Monthly Archives: March 2008
First, the bad news
Nothing like a bit of Silicon Alley Insider gloom for a Monday morning. So here's a piece about US newspapers experiencing their worst drop in paid advertising revenue for 50 years. It serves as a reasonable opener to Eric Alterman's excellent essay in The New Yorker: Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper.
Posted in Business Models, Newspapers Tagged advertising, Newspapers, nytimes, revenue, the new yorker, websites Leave a comment
Mistakes are built into the system
I've had a few interesting conversations this week about quality control in newsrooms, in part sparked by the diagram I posted last week showing how many pairs of hands various kinds of news stories go through before being published. One thing that came up was how irritated people are by the number of typos regularly seen on news websites - including nzherald.co.nz and stuff.co.nz. As Nathan said in a recent comment, "I generally expect better of professionals."
Tips on using social networks in medialand
A few tips on using social media from BBC blogger Robin Hamman: "Social media isn't something you add to a website, it's something you do. When I look back over the social media projects I've been involved in over the years, it's obvious that the key variable upon which success, or failure, is dependent is to what extent social media has actually been integrated into the overall editorial proposition."
Outsourcing ads and consolidating sales
Another one for the outsourcing archive: a Fort Worth, Texas, newspaper, the Star-Telegram, is joining the ranks of US newspapers outsourcing advertising artwork to India. The paper is transferring 26 ad artist jobs to a US company working out of New Delhi.
NY Times tribute to Dith Pran