Newspapers are out, online is not (yet) in. OECD ponders

The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has conducted a study on the business of newspapers and the future of news in an evident response to declining advertising revenues in the backdrop of a relative unwillingness of readers to pay for online content.
I found it interesting that governments are thinking about helping newspapers--because they help democracy. So, after rejecting government support for ad cash, will newspapers and news gathering machines accept government patronage again? Interesting question.
I do think the world of news is going to be more varietous, as the report itself is suggesting. In fact, it already is. But revenues and money? Ah, we are still wondering where this is all going.

The Journo Trap: Who reads your stories?

Imagine a world where there are no television rating points (TRPs) for news channels.

Imagine a world where there is no broad circulation or readership metric for newspapers or magazine.


Imagine a world where journalists cannot quite claim their stories drive the business -- or one in which they can do EXACTLY that!

We seem to be getting there. But on the Web

AOL has started a new experiment in which stories on the Web are measured for popularity and the traffic shared. It is the closest journo stories got to post-paid billing a la telecoms.

Is that good for journalists?
Yes, if you are really good, and cribbing that your organisation does not take note of you. Or for you to fine-tune your work.
No, if your stories are meaningful in a larger social sense or giving you some personal fulfillment, but held accountable to some scoreboard.
Transparency is a two-way sword, I tell you.

Content goes the service way

Content is King, yes.

Murdoch says it is the emperor. Yes.

But there is an interesting insight. Just as a still is not a moving picture, content is not about static stuff on the Net. Increasingly, it is a service.
Here is a fine piece on that.

Newspapers are alive and kicking -- in Delhi

So you thought newspapers are sinking? Not in Delhi--look what I clicked at the news-stand this morning...and none of them is Delhi's main paper. Amazing language range as well!

Why Murdoch is right on charging for online news

The Web is abuzz after media baron Rupert Murdoch of New Corp said that his group's newspapers planned to charge for online news/content.
I have no problem with that. Though obituaries and criticism of such a move are afloat on the selfsame Net.
As an experienced journalist, I make a few simple observations.
It costs money to make people do reportage
Credibility comes from known sources that employ processes
Bloggers and others who simply extract published news from the Web and repeate it have no viable business model and breaking news cannot be ad-hoc.
If it is offered free, it has to be accounted in financial terms somewhere--at least by cross-subsidisation.
For more than a decade now, newspaper publishers have been shooting themselves in the foot in order to understand the new medium better.
They have tried to behave like news agencies, reporting 24/7
They have offered content free, only to find their own revenues and circulation falling.
They have invested in technology and branding, but online ads have not got the traction to take it beyond a point.
Above all, they have to suffer sites like Google News that looks like a newspaper and rides on free content from the papers and other online news sites.
Something's gotta give.
If Murdoch charges, will other newspapers see it as an opportunity or a threat? I don't know, but  I do know that sooner or later, viable models for both credibility and profitability in online news has to come in.

Murdoch thinks newspapers will go digital --and won't be free on the Web

Rupert Murdoch should know -- it costs money to produce news and content. Why should newspapers give it for free--especially when the Web is what is putting them into trouble?
Here is the baron telling us how things should move--or the way he sees them moving.

End of Television --A lovely, inspired piece of writing

Please catch this lovely piece in New York's maverick blogazine, Gawker, on how online videos and help creative television writers circumvent the suffocating studio system.
Internet is revolutionising media, and I have written many times in the past about how TV is changing and will end as we have known it. But this piece makes it read like a fairy tale.

The Future Of Newspapers: Are micropayments the way out?

First came print advertising because people read newspapers.
Then came TV advertising, that took away some of those ads
Then came the era of advertising-supported content, as readers became more of "consumers" being targeted by advertisers who signed large cheques.
Then came the part about newspapers adjusting to the demands of advertisers, and addressing readers as "target segments"
That phase is still on now, but the Web is changing --or has changed things--all over again.
Classified ads have migrated to the Web.
Newspaper Websites are not really getting that much ads.
Digital ads are growing,but are they the way out?
How do we price content? Journalism is a costly business, involves travel and credibility -- and unbiased coverage that is under constant pressure from politicians or advertisers in some form or the other.
In the age of the Internet, the business has become more complicated. New York Times has its property on mortgage, and Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy.
So what is the future of the newspaper?
This article in Time magazine discusses it, and apparently bets on micropayments. Oh well, let us see how it all goes.

How Mumbai 26/11 shaped the future of media in India

Mumbai, 26/11/2008

Terrorists carried sat-phones
Eyewitnesses used Twitter feeds
TV cameras rolled live
Social activists attacked them on blogs
Citizens rallied around Facebook pages

That was the world's first instance of "convergence terrorism" or Terrorism 2.0 as I said.
It is clear that media will never be the same again.
Facebook groups sprung up against Barkha Dutt, India's most familiar English TV news anchorette. And pieces by activist writers like Harini Calamur (like this took on the media.
Here are my brief observations.

1)Media will never be the same again, because Internet activism is acting as a countervailing influence on conventional media. Even if they care only for viewership, and claim publicly that only viewers matter, there will be some influence.

2) There are still a huge number of people out there who believe the role of the media as a noble "watchdog" purveying facts, presenting it responsibly. Who is going to PAY for this journalism? Can these activists subsidise the high cost of the publishing business?

3) Increasingly, social bookmarking and e-mail are emerging as powerful drivers of attention.
Gnani Sankaran's piece
questioning the Taj as Mumbai's icon became quite a rage on the Net.

Is User Generated Content heading for bust?

There is a quote my father used to cite, though I am not sure who this is from. Possibly Samuel Johnson: "No ass ever wrote anything but for money."

Now, we are living in the age of User Generated Content.
This blog is one example, but then I am told I can make money by using the Google AdSense program (me!).
Yahoo has Answers.
Everywhere, we have social networks being described as the hottest Internet thingie.
Message boards, discussion forums, self-created cartoons, photographs uploaded from the family album.... the list is long.
To this long list may be added this "citizen journalism" thing.
As a professional journalist, I often ask myself: Am I heading for unemployment, sub-employment, oblivion, whatever...?
I don't have the answers, but I can tell this much: It suits the creators of technology platforms, and those who make money on advertisements, to get content for free.
User Generated Content assumes that writing, singing, photographs...they are all done only for fun and self-satisfaction.
Some marginal money is shared through programmes like AdSense to encourage good content, but in the end, I do have my reservations about UGC.
If it is good, it must be worth the right price!
How much does one pay for something that is good?
In the current phase, there is a trend of disruption in which demand and supply are not being properly measured. The industry is, as it were, groping itself to find its own shape!
There are geeks trying to figure out how to get on top of Google Search lists.
There are geeks trying to measure how users consume content.
There are geeks trying to measure hits, impressions and usage patterns of content.
It is the lack of accepted measurement metrics, and the sheer novelty of uploading something on the Net that is creating a culture of "UGC-generated" revenues.
I expect this to settle into a rhythm.
Having seen the first dotcom boom -- and bust -- I expect the din on the side of the UGC evangelists from the technology and publisher side to die down.
Clarity will emerge a while later.
Remember the days when kids had 7 mail IDs?
Remember the days when a new email account resulted in 23 forwards read per day and 4 forwards done per day?
All that changed, and I expect this UGC thing to settle into a simple rhythm. A part of the advertisement revenue will most certainly go there, but a lot of the action will be in the mainstream media business.
Techies and ad-sellers trying to behave like publishers is a passing phase.
Loser Generated Content has its limits.
Just wait and watch.

Magazine with flashing digital-light cover! Esquire does it in style!

Wow!
This is technology at work. I had written a post last year about foldable electronic paper and was wondering at it. Now comes Esquire magazine which is flashing its old-world charm in a 21st Century package!
Here is the story.

M&A comes to blogging...

A feeble poll I set up on this very blog a few days ago ended yesterday. It asked: Can blogs turn into viable businesses? Only four people cared to vote and three of them said yes.
Now comes the news that GigaOM a blog-based content network founded by Om Malik in the Silicon Valley, has made its first acquisition...actually, the acquisition is by his venture-funded blog company, Giga Omnimedia.
In simple terms, the word blog can be misleading. Though its origins lie in the word web log, blogging tools are online publishing tools acquiring sophistication and method everyday. No wonder, quality blogs can and will -- as we see in this merger and acquisition of sorts involving GigaOM -- count alongside mainstream media.
Let's hear it from Om Malik on his deal:
"In the life of every company, there comes a time when it is faced with the choice of how to extend its reach: Either build a new product or service, or acquire the one that's already established itself as the best in its class. Larger companies face that question every day, but it is rare for a nano company like ours to have to make such a decision.
I am pleased to announce that Giga Omni Media, the company behind GigaOM, has acquired jkOnTheRun, a blog started by James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel that focuses on the wonderful world of mobile gadgets, including mobile phones and cloud client computers. James and Kevin will join GigaOM, but will continue to work from their respective homes of Houston and Telford, Pa., and jkOnTheRun will become the sixth blog in the GigaOM Network."
Congratulations, Malik Saheb!

Is television dying? Or is it prime-time? Or is that the soap opera?

Am I eating crow?
Did I speak too soon when I predicted the end-of-prime-time-as-we-know it?
Have I been betting too much on online video?

A new study by CBS says rumours of the television's death may be premature. It says online video is not going to kill TV.

Did video kill the radio star?
Did movies kill theatre?
Did television news kill newspapers?

Hmmm. I wish to go back to the details of my general drift during the three years that this blog has talked time and again of prime-time.
The emphasis should be on end-of-prime-time-as-we-know it

What it means is that a profusion of easy-to-launch digital TV/direct-to-home channels, online videos seen on PCs and other devices, and mobile videos streamed from a variety of sources (including blogs) will collectively erode the awesome power that 20th Century-style television had for about half-a-century.

This is what I say. Just as theatre, newspapers and radio had to re-invent themselves and undeniably lost their clout, so will television, primarily of the thousand-pound-gorilla-prime-time variety. Some of the soap serial makers like Ekta Kapoor, raised on a diet of greasy parathas and TRPs (television rating points) may wish to reach for a handkerchief, mimicking the ladies of their much-watched prime-time serials.

Now, will audio-books make reading go out of fashion? That's another story.

Editor & Publisher mag to offer electronic edition

I remember my days 20 years ago, when I used to visit the American Center library and thumb through a magazine that stood for a vibrant newspaper industry in North America. It is now available in an electronic "same-as-print" edition, thanks to a partnership with Hyderabad-based Pressmart. Pressmart is an amazing company which is putting some of the world's leading newspapers into online editions that look the same.
Here are some details from the media statement:

E&P Publisher Chas McKeown said "the Pressmart state-of-the-art solution will provide our readership access to Editor & Publisher on multiple digital distribution channels including eEditions; Podcasts; Mobile devices and eArchives."


Editor & Publisher is the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.

Based in New York City, the magazine dates back to 1884, when The Journalist, a weekly, was founded. E&P was launched in 1901 and merged with The Journalist in 1907. E&P later acquired Newspaperdom, a trade journal for the newspaper industry that started in 1892. In 1927, E&P merged with another trade paper, The Fourth Estate. In January 2004, E&P switched from weekly to monthly publication, while revamping its Web site to offer more breaking news and content on a daily basis.

E&P Online (www.editorandpublisher.com) offers breaking news free to all visitors in our Top Stories section. Each week, selected proprietary stories from E&P staff are made available free to all visitors, but the majority of our analysis, industry news, features, columns, and trends are restricted to E&P subscribers.

See, I told you? Video Entertainment in 2013 Will Be Less Than 50% Traditional TV

More market research in the US reveals more about Life After YouTube (and Hulu, and broadband, and mobile video!).
TV is fading away in the sense we know it.
Mediapost, quoting Solutions Research Group on a study covering US media consumer behaviour, says: "While daily time with TV will remain close to 4 hours, traditional TV's share of the total video entertainment pie is projected to shrink from 63.9% today to 47.1% by 2013, given the overall increase consumers' in total video-based entertainment consumption"
It kind of validates a lot of stuff I have been writing on this blog since it began in 2005.
Am I supposed to say: Watch this space?

PaidContent marks a milestone

The acquisition of PaidContent by the UK-based Guardian group confirms (again) my belief that "blog" is just a word -- It can turn into a business and become part of the mainstream media. Indian-born Rafat Ali has taken the group of sites logging the growth of the digital publishing industry in a "collablog" publishing venture to new heights and has thus become a pioneer. He joins the likes of Sabeer Bhatia and Vinod Khosla in marking new milestones in the Internet economy. The New York Times found it relevant enough to write a meaningful story

The Google-Yahoo war should go to WTO, not Washington

I chanced upon this post by the Silicon Valley's respected Net-watcher Om Malik, and it seems he has forgotten his days in Delhi. Basically, he wonders if the war over Google's alliance with Yahoo (and by implication, Microsoft's acquisition/merger attempts) should go to the regulators -- by which he means Washington's powers-that-be.
The Internet is a global medium, and I don't quite fancy US-centric people holding forth as if the rest of the world does not matter. They have not learnt their lessons from Vietnam/Iraq, whatever...


So, here is my beginner's guide to anyone commenting on the Google-Yahoo saga

1) The US is not the only nation in the world. It is one of about 150. George W. Bush doesn't get this. Do you?

2) Google is a global search engine and Yahoo is a global media company. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), not Washington, is the place to decide anti-competition issues on this.

3) Online advertising is not the only kind of advertising. Google's share should be measured as a part of global advertising revenues in all media.

4) If online ads are to be treated separately, let it be done only for US IP addresses and let there be technologies to segregate and analyse all this. (That will give use to more startups.Wow!) Or else, revenues should be segregated on the basis of geographical origin.

5) Google is leading the process of creative destruction in the global media industry as a whole. Anything disruptive in this nature is by definition pro-competition until such time as it acquires critical mass in market-share. And digital ads have only just begun!

6) If Microsoft's desktop market share in OS or the browser war is not a problem, why should Google's online revenue share should be?

7)In the case of document standards, the International Standards Organisation showed the way to go. Let there be a similar global discourse (oops, do they use this word at Stanford? Must ask my friends from Oxford). This should be done at the World Trade Organisation.

Geneva, not Washington, is the place to decide this. And Mountain View and Wall Street are small dots on Google Earth.

Or how about the United Nations, Om?

The Logic of the Four Screens

The "Silver Screen," television, PC and now mobile handsets --media convergence is increasingly about converging these four and optimising their mix. I am not even talking about print here. My friend Ajay Jain makes an interesting analysis of the four-screen play in his site here

Bloggers need to honour copyright -- and must be respected for theirs!

I spoke at a workshop organised by the Indian Blog and New Media Society last weekend, and faced some questions on copyright of content produced by bloggers. It stays with them, as far as I know -- but then, they also need to honour other's rights.
Here is an article on how Big Media is watching bloggers. Well, Big Media should also realise that bloggers are also challenging them, somewhere!

Here is my presentation on where blogs are -- and can go

On June 7, I made a presentation to the Delhi Bloggers Bloc on classifying blogs and what they could mean from the point of view of the mainstream media.
You can view it here -- though the size seems larger than it should be!


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