The National Newspaper Association has launched an informal exercise to try assemble best thinking about types of content the public might be willing to pay for. The effort is noted in a comment to a post by veteran news executive Alan Mutter on his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur:
LINK:
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-sell-news-on-web-checklist.html
In one comment, Beth Lawton, a digital strategist at the Newspaper Association of America, wrote: “NAA is working on getting a conversation rolling about this topic. Please cross-post your comments to Twitter (#newspay) or to NAA’s Facebook page. Nice work getting this started, Alan! Thanks!”
http://www.facebook.com/NewspaperAssociationOfAmerica
In his post, Mutter lists four types of news-oriented information a publisher might arguably convince a user to pay for, including intensive, comprehensive, exclusive local news, news that helps the reader make money or avoid losing money, or exclusive entertainment stories.
Mutter suggests rating information on a five-point matrix of attractiveness for attempting a paid content experiement. These include, Mutter wrotes: Uniqueness, routiness, time sensitivity, business urgency, entertainment value, localness and relationship to home economics.
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The topical blog Search Engine Land and its editor-in-chief, Danny Sullivan, scored a long interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt posted Sat., Oct. 3, at 8 a.m. In it, Schmidt comes off as rather supportive of newspapers’ role supporting democracy through investigative journalism, says he sees it as a “moral obligation” of Google to help the news industry, but reveals no specifics about how Google might do so. Here’s the link:
http://searchengineland.com/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-on-newspapers-journalism-27172
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More than 40 newspaper-industry executives, researchers and advisors are gathered at the American Press Institute in Reston, Va. today for the two-day convening, “Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference.” The event follows the May release of the API report: “Newspaper Economic Action Plan.” The idea of organizers is to use an open-space style event to consider what newspapers can do to sustain journalism and their business.
Click Here To Watch the CoverItLive running blog discussion (and participate)
At 9:30 a.m. EASTERN today, two experts on newspaper website analytics will be unveiling an initial tranche of research on some 100 sites. Gregory Harmon of Belden Interactive and Greg Swanson of ITZ Publishing will make
the case that newspapers can move to selectively charge for content without losing the majority of their online advertising revenue.
The event was by-invitation only, but organizers have invited live blogging of the Harmon/Swanson session as a service to the news industry. You can follow the participants’ blogging by going to this link:
http://tinyurl.com/ps38bc at or after 9:30 a.m. EASTERN.
Some people may post or comment on the blogstream via Twitter using the
hashtag: #apinewsmedia
And this temporary URL will carry informational updates about the event through the day and until it’s conclusion at mid-day on Tuesday: http://www.journalismtrust.org
EVENT HOME PAGE
WIKI BACKGROUND PAGE
API’s Mary Glick says she and colleague Mary Peskin framed the conference around API’s NEAP White Paper, an integrated five-point plan to guide the news industry through the current disruptions and position itself for the future by:
- Establishing a true value for news content online and generating revenue from it.
- Maintaining the free flow of content and monetizing it equitably.
- Thwarting unauthorized re-use of content that originates in newspapers.
- Investing in technologies that enhance the user experience and provide content-based e-commerce, data sharing and other revenue solutions.
- Adapting revenue strategies from those focused on advertisers to those focused on consumers.
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Tagged: advertising, api, charging, infovalet, journalism, micropayment, news, newspapers
Jeff Vander Clute announces in Washington, D.C., on May 27, 2009, a partnership among four entrepreneurs and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Vander Clute is president of the Silicon Valley startup, CircLabs Inc. Vander Clute is followed by Martin Langeveld, CircLab’s executive vice president. For more information go to: CircLabs.com
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Jeff Vander Clute, entrepreneur, founder of Semesphere Inc., and a consultant to the Information Valet Project, announced the launch of CircLabs Inc. at the “From Gatekeeper to Information Valet” conference on May 27.
Vander Clute is a co-founder of CircLabs along with Bill Densmore, a Reynolds Fellow, Martin Langeveld a veteran newspaper editor, Joe Bergeron a serial entrepreneur.
The Silicon Valley-based start-up will offer a suite of services, the first of which is code-named “Circulate.” The services focus on generating revenue for online news. CircLabs is set to launch in the second half of 2009.
CircLabs was hatched at the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute’s (RJI) fellowship program, and grew out of research led by Bill Densmore a 2008-2009 Reynolds Fellow. RJI is supporting the startup and will be an equity stakeholder.
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The Federal Trade Commission is holding a series of workshops titled “Can News Media Survive the Internet Age?” Competition, Consumer Protection, and First Amendment Perspectives.” The first one debuts on December 1-2, 2009.
Susan DiSanti director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning, paid a visit to our conference and offered a brief preview of the workshops to come.
Check out the press release at http://ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/news2009.shtm
“We’re very much in favor of competition,” DiSanti says, noting that as media evolves certain topics such as consumer and identity protection will be at the forefront.
Why the workshops?
“This is really our attempt to understand what is going on and move the discussion,” she says. “W e aren’t looking for a place where answers are found.”
Stay tuned.
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We are into the whirlwind break out sessions, and I am sitting at the first one.
The discussion, led by Ann Peters of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, is about how to get more high school students and college students interested in international stories and coverage, particularly at a time when media outlets are cutting back on global coverage and their international bureaus.
Huffington Post’s Steve Brant says, “one of the reasons why journalism is in trouble because it’s misreporting things.” Bottom line: they cover the bad things, but what about the good news and a better balance?
Patricia Jane Berg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, is here at the conference to get more material for her classes.
John Boyer, executive director of oneblue.org asks if anyone has seen Frontline’s story about Pakistan. “All it focused on was the Taliban, it was real brave reporting, but a real downer,” he says. “We really live in this Rashoumon world, as Americans we’re just focus on how we’re going to get out of Taliban.”
“I think the hard part is how do you fill in the other parts that the news media doesn’t cover,” Boyer says.
Amy Korzick Garmer of The Aspen Institute says, in a global society and economy the key is to connect with reporters overseas, to develop sources etc. She notes that U.S. nws outlets are “shooting themselves in the foot” when cutting back on international coverage.
Okay, am headed to breakout session #2.
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More highlights from the panel on sustaining journalism.
- Kachingle’s Cynthia Typaldos says advertising has failed journalism and Journalism Online’s Merrill Brown doesn’t agree. Brown says strengthening advertising is crucial.
- “If you’ve got great content, people will be going to their site. Llet the tweeters tweet,” Typaldos says. “You can have the best of both worlds.”
Here are some highlights from the Q&A session.
- Huffington Post columnist Steve Blunt asks Walter Issacson and fellow panelists to consider a face lift for content, and not just technology
- Allan Hoving of PaycheckR.com asks, what is the model? “I think different models will work differently, the great thing about the Internet is we have dozens of models…We should celebrate the diversity of choice we give for content providers and for users too,” Issacson says, noting that there’s tons of room for bundling, licensing and other potential experiments
- Brown and Typaldos both agree that overall simple is better than complicated when it comes to content or business models. ”You can not make it complicated, it needs to be no thinking…” Typaldos says.
- That said, Brown suggests that Gen Y, those under 30, still care and are voracious consumers of information. They just buy and consume it differently. “We obvciously have a reinvention to do about price points,” Brown notes.
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