Author: Newspaper Project

By Greg Bensinger and Brian Womack
Bloomberg.com

Publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News may pull some of their stories from Google Inc.’s news site, a move that would emulate News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch.

News Corp. is considering blocking Google’s search engine from displaying its news articles and is talking to Microsoft Corp. about displaying stories on its Bing site, people familiar with the situation said yesterday.

MediaNews Group Inc., the Post’s publisher, will block Google News when it starts charging readers in Pennsylvania and California for online content next year, Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton said in an interview. Morning News owner A.H. Belo Corp. may also introduce online subscription fees and also block Google, Executive Vice President James Moroney said.

“The things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic,” Singleton said.

Newspaper publishers, grappling with a collapse in the print-ad market, are considering Web-site charges and are pushing back against Google, which displays headlines and excerpts from stories on its free news site. . . READ FULL STORY

By Erik Sass
mediapost.com

Newspaper publishers hoping to staunch the flow of ad dollars out of the medium got some help this week from a Scarborough Research study, which found that 74% of American adults either read the newspaper or visit a newspaper Web site at least once a week.

These data indicate newspapers still enjoy considerable reach; whether advertisers will be impressed by these figures is another story.

Scarborough’s latest Integrated Newspaper Audience study revealed that 171 million American adults read a newspaper’s print or online version at least once a week.

What’s more, well-heeled and well-educated consumers index even higher in newspaper readership, with 79% of white-collar workers, 82% of adults with household incomes over $100,000 per year, and 84% of college graduates reading print or online newspaper content at least once a week.

Of course, newspapers are still faced with a long-term decline in print readership, but the print versions still reach tens of millions of American adults. Commenting on the findings, Gary Meo, Scarborough’s vice president of print and digital media services, stated: “While our data does show that print newspaper readership is slowly declining… given the fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well.”

Impressive online figures show that at least in terms of audience — newspapers have successfully transitioned to digital media.

According to a separate study by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America, between the first half of 2004 and the first half of 2009, newspaper Web sites’ total unique audience almost doubled from a monthly average of 41,147,206 to 71,831,867.

In terms of active reach, altogether, newspaper Web sites jumped from 27.1% of all U.S. Internet users in the first six months of 2004 to 41.8% of all Internet users in the first six months of 2009. . . READ FULL STORY

By Bob Powers
Bostonglobe.com

New Product, Powered by Adobe AIR, Provides Offline/Online Convenience

The Boston Globe announced today the formal launch of GlobeReader, a digital version of The Boston Globe newspaper that can be read offline or online. GlobeReader replaces the preview edition that had been available since this summer to all Boston Globe subscribers at no charge.

Through GlobeReader the content of the Globe is downloaded daily to a user’s desktop, laptop or netbook, in a format designed to resemble the look and feel of the print version of The Boston Globe. Enhancements to the preview edition include the addition of comics, sports scores, weather and the daily crossword puzzle. Various product and design improvements have also been incorporated.

“Reader response to the preview edition of the GlobeReader has been very encouraging. Now we’re pleased to offer GlobeReader to the public at large,” said Chris Mayer, senior vice president, circulation and operations, The Boston Globe. “It is important for our business to offer Globe news and information on a variety of platforms that appeal to a variety of market segments.”

GlobeReader is available at a fee of $4.98 per week. A bundle including home delivery in the Boston metro area of the Sunday Globe plus 7-day access to the GlobeReader is offered at the same price. For the Globe’s seven-day newspaper subscribers, it is included at no additional cost.

Designed for people who enjoy reading the news, GlobeReader combines the familiarity of The Boston Globe newspaper format with the convenience of a digital product. . . READ FULL STORY

By Jack Loechner
Center for Media Research
mediapost.com

American Press Institute, with ITZ Publishing and Belden Interactive, recently published initial results of a study designed to help Newspaper executives understand the current peer practices in generating revenue from digital content, the various pay models, success levels, and approaches to issues like site registration, electronic editions and tracking original content across the Web.

Among the preliminary findings, nearly 60% of respondents are considering initiating paid access for currently open/free news and information online, and nearly 25% expect to implement a paid strategy in the next six months. This is a big change, says the report, considering that 90% of the responding newspapers currently do not charge for content, and only 3% currently have a paid-only site.

Capturing new revenue and preserving print are likely the key drivers of any final decision to adopt a paid-content strategy. 34% of respondents think capturing new revenue opportunities is or will be the most important factor, while 28% think it is or will be preserving print circulation.

Most of the respondents overlook the opportunities and discount the convenience of e-editions, which give users the experience of reading a newspaper online. Most are not charging for e-editions or are not charging enough:

– Only 67% offer an electronic edition of the paper on their Web sites
– 59% of those offer it free to their print subscribers
– The median price for an online-only subscription is $5.99 a month.
– The median up-charge price, for those who offer it to print subscribers, is $4.99 a month

Current prices for online subscriptions strongly suggest that “convenience” pricing is generally in play, not tied to rigorous price analysis or research into what people are willing to pay. . . READ FULL STORY

By Lloyd Grove
DailyBeast.com

His publishing unit is trouble. The spinoff of AOL is at hand. CEO Jeffrey Bewkes talks exclusively with The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove about the future of the media business.

Jeffrey Bewkes seemed eager to unveil a brand-new business strategy for Time Warner Inc., the careworn media giant he’s been running for the past 22 months.

“Actually we’ve been hiding this, and you should be the one to break the news,” Bewkes told me in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast. “We are going to buy and roll up all the railroads in the United States. Then we’re going to put flat screens in all of the freight boxcars, because we think that anybody in a recession like this, who’s actually hitching a ride on a boxcar, could become a very loyal viewer of some of our programming. And later, we might be able to sell them something. That’s our theory.”

Warner’s 57-year-old chairman and chief executive was joking, of course—giving his facetious take on the supposed synergy that results from marrying content to distribution. Comcast’s quest to buy NBC Universal is only the latest example. In a wide-ranging conversation, Bewkes also:

– declared himself bullish on Big Media—especially (no surprise here) Time Warner’s prospects and the “branded multichannel cable networks” with distinct programming personalities, such as Fox News, MTV, and HBO.

– suggested that mass-audience broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC have a business model that’s “increasingly becoming not viable.”

– reiterated his defense of Time Inc., the company’s troubled publishing unit, and stoutly denied rumors of plans to turn the magazines (with the exception of People and Sports Illustrated) into purely digital enterprises. “Absolutely not,” he said.

– predicted widespread paid content for news Web sites within the next two years. “I think what is not viable—literally not viable—is advertising-support-only free content in journalism.”

Bewkes predicted that people will soon become accustomed to using a variety of technologies, both paid and free, to view movies, read magazines and newspapers, watch television and otherwise consume their favorite media. . . READ FULL STORY

By Alan Mutter
newsosaur.blogspot.com

The resolve to charge for most interactive content is dissolving at some newspapers, potentially thwarting the plans of other publishers who still hope to erect pay walls on their sites.

Despite determined statements by several publishers earlier this year that they intended to make consumers pay for the valuable content newspapers have given away for more than a decade, the managers of some newspapers have come to realize that they can’t afford to lose the traffic that pay walls almost certainly would turn away.

So, the executives are scrapping plans to charge for most, if any, of their content. The latest thinking – which, of course, is far from unanimous across the industry – is illustrated in two fresh data points:

– Goli Sheikholeslami, the general manager of WashingtonPost.Com, told a conference at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard last week that “not enough people are willing to pay” to make the sale of online content a viable business. “If could get 5 million people to pay me to visit my site each month, I would be done,” she said. But Sheikholeslami said she has no hope of doing so.

– Although Hearst Corp. attracted headlines in February when its top newspaper executive said he aimed to start charging for content, Mark Adkins, the president of the San Francisco Chronicle, told me last week that “we believe in being a free website” but plan to develop supplementary “premium content we will charge for.” . . . READ FULL STORY

By Daniel Gross
Slate.com

Recent data provided newspaper lovers with fodder for despair and newspaper haters with fodder for glee. As Reuters reported, citing Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, “Average weekday circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to about 30.4 million copies for the six months that ended on Sept. 30, 2009 from the same period last year.” “Those numbers take my breath away,” said Josh Marshall. “A ten percent decline year over year is the rate of a mode of distribution going out of existence.” Kevin Drum of Mother Jones reaffirmed his view that newspapers would be gone by 2025. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic declared, “I think we’re witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it.”

Chillax, people.

At some point in the future, newspapers may disappear. But count me in the later rather than sooner camp. And I can’t help but think that many newspaper-doomsayers are conflating hope with analysis. According to many of the digerati, newspapers and other printed matter that people pay for through clunky old distribution systems (the mail, kids on bicycles, vans) can never make money and are bound to fail, while publications distributed online for free are destined to rule the world. (Of course, I could be guilty of the same impulse. I have feet in both worlds and could no more choose between print and the Web than I could choose between my two children.) But I also think this might be a case of making too much of a few numbers and ignoring some important ones.

First of all, there’s nothing ipso facto shocking about a decline in patronage of 10 percent in six months. Many political blogs and cable news shows have seen their audiences fall by much more than 10 percent since the feverish fall of 2008. And advertising at plenty of online publications has fallen by a similar amount. In case anybody has forgotten, we’ve had a deep, long recession, a huge spike in unemployment, and a credit crunch. Consumers have cut back sharply on all sorts of expenditures. . . READ FULL STORY

By Erik Sass
mediapost.com

An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40% of all active U.S. Internet users, according to the Newspaper Association of America, citing research performed by Nielsen Online.

This is the most unique visitors recorded since the NAA and Nielsen began tracking newspaper Web site audiences in 2004; the previous record was 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.

Although year-over-year comparisons are difficult because of a big increase in Nielsen’s panel size in June, the active-reach figure appears to be remaining stable, as newspaper Web sites have hovered around 40% for the last two years.

Meanwhile, the actual number of unique visitors in the third quarter of 2009 represents an increase of about 8.5% over the third quarter of 2008, when they came in at around 68.2 million.

This growth is good news for newspapers, especially since it comes in an “off” news year — one without Olympics or closely contested elections. Last year, some analysts expressed concern that newspaper Web site numbers would remain depressed after reaching record highs in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. But these fears have proven unfounded, as newspaper Web site audiences continue to grow. . . READ FULL STORY

By Tom Foremski
siliconvalleywatcher.com

Hat tip to Danny Sullivan for pointing out the above panel at Web 2.0 Summit, which featured Robert Thomson, Wall Street Journal chief, and Marrissa Mayer head of search products at Google, plus Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times Company, and Eric Hippeau from the Huffington Post, moderated by John Battelle. Title: “Whither Journalism.”

Video – Web 2.0 Summit 09: “Discussion: Whither Journalism?”

The reason this discussion is interesting is because Mr Thomson is a close confidant of Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp and one of the leaders in trying to create new business models for online journalism. One of those ways is to create a paywall – to charge for content.

This has been criticized by many online pundits who believe content should be free and that Mr Murdoch, and others that want to charge for content won’t succeed.

This is a ridiculous argument because it doesn’t address the issue of how content is created and the costs in creating content. An army of citizen journalists won’t be able to fill the gap caused by fewer professional journalists. We have to figure out a way to pay for professional journalism.

At the beginning of the discussion Mr Thomson gets to the point right away, when he makes the distinction between content creators and content aggregators and point out that the cost burden is being shouldered by the content creators. . .

. . . Producing original content is very expensive. Trawling web sites and taking the headline and top paragraph of a story is dirt cheap. The difference between costs for content creators and content aggregators is very large indeed.

The Huffington Post gets a ton of content for free. The New York Times has more people moderating its comments than The Huff Post has journalists on its masthead. Yet the Huff Post couldn’t exist without the content creators. Clearly there is a large mismatch here.

The tragedy is that on either side of the equation there isn’t enough money to pay for the content creation. . . READ FULL STORY

Original story by Joe Strupp, Editor and Publisher
posted from mediapost.com

For newspapers, it increasingly looks like local is golden. A new National Newspaper Association survey found that 81% of respondents read a local weekly paper each week, and those readers spend an average of 40 minutes with the paper. About three-quarters say they read “most or all of” the publication.

The NNA survey, co-sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism, surveyed 500 adults. Researchers also found that readers, on average, share their paper with 2.36 others and nearly 40% keep their community newspaper more than a week. Almost half say there are days they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the news.

How about online? Only 12% say they often read local news online. . . READ FULL STORY