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.

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.

State of the Blogosphere-A cheat sheet

Here is an interesting insight into the blogosphere, from Mediapost, looking at Technorati

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 Blogs And Mainstream Media Intersect According to Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, the majority of bloggers surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, says the report, yielding disparate estimates, but all studies agree that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream. Reports in 2008 include these estimates: comScore MediaMetrix reports: (August 2008) Blogs... 77.7 million unique visitors in the US Facebook... 41.0 million MySpace... 75.1 million Total internet audience... 188.9 million eMarketer says: (May 2008) 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users) 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12% of Internet users) Universal McCann finds: (March 2008) 184 million world wide have started a blog 346 million world wide read blogs 77% of active Internet users read blogs Wikipedia defines the Blogosphere as the collective community of all blogs. interconnected and socially networked. While discussions in the Blogosphere have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion, Technorati isolates the Active Blogosphere as the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation. But, says the study, as the Blogosphere grows in size and influence, the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear. Larger blogs are taking on more characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere. In fact, 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs. Technorati tracked blogs in 81 languages in June 2008, and bloggers from 66 countries across six continents, finding that Bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day. Blogs have representation in top-10 web site lists across all key categories, and have become integral to the media ecosystem. The key findings included such things as: Personal, professional, and corporate bloggers all have differing goals and cover an average of five topics within each blog They use five different techniques to drive traffic to their blog. They're using an average of seven publishing tools on their blog and four distinct metrics for measuring success Bloggers ae receiving speaking or publishing opportunities, career advancement, and personal satisfaction Bloggers are using self serve tools for search, display, and affiliate advertising, and are increasingly turning to ad and blog networks. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate) Company information or gossip and everyday retail experiences are fodder for the majority of bloggers One-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates Global Snapshot of Bloggers   U.S. Bloggers European Bloggers Asian Bloggers Male 57% 73% 73% Age          18-34 years old 42% 48% 73%    35+ 58% 52% 27% Single 26% 31% 57% Employed full-time 56% 53% 45% Household income >$75,000 51% 34% 9% College graduate 74% 67% 69% Average blogging tenure (months) 35 33 30 Median Annual Investment $80 $15 $30 Median Annual Revenue $200 $200 $120 % Blogs with advertising 52% 50% 60% Average Monthly Unique Visitors 18,000 24,000 26,000 Technorati, State of the Blogosphere, October 2008   Segment Snapshot of Bloggers   Personal Corporate Professional With Advertising No Advertising Male 64% 70% 72% 66% 66% Age              18-34 years old 52% 45% 48% 53% 45%    35+ 48% 55% 52% 47% 55% Single 36% 24% 31% 34% 34% Employed full-time 52% 51% 55% 49% 56% Household income>$75k 37% 49% 42% 40% 37% College graduate 70% 74% 74% 69% 72% Average blogging tenure (months) 35 35 38 35 33 Median Annual Investment $100 $200 $150 $100 0 Median Annual Revenue $120 $250 $300 $200 0 % Blogs with Advertising 53% 64% 59% 100% 0% Average Monthly Unique Visitors 12,000 39,000 44,000 46,000 4,000 Technorati, State of the Blogosphere, October 2008   Global Bloggers by Gender   Female Male Personal Blog 83% 76% Professional Blog 38% 50% Age        18-24 years old 9% 15%    25+ 91% 85% Single 29% 36% Employed full-time 44% 56% Median Annual Investment $30 $60 Median Annual Revenue $100 $200 % Blogs with advertising 53% 54% Sell Through a Blog ad Network* 16% 7% Have Affiliate ads* 41% 32% Have Contextual ads* 61% 73% Technorati, State of the Blogosphere, October 2008  (*Among those with advertising on their blogs) In 2004 when Technorati started, says the report, the typical reaction to the word 'blog' was 'huh?' Today... the blog has forever changed the way publishing works... anyone can be a publisher. The issue is no longer distribution, it's relevance.

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!


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by madhavan

Media set for zillion-scale growth (Er, what about crude and food prices?)

I love those forecasts. Everybody from Goldman Sachs to your friendly neighbourhood IT consultancy was making predictions in 1998-2000 about the way the Internet will grow and grow and grow. And then came the Dotcom Bust that saw startups and listed companies alike go belly-up!
Take forecasts with a pinch of salt-- but like your teenage crushes, they always make you feel good, even if they take you nowhere.
This week comes PricewaterhouseCoopers' forecast about growth in the media industry.
Media revenue is globally set to rise 6.6 per cent a year to $2.2 trillion (A trillion is one billion and one billion is 1,000 million) by 2012, says the forecast. The 6.6 number does not sound unrealistic to me, given the single digits, but I am once-bitten, twice shy.
The Hollywood Reporter's despatch mentions Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) as the major growth driver.
It says: "Growth in the roaring economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- the so-called BRIC nations -- will outpace the more mature markets of the U.S. and Western Europe, with PwC forecasting 13.6% average annual growth in BRIC compared with just 4.8% annual growth in the U.S. media industry and 5.4% in Western Europe.

By 2012, the report predicts that the media business in BRIC will total about $250 billion, compared with $759 billion in the U.S., about $633 billion in Western Europe and $166 billion in Japan."
Oh, I really love that. And given that newly affordable TVs and exploding mobile handsets will drive new kind of content and games and entertainment, it sounds plausible.
But then, I am reading all this amid a sub-prime crisis in the US (and ergo, global) economy. With crude prices and food prices high in many parts, I need to also worry about the price of salt. If all of us take a pinch of it with such reports, I am sure the price of that grain will go up as well!

Talking Technorati: How to make sense out of Loser Generated Content?

It is official! This blog has entered Technorati, which classifies blogs by tags and tries to promote them, and creates a floating chaos in which a combination of tagging by keywords, categories and "favourite" labels bundles content and shoves them around the Internet.
Phew! If this is an alternative to journalism, I am not sure if it will work.
Technorati is commendable for its work, but I do believe some kind of an organization of content going beyond tags and keywords and automated software will be needed. If academic PhDs and Nobel prizes need citations by well-regarded people, I presume the same might apply for blogs. Or at least, the better blogs will be paid for, either by subscribers or advertisers -- and there must be real "blogamediaries"
I am sceptical about a democratic soap box oratory on the Net passing off as "citizen journalism!"
I spoke to the Delhi Bloggers Bloc on June 7, and taking a media-centric view, wanted the men/women among bloggers to be separated from the boys/girls of the Blogosphere.
Why should a good blogger be different from a good newspaper columnist or journalist? In the end, I see good blogs as an extension of good journalism -- not an alternative. At the presentation, I referred to many blogs as "Loser Generated Content": if the blogs are useless, the bloggers are losers anyway; and if they are useful and not compensated for in a meaningful way, even good-quality bloggers must be losers!
I can't wait to see more credible organisational and business models to honour the better blogs. Of course, you cannot ban or ignore the mass of blogs anymore than you can ban or ignore random letters to the editor. But I plead for sense and sensibility. Surely technology and tagging must have their limits?

The tug-of-war between media firms and ad networks

Just what is going on in the world of Internet advertising? Ad networks -- those systems that use technology to pump online ads to various websites, are on the defensive because media companies (oh, at least some of them) are forming their own networks which we could call captive ad networks (basically, like their own ad departments, with some tech thrown in perhaps) Now, ESPN says that this is because the brands their sites get does not seem to be matching its image. Sounds like a good reason, and probably has its origins in the automated way ads are pumped into content sites.
However, I am still not convinced. My suspicion is that if content is created in one place and technology takes care of a good part of the placement of advertisement -- and more important , the pricing of an ad is determined in a measurable, transparent way -- a good bit of fat-cat executives who collect ad cheques may be on their way down -- or out.
I think the last word on how ads should be placed on the Net will take a while to figure out.
I am playing the devil's advocate here, but am keen to find out what is going on in a universe full of gazillion Web pages. Meanwhile, here is a very readable, gossipy, chirpy story on the business, with some great quotes. Loved reading, actually. Be warned, it is part fact, part fiction.

Is India ready for a digital publishing explosion? (Because US seems to be getting there)

Sitting in India, it is difficult to map out how Internet publishing will pan out over the next few years, but I do believe that at least for the English media, it will make a big difference. There is a reasonable chance that anyone who writes/reads English will earn enough to buy a PC and a Net connection, with both becoming cheaper.
Here is the big one from the US: Internet is set to become "Medium Number 2" --next only to direct marketing!
This is based on an IDC survey (respected agency, mind you!), which also records that this is despite recession clouds over the United States economy. I only hope such numbers do not go the way of the Web 1.0 hype when B2C, B2B and all that gave way to P2P and C2C in the Web 2.0 way.
Here are the operative parts from the IDC release, and a link to the statement follows:
"During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large. IDC finds overall Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.
"The Internet will go from the number 5 medium all the way to the number 2 medium in just 5 years, making it bigger than newspapers, bigger than cable TV, bigger even than broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing. Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising over the next five years by attracting the most new marketing dollars"

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp%3Bjsessionid=GO1LTXAYTD3CACQJAFICFGAKBEAUMIWD?containerId=prUS21260308