to trust Clay Shirky or Tom Rosenthiel more on discussing the future of news media, I know my answer, in a flash, would be Rosenthiel. He's been doing this longer than Shirky, in a more "dedicated" fashion, and more on the ground.

Plus, unlike Shirky, Jeff Jarvis and similar, he's not a mindless booster of the Internet.

That said, here's a short take on his five myths about the news media. They include seeing the need for paywalls, because unlike Shirky et al, Rosenthiel actually is looking at media business/financial models, and, also, he recognizes that ads alone just won't pay the freight.

That said, here they are:

1. The traditional news media are losing their audience.
The 25 most popular news Web sites in the United States, for instance, all but two are “legacy” media sources, such as the New York Times or CNN, or aggregators of traditional media, such as Yahoo or Google News. ... The crisis facing traditional media is about revenue, not audience. And in that crisis, newspapers have been hardest hit: Ad revenue for U.S. newspapers fell 48 percent from 2006 to 2010.

2. Online news will be fine as soon as the advertising revenue catches up.
Such hopes are misplaced. In 2010, Web advertising in the United States surpassed print advertising for the first time, reaching $26 billion. But only a small fraction of that, perhaps less than a fifth, went to news organizations.

3. Content will always be king.
The syllogism that helped journalism prosper in the 20th century was simple: Produce the journalism (or “content”) that people want, and you will succeed. But that may no longer be enough.

The key to media in the 21st century may be who has the most knowledge of audience behavior, not who produces the most popular content.

4. Newspapers around the world are on the decline.
Actually, print circulation worldwide was up more than 5 percent in the past five years, not down, and the number of newspapers is growing. In general, print media are thriving in the developing world and suffering in rich nations.

By and large, American newspapers are suffering the most. Roughly 75 percent of their revenue comes from advertising, vs. 30 percent or 40 percent in many other countries, where papers live and die by circulation. That means the collapse of advertising is not hitting papers elsewhere as hard as it is hitting them here. It also suggests that the need to charge for online access may be even more important abroad.

5. The solution is to focus on local news.
Going “hyperlocal” was the war cry of Wall Street to the news industry five years ago. The reasoning was simple: In the Internet age, when users can access content from anywhere, it didn’t make sense for local operations to compete with the big national news providers.

The problem is that hyperlocal content, by definition, has limited appeal. To amass an audience large enough to generate significant ad revenue, you have to produce a large volume of content from different places, and that is expensive. On top of that, many hyperlocal advertisers are not yet online, limiting the ad dollars.

Now we are entering what might be called Hyperlocal 2.0, and the market is still up for grabs. Google, which garners two-thirds of all search advertising dollars nationally, doesn’t exert similar control over local advertising. Locally, display ads — all those banners and pop-ups — are a bigger share of the market than search ads.

But how to produce local content remains a mystery. ... So far, no one has really cracked the code for producing profitable local news online.

Nos 2 and 5 are pretty much direct blasts at Shirky. And I agree on both. No. 3 is the troublesome one, to a news idealist. That said, much of what the MSM pumped out in the past was news-lite anyway.

Overall, thoughk this is a good overview.

Five myths about news media, especially online

If you asked me to trust Clay Shirky or Tom Rosenthiel more on discussing the future of news media, I know my answer, in a flash, would be Rosenthiel. He's been doing this longer than Shirky, in a more "dedicated" fashion, and more on the ground.

Plus, unlike Shirky, Jeff Jarvis and similar, he's not a mindless booster of the Internet.

That said, here's a short take on his five myths about the news media. They include seeing the need for paywalls, because unlike Shirky et al, Rosenthiel actually is looking at media business/financial models, and, also, he recognizes that ads alone just won't pay the freight.

That said, here they are:

1. The traditional news media are losing their audience.
The 25 most popular news Web sites in the United States, for instance, all but two are “legacy” media sources, such as the New York Times or CNN, or aggregators of traditional media, such as Yahoo or Google News. ... The crisis facing traditional media is about revenue, not audience. And in that crisis, newspapers have been hardest hit: Ad revenue for U.S. newspapers fell 48 percent from 2006 to 2010.

2. Online news will be fine as soon as the advertising revenue catches up.
Such hopes are misplaced. In 2010, Web advertising in the United States surpassed print advertising for the first time, reaching $26 billion. But only a small fraction of that, perhaps less than a fifth, went to news organizations.

3. Content will always be king.
The syllogism that helped journalism prosper in the 20th century was simple: Produce the journalism (or “content”) that people want, and you will succeed. But that may no longer be enough.

The key to media in the 21st century may be who has the most knowledge of audience behavior, not who produces the most popular content.

4. Newspapers around the world are on the decline.
Actually, print circulation worldwide was up more than 5 percent in the past five years, not down, and the number of newspapers is growing. In general, print media are thriving in the developing world and suffering in rich nations.

By and large, American newspapers are suffering the most. Roughly 75 percent of their revenue comes from advertising, vs. 30 percent or 40 percent in many other countries, where papers live and die by circulation. That means the collapse of advertising is not hitting papers elsewhere as hard as it is hitting them here. It also suggests that the need to charge for online access may be even more important abroad.

5. The solution is to focus on local news.
Going “hyperlocal” was the war cry of Wall Street to the news industry five years ago. The reasoning was simple: In the Internet age, when users can access content from anywhere, it didn’t make sense for local operations to compete with the big national news providers.

The problem is that hyperlocal content, by definition, has limited appeal. To amass an audience large enough to generate significant ad revenue, you have to produce a large volume of content from different places, and that is expensive. On top of that, many hyperlocal advertisers are not yet online, limiting the ad dollars.

Now we are entering what might be called Hyperlocal 2.0, and the market is still up for grabs. Google, which garners two-thirds of all search advertising dollars nationally, doesn’t exert similar control over local advertising. Locally, display ads — all those banners and pop-ups — are a bigger share of the market than search ads.

But how to produce local content remains a mystery. ... So far, no one has really cracked the code for producing profitable local news online.

Nos 2 and 5 are pretty much direct blasts at Shirky. And I agree on both. No. 3 is the troublesome one, to a news idealist. That said, much of what the MSM pumped out in the past was news-lite anyway.

Overall, thoughk this is a good overview.

Dear NYT - A paywall should mean better guest op-eds

Former GOP nutbar Congresscritter Curt Weldon talking about his personal plan to talk Gadhafi into exile does NOT qualify.

Weldon doesn't mention the backers of his initiative, with whom he is talking in Libya, etc. Given his past history of alleged financial improprieties, for the NYT to run a column like this without at least having a backgrounder news story is kind of laughable.

Paywalls and leaks — are they desirable?

The Nieman Labs note that the new New York Times paywall, already live in Canada, can, in current incarnation, be cracked with just four lines of Javascript. And, it says, beyond that, that some "leakiness" in a paywall, if the media company knows how to manage it, can actually be a good thing.

The story approaches the issue in part from a cost-benefit analysis. It notes that there are a couple of classes of people who are simply determined not to pay for content in such situations. Those who have the skill, or who get the information from someone else who has the skill, will work around the paywall easily enough. As long as they're looking at ads, the story says, and maybe clocking an occasional one, then the NYT is still ahead, rather than spending more money to tighten the paywall.

OOPS.

Just one problem with that analysis.

Those same people, in general, are already blocking ads on their computers. I can't believe Nieman was either that dumb or that naive.

And, beyond THAT, the reason WHY for paywalls is to generate revenue not only from falling Internet ad rates, but, because savvy online news readers are already blocking ads, and savvy online newspaper IT staff know that.

That said, from there, we can honestly discuss whether a "straight" paywall, a "freemium" system, or a metered system like that of the NYT is the best thing for a daily newspaper vs. a "weekly" (in hardcopy) magazine, etc.

But, this idea that a fair amount of "leakage" will actually help on the ad side? Stupid.

CFLs, libertarians, and hidden cost denial

Another shock me here.

From one of the New York Times' "Room for Debate" set of mini-columns on a subject, we get one that doesn't really even deserve such space, namely the wingnut conspiracy theories over compact fluorescent lights and the GOP Congressional wingnuts' attempt ot roll back the mandated phase-out of current incandescent bulbs.

And, gives in doubly. One writer is from Cato, and another from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Leave it to pseudo-free market rationalist Cato to compare apples and oranges with European and American energy costs without talking about hidden American costs.

Ditto for someone from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

And, the Times will either be stupid enough or arrogant enough to put this behind the metered paywall.

Update: Ron Brownstein at National Journal agrees about hidden energy costs.

Why the NYT is right to be charging online

Steve Brill crunches all the numbers and says just $2 per month per unique visitor would pay fantastic returns.

Oh, The Big Money agrees.

Take THAT, Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and other people, like perhaps Bora, who think the online pay model is wrong. (And, maybe I overly stereotyped Mr. Rosen's views, in part as a deliberate caricature. I don't think I got them 100 percent wrong.)

Jay, you can diversify content all you want. But, any company that still relies on an advertising-only model to try to make money off that is run by schmucks.

Let's add to that. A Columbia Journalism Review story last year said that in a typical larger metro area (Baltimore was sampled in depth) the traditional newspaper still breaks 60 percent or more of the news. Next is TV, then radio. "New media"? Even in a halfway-techie area like Baltimore, it's still below 5 percent.

So, if you're still the primary purveyor, you have more incentive to charge, charge, charge.

Where media analysts of the "free Internet" stripe (and the more clueless old media moguls like Dean Singleton) miss the boat can best be illustrated by an analogy.

If Campbell's started selling its condensed soup in plstic screw-top bottles, while still selling in cans, and said it wouldn't charge for it because it could spit out soup much faster this way, we'd grab all the Campbell's we could while laughing at its stupidity.

As for the AP, more than a decade ago, buying into the "TV model"? That ignored newspapers themselves charging for circulation. In the TV world, it ignored cable, let alone premium cable.

Murdoch ready to cut Google out of the loop?

Rupert Murdoch says that, as part of putting paywalls up on News Corporation websites, the company will remove its articles from Google searches. Sounds like a smart idea.

And, he claims it’s what the Wall Street Journal already does with the part of its content that is paywalled. However, that’s not exactly true:

Users who click through to screened WSJ.com articles from Google searches are usually offered the full text of the story without any subscription block.

Sounds like you might want to fix that.

Newspaper columnist too dumb to know who pays his bills

A columnist for Long Island’s daily newspaper, Newsday, has quit. Why? The newspaper is putting up a paywall on his website.

Great, not only are there freeloaders outside the newspaper office, they have aiders and abetters inside.

Goodbye, Saul Friedman.

Three other comments.

One, don’t flatter yourself about how many people around the country read you.

Two, if they actually did, whether in hardcopy or on their cities’ newspaper websites, they could ask to have you syndicated by the local paper.

Three, before the Internet, they were reading somebody else because they couldn’t read you anyway.

Now, that said, Newsday is owned by Cablevision, so, there is possible corporatized newspaper greed here. But, not necessarily. Did Friedman ask what operating profit Newsday has, not just overall, but specifically on online operations? (If it has any, when online is priced out separately.)