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Digital Edge Blog: To Print, or Not to Print…
 An internal discussion about how NAA distributes reports (and the online-only vs. print debate) became even more important when the head of a member newspaper called asking for a print copy of a report about building the online audience.
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Borrell: Online Political Ad Spending Remains Low Despite Online Activism
Calling the Web “the Dennis Kicinich of media outlets,” MediaPost reported online spending on political advertising will remain significantly far behind traditional media outlets – especially television. Borrell Associates reported broadcast television will sell $2.9 billion in political ads (60 percent of the total), with most of the remainder going to newspapers (17 percent), radio (10 percent) and cable television (5 percent). Spending on the Web could be less than 1 percent of total spending this election cycle, according to the Borrell report.
“One key reason is that older, affluent voters remain the core of candidates' political support, according to the Borrell report,” MediaPost reported. “The best way to reach the over-55 crowd is still TV, since most of that group spends less than an hour per week online.”
Sources: MediaPost, Borrell Associates
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Campaigning for Ads: How Newspaper Web Sites Can Increase Political Advertising Revenue
 Newspapers can leverage packaging and knowledge to draw more political advertising online, especially with local elections, but some analysts are unsure whether newspapers are doing enough to sell their Web sites as potential places for candidates to advertise. This Newspaper Association of America report gives insight from newspaper executives and political analysts on how to maximize political campaign spending on newspaper Web sites.
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Scripps Co. Launches Political Social Networking Site
Scripps Co. opened a politically-oriented social networking Web site last week called “RedBlueAmerica.” The site features social networking tools such as personal profiles, as well as news, blogs, video, and an online poll called “Truth or Not.”
Source: Business Courier via The Editors Weblog, Scripps
HBO’s ‘The Wire’ Producer Simon: Does the News Matter to Anyone Anymore?
With a frustrated tone, HBO’s “The Wire” Executive Producer David Simon wrote in the Sunday Washington Post about his 12 years as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and the decline of “high-end” journalism. The following is an excerpt:
“We had seen a future of substance in bylines and column inches. Immortality lay in a five-part series with sidebars in the Tribune, the Sun, the Register, the Post, the Express. What the hell happened? I mean, I understand the economic pressures on newspapers. At this point, along with the rest of the wood-pulp Luddites, I've grasped that what was on the Internet wasn't merely advertising for journalism, but the journalism itself. …
“Is there still high-end journalism? Of course. A lot of fine journalists are still laboring in the vineyard, some of them in Baltimore. But at even the more serious newspapers in most markets, high-end journalism doesn't take the form of consistent and sophisticated coverage of issues, but of special projects and five-part series on selected topics — a distraction designed not to convince readers that a newspaper aggressively brings the world to them each day, but to convince a prize committee that someone, somewhere, deserves a plaque. And so here we are.”
Source: The Washington Post
GateHouse Brings Local Retail Shopping Online with Yokel
Shopping and searching will come to GateHouse Media newspapers in a new way through a partnership with Yokel, GateHouse Media announced.
Powered by Yokel’s business directory services, GateHouse will launch searchable local shopping online sections on all its newspaper Web sites. “The locally-targeted retail program will be branded as WickedLocal Shopping in GateHouse’s more than 100 Boston-based Web sites and print publications and TotallyLocal Shopping across its hundreds of other community-based properties in more than 23 states,” according to a GateHouse Media press release. “Shop.TotallyLocal.com and Shop.WickedLocal.com, once integrated with their respective local community Web sites, will combine to make it easy for shoppers to find specific products in stores near them and for local retailers to offer their products and services to these shoppers, online and in print.”
Source: GateHouse Media
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The Newspaper Online Shopping Report: Online Relationships with Retailers
Last summer, the Newspaper Association of America published a report on the challenges, opportunities and importance of creating local shopping directories on newspaper Web sites. The report, called “ The Newspaper Online Shopping Report: Online Relationships with Retailers,” by Peter Krasilovsky (now of The Kelsey Group), is free to NAA members. | |
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Quotes of the Day: Zell, O’Shea on Newspaper Staff Cuts
“Going forward, by definition, there will be a lot of changes. I do not believe that anybody can grow a business by reducing the number of employees. It is not our game plan to, in effect, try and figure out how few people we can have run this business. The focus of everything that we're going to do is directed at one thing: generating more revenue.”
- New Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell last week at a question-and-answer session with Hartford Courant staffers. Zell’s comments came just days before The Los Angeles Times Editor James O’Shea was reportedly “forced out” because he refused to cut even more jobs at the newspaper.
“The current system relies too heavily on voodoo economics and not enough on the creativity and resourcefulness of journalists. … A dollar's worth of smart investment is worth far more than a barrel of budget cuts.”
-- James O’Shea in an e-mail to The Los Angeles Times newsroom about his termination, which the newspaper announced Sunday. O’Shea’s departure was related to disagreements about the newspaper’s budget. |
Atlantic Magazine Web Site Ends Paid Access
The Atlantic monthly magazine took down the payment wall yesterday on its Web site. The move was part of a larger effort for the Web site to become “a publication in its own right” instead of just a “marketing arm for the print magazine,” said Editor James Bennet in an article on Paidcontent.org. In the past year, the Web site has quadrupled traffic under the guidance of Andrew Sullivan (formerly of TIME magazine), by adding blogs and other substantive content. Bennet expects traffic to increase again this year.
Source: Paidcontent.org
Triblocal Expands
Tribune Co. launched an additional 13 Triblocal Web sites, more than doubling the number of sites in the network, The Editors Weblog reported. Triblocal, a set of community-oriented Web sites covering Chicagoland, first launched in 2007. With the new sites, Triblocal now covers 21 communities. By the end of 2008, the Tribune Co. plans to have 35 Triblocal sites operating. Some Web content is published in print and distributed with the Chicago Tribune newspaper weekly.
Source: The Editors Weblog
FCC Spectrum Auction Starts Thursday; Could Draw Record Bids from Google, AT&T, Verizon
The Federal Communications Commission auction for a “highly valuable swath of the nation’s airways” will start Thursday, and analysts are seeing big dollar signs from Google, AT&T and Verizon.
“The radio spectrum licenses, which are to be returned from television broadcasters as they complete their conversion from analog to digital signals in February 2009, are as coveted as oil reserves are to energy companies,” The New York Times reported. “They will provide the winners with access to some of the best remaining spectrum — enabling them to send signals farther from a cell tower with far less power, through dense walls in cities, and over wider territories in rural areas that are now underserved.”
Bids for available spectrum licenses in 2006 hit a record $13.6 billion, and bids this year are expected to easily exceed that.
Source: The New York Times
Dutch Company Creates Foldable Digital Screen for Mobile Phones
Dutch company Polymer Vision has solved a screen size challenge by creating a screen that folds up when not in use, The Washington Post reported. Unfolded, the screen is 5 inches; folded up, the device is no larger than other mobile phones. The “Readius” will be on sale this summer, and it is meant to compete with the Apple iPhone and the Amazon e-book reader Kindle.
"You get the large display of e-reading, the super battery life of e-reading, and the high-end connectivity ... and the form factor and weight of a mobile phone," CEO of Polymer Vision Karl McGoldrick told the Post.
Source: The Washington Post
New CPI Database Shows Connections between Official Statements on Iraq, WMDs
A new database-powered Web site from the Center for Public Integrity, a public policy research group focusing on government ethics, now allows people to search for phrases in documents and other materials from the two years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The database “[connects] the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons,” The New York Times reported. “There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war.”
Source: The New York Times
NAA Marketing Conference: Digital Media Session Details
There is still time to register for this year’s Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference, Feb. 24 – 27 in Orlando. The Program Planning Committee has taken care to ensure that the education sessions provide both a good balance of specific how-to’s you can take back and put to work immediately at your paper, and information on future trends, new products and innovations. Examples of sessions that will help you grow your audience and enhance revenue include:
- Can Money Buy News Innovation?: Four winners of the Knight News Challenge Awards discuss their innovative ideas and progress in the areas of community-oriented design; online games that inform and engage citizens; a community news platform that incorporates advertising, reverse publishing and professional and community journalism; and ways to engage young people in the 2008 election campaigns through newspaper digital mediums.
- Taking Your Website Revenue to the Next Level: Hear experts talk about new ways for newspapers to generate significant revenue in untraditional ways, including more targeted ad delivery; website video and photographs; alliances with major players on the web; and delivering mobile content portable devices.
- Why Newspaper Online Audience is Worth the Investment: Learn how to equip your sales teams and management with the proper understanding of the value your newspaper’s digital/web audience while maximizing your selling ability!
For more information and to register for the conference, visit www.naa.org/marketingconference.