Tips to a Prosperous Digital New Year!!!

What a year we are closing out! With 2009 just hours young in some parts of the world, I am going to go out on a limb to say all of us digital publishers out there are on the precipice of prosperity.

No, I haven't started the festivities early. I am serious. Undoubtedly there are a few hurdles to overcome, but if you are still in business when dawn breaks in the morning, then you have a very good chance of having a ground-breaking new year. Not yet believing?

It's a given, 2008 was wretched. After years of gorging on hubris and debt, we were forced to see our silhouettes in the mirror to see nothing but fat and sloth. We’re closer to rigor mortis than to agile. But at least we are still alive.

Former General Electric guru Jack Welsh once said, “change before you have to.” Okay, we missed that boat, so let's his words to “change -- before everyone else does.” Start dropping the ballast and abandon the traditions that have kept you moored in place. And start reinventing the processes that will allow you to take advantage of the incredible fire-sales that are sure to start happening shortly.

Been in the print business for over a century? Okay but remember you are not in the print business, you are in the news business, and news is channel agnostic. So hug a tree and shed the paper. Go slowly -- maybe a few days a week like Detroit – or go all in like the CS Monitor.

Author Robert Fulghum realized that much of what he learned in kindergarten applies to him today, so channel your inner 5-year old and learn to share. As Arturo Duran, CEO ImpreMedia Digital says, with the web we don’t own eyeballs any more — we share them. It’s a big world, so find some folks you like to work with and figure out away to share. You’ll reduce some overhead while you're at it too.

Stuck on yourself because of your ability to turn a phrase? Well lots of us can write, but mortgages and kids and snot having someone to subsidize an apartment in New York forced some of us into different careers. Now blogs and comments are our outlets! Figure out a way to sift through the cacophony and add value to the voices.

Want to think bigger? So let's talk about increasing your market share. Plenty of publishers will be looking to stop banging their heads against a wall (unless they are truly insane – and stay away from them) and will be looking to unload some titles that have underperformed. Some even will be idiotic enough to not realize that six years worth of archives are actually worth something – and will just abandon their property outright. Be ready to pounce!

The key capitalizing on any of these opportunities is to be digitally agile. The analog world was all about being rooted and routinized. Digital means flexibility, playing with others, and being able to adapt on a dime. Doubling down on digital after years of ignoring the future is not going to be easy. But if you play your cards right, it will certainly yield high payoffs!

Help for the Twitter Illiterate

I admit it. I have been a slow adopter to Twitter. I created my account about a year ago after reading a great post on Poynter, and filled out my profile to havealerts emailed to me when I was being followed or receiving a direct message, but I don't update from my phone. Yet. Am thinking about that. My friend Oleg just introduced me to TweetDeck and he has promised me more. Until he gets his CliffsNotes written, you might want to check out NewsTechZilla. The new site is the brainchild of two bloggers journalist Trace Sharp (aka Newscoma) and technologist Scott Adcox (aka Sadcox). They want to be the go-to source on citizen journalism -- for journalists.

Cutting Web Staffs, Prelude to the Titles Themselves??

What a mind-boggling development according to The New York Observer. Perfect-bound mags who finally got around to building their web teams - are now laying them off to bolster their struggling print gorillas. It's a head-shaking turn of events, I know. But not totally unexpected. The magazines referenced, Condé Nast's Portfolio and Time Inc.'s Fortune, were facing steep cutbacks -- and the web staffers were seemingly the most expendable.

Allegedly a publisher at Condé Nast was heard to opine: “You’re never going to get the traffic that really matters. So it’s a traffic thing, but also, how do you monetize the traffic that you have? It’s impossible.”

Impossible. Monetizing content is impossible. My second head-shaking moment. Is monetizing content on the web really impossible? See, call me an optimist but I don't think so. I just don't think these publishers have found the right mechanism to monetize their goods. Or maybe their magazines don't really add that much value. When you think about some titles, they are a nothing more than a collection of glitzy ads between glossy covers. In that case, yes, i think monetizing on the web is going to be difficult.

I was reading the comments to this article (an occupational hazard these days, as more vision and thought seem to exist in the comments than the stories themselves), and the rabble didn't let me down.

Skyrocketing eyeball numbers are great, but when there is no meaningful revenue attached to it, it's a parasite. As long as aggregators can take all that work for free and sell search ads - the only type that are working - the environment will not improve. -- Anonymous


Publisher's like Time Inc have no solid digital strategy. They are all mostly analog players lead by analog CEOs, in a digital world. -- Shines

This is very shortsighted. I can't tell you how many print magazines I have become interested in because of their online version. -- Anonymous

There are several issues at play here:

1. There are just too many magazines to sustain the number of readers: an allt-time high of 26,140 titles in the US and Canada according to a 2006 Print Council Study
   
2. Newsrooms are still circa 20th Century: having unique staff per dissemination channel. Guilds, culture and an unified infrastructure are to blame. Anyone heard of a single newsroom to serve multiple channels??
   
3. Monetization stagnation. The banner ad. Sheesh what a cliché. Can not any of these big properties figure out how to derive value with their content besides a banner ad? Maybe they need to stop navel-gazing and see how their content actually helps their industry. If it turns out it doesn't .... well, maybe you need to rethink your content model.
4. It may be that the can monetize their content -- they just can't motivate their sales forces.

My New Year's predictions are a tad early, but I foresee a great reduction in titles. And for you bargain shoppers, there should be some great content at firesale prices -- since those publishers don't really see much value in their assets.

Private owner --

Former MSNBC GM Dan Abrams addresses grumbles to his new public affairs venture Abrams Research by stating

It sounds like once you touch journalism, you can't work in any other industry. You know why? Because then you're a sellout.

There's truth to that -- which is why the ginormous firewall between the newsroom and sales. Any hint of money or benefit for influence peddling has been a no-no. To give you a sense, many newsrooms adopt a rule that any products or gifts received in the course of the year are auctioned off -- with proceeds going to charity.

But this disconnect to ply one's craft in a bubble, is precisely what we are all railing against now:

Why don't journalists get on board? Why don't they embrace new media? Why don't they take more of a business interest?

Because it has been an anathema to their total being for-ever!

Thanks for the tip Romenesko!

The Future of News ... Ownership

The hand-wringing in the publishing industry continues as Chicago Tribune files for bankruptcy, The NY Times mortgages its building, and the rest of the dailies mortgage their souls by dumping hoards of journalists out on the street.

What seems like a lifetime ago during my tenure as head of interactive for New Jersey Press, my then boss, Bob McAllan (no relationship to the Scotch -- although he loved it) and I would spend hours talking about the role of the web and information. In 1994, we likened it to the evolution of the transportation industry; how newsrooms needed to evolve to embrace the newest dissemination system. Apparently, all that thought was bogged down in the ether and was just picked up by the New Yorker this week.

And I was non-plussed by its observation that while the byproduct of a paper continues to be consumed, people have ceased wanting to pay for it -- either directly or indirectly. Online advertising doesn't equate to print advertising rates. (This too was a problem manufactured by newspapers when they decided to "bundle in" online, basically devaluing the online ad. Betcha they wished they had a do-over for that dopey decision.)

No, what I found most interesting in the New Yorker piece, cleverly hidden at the bottom, was the suggestion that newspapers may have more success if they retool as non-profits. Frankly, I believe this idea has incredible merit. There is precedent for this -- a handful of small papers are non-profits, thereby becoming self-sustaining news ecosystems. Back in the day, privately held companies, which Wall Street would no doubt dismiss as might-as-well-be non-profits, thought it appropriate to have 10-15 percent margins. All worked well until former USA Today founder & publisher Al Neuharth, whose skills as a marketing genius far outweigh his news sense (despite columns he filled to prove otherwise) convinced the public to buy shares in his product. Suddenly all newspapers wanted to be public. And so they did. And now a decade later, each month, more resources* are spent creating powerpoints in preparation for board and analyst meetings -- than on long-term storygathering and retooling their digital strategies.

(I digress, but Sam Zell, the Trib's owner, publicly ridiculed the focus on long-term investigative projects, telling a New York investors’ conference, “I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize.”)

So here is the problem in a nutshell: the business model of news manufacturing has been badly hit by a disruptive technology, making near obsolete the old method of dissemination. However the new method of delivery doesn't generate the same amount of income that the old method does, and further, the people who own the newspaper, the investors and shareholders are a demanding and cranky bunch who want to distill news development into a commodity product that comes off an assembly line -- versus a community-based responsibility that is the Fourth Estate.

And, so why yes, Jeff Jarvis is partially right in that journalists did bring some of this on themselves by not embracing digital at the onset, so too are the owners to blame: Those who cashed out to become public, and those public owners who think being in the news business is about manufacturing dividends -- instead of news.

So maybe it is not the business model that needs to change, maybe it is the ownership model. Because a true news loving gent would comfort himself in knowing that Chicago's mayor was deathly afraid of the incessant questions asked by his reporters, and thus offered money to have those reporters rooted out. For a guy who really loves news, that would be payment enough.

* this is an anecdotal claim based on first hand sightings of burgeoning financial teams clamoring around photo copying machines just prior to investor meetings.

In Blogs We Trust (Maybe)

People don't place a lot of faith in blogs, so says a Forrester report, particularly the corporate kind. It's not really so surprising. In this era of devaluation, corporate America has eroded credibility & integrity. A blog that is a mere infomercial can be seen for what it is. It's a fine line and an art to create a corporate blog that offers valuable (enough) information so that people want to come back to you, while still slanting toward your products.

And not so shockingly too, bloggers had more faith in bloggers than the general public.

Digital Wayfinding Webinar

Am very interested in how people search and have created a new talk that explores how individuals "wayfind" in the physical world versus the digital one. Believe it or not, the same way we might navigate a very large commercial complex with mixed-use (retail, offices, restaurants etc.) is similar to how we would navigate a website. We are all looking for something, although admittedly some of us might have more of an idea than others, and we are doing so in one of two states: Relaxed or Anxious.

What most of us who publish to the web forget, is that search engines have created an Orientation issue. People are not popping in through the front door -- with its welcome mat and explanation of what the site is all about -- they are being dropped deep into the bowels to a specific piece of content. How does a person orient themselves from that page? Do you have enough clues that tell a person -- whether they are researcher, client, journalist, prospect where they are -- and what else they might find on your site? Does your site appeal more to the one who likes to ask for directions -- or to those who want to go it alone?

I'll be posting more on physical versus digital wayfinding.

Bad Headlines

I hate when I am hijacked into reading a story because of a Bad Headline. Nothing screams amateur hour more than a sensational hed that baits you but then delivers nada.

Read this beauty from Huffington Post: "Biden to be Barred from Democratic Caucus Meetings".
Barred? Does the writer/producer know the meaning of barred? Willingly returning to the rules prior to VP Cheney is not being barred from attending. Sheesh.

Spitzer: The Unapologetic Pundit

Ha! Talk about ethics, integrity and honesty. Disgraced governor, Eliot Spitzer, is now a columnist for Slate, an online magazine owned by the Washington Post Company (you know the company that used to employ journalists!) Is it too soon? well if train-wreck watchers turn to him en masse, it will be a boon for Slate -- and yet another outlet for disgraced pols, celebs & who-ha's.

Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin Between the Covers

Great article by The New York Times guest opinionator Timothy Evans who implores manglers of the English language like Joe the Plumber and former Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin to stop the madness and tear up those publishing contracts. Now the chances of them doing that are as likely as Palin not uttering a sentence like the following:

I had great faith that, you know, perhaps when that voter entered that voting booth and closed that curtain that what would kick in for them was, perhaps, a bold step that would have to be taken in casting a vote for us, but having to put a lot of faith in that commitment we tried to articulate that we were the true change agent that would progress this nation.

In case you had wondered, the transcription is no better than the aural interview, you still need a crypto guy and perhaps a firewire into her brain to decode. So it does cause pause to ask why would a publisher do this? Why indeed. The book will sell.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recently announced that it was suspending acquisitions of new textbook manuscripts. And while the industry was aghast, it should look in its own mirror; the bestsellers have more to do with writers (or subjects) having a built-in audience than they do prosaic ability. In these tough times publishers want to know they have a hit -- and a loyal following is the first -- and perhaps only criteria.

What is a good writer to do? Well, all is not bad news. The Web has provided a democratic forum for we smiths of the word to hone our wares and develop our audiences. With social networking tools like blogs and Twitter we can create, market and build ourselves into a brand. And then again, we could always have a press conference, make outrageous claims and mangle the English language. Digg it?

Social Networks & Ethics

A friend of mine has this very bright and ambitious young man working for him, who creates a pseudonym for social networking sites to go "undercover" for his company -- engaging in conversations with people without them knowing his identity -- or phishing for information. My friend is mortified and asked me to provide some guidelines that he could post.

The principal guideline is simple: be honest and maintain integrity.

We started our blog Behind the Curtains four years ago, which was way ahead of the curve. We had one rule -- you had to be honest. The derivatives were: If we saw the post somewhere else first -- cite it -- and better yet, link to it. And if we had never sat on a certain designer couch before we couldn't claim its comfort. We could say i bet it is comfy -- or it looks like it would sit like a park bench, but we couldn't state it with authority. (The main site, Pure Contemporary, follows AP-style and avoids first-person claims altogether.)

My Dad used to say to me -- before you do something think, "would I do this if my parents were present?" The same should be used in blog posts, comments, community sites and others -- what would happen if my peers, colleagues or employer were to associate me with this comment? Will I or my company be irreparably harmed?

Whether it is social networking, being a journalist, maintaining a good relationship with customers, your credibility is all you have. Destroy it at your peril.