With newspapers and magazines folding virtually every week now in the face of a global economic crisis Clay Shirky is comparing the scope of change being experienced by the rise of online publishing's challenge to newspapers to the tumultuous change sparked by the rise of printing presses nearly five hundred years ago. From my perspective I think that the scope is actually far broader than that. As I outline in the Content Nation book, the scope of change fomented by the rise of online publishing is likely historical on an even broader scale, a scale perhaps never seen since the rise of centralized publishing by the world's first recorded civilizations thousands of years ago.

Whatever the ultimate breadth of the challenges facing traditional publishers, one thing is for certain: timidity in addressing the challenges presented by online publishing has not served them well. This timidity reflects not just in the online portals offered by most traditional media companies but as well in their print strategies. You'd think that some of the lessons learned from online publishing would have worked their way into print offerings a long time ago. Yet more than two years after Wired Magazine offered its users the ability to put their own photo on a customized cover of their magazine (part of a promotion by Xerox), the mass customization of print remains largely a novelty in the eyes of most mass media publishers. But there are glimmers of hopeful signs that publishers may be getting ready to push further on into print customization.

One recent sign of hope for mass customization is a new offering from Time, Inc.'s consumer media group called MINE, a service that allows people to build their own custom magazines from articles found in eight of their leading consumer publications. The actual customization seems to be quite limited at this point - you may specify your address, your age, up to five Time-owned magazines that you'd like to have content from and provide answers to four questions that indicate your presumed tastes (Like sushi or pizza? Sing in the shower? Would you like to learn juggling or celebrity impersonation? Would you like to have dinner with Leonardo da Vinci or Socrates?). From these choices Time will pop out articles tailored to your profile in five issues of your MINE magazine print or digital form, all for free (Lexus appears to be the major sponsor for this effort).

On the scale of today's print offerings this is a fairly bold experiment, enabling Time brands normally built up separately through their various flagship publications to comingle in a common publication. It echoes in some ways the use of The Wall Street Journal's branded business content in some local newspaper editions, but with a level of customization not seen heretofore the editorial side of a magazine cover. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki notes tongue in cheek in a recent Twitter message that perhaps it's even a copy of his Alltop's "online magazine rack" of popular topics concept. While I wouldn't discount that self-flattering comparison of Guy's entirely, I think that it's far more likely that Time has finally started to consider a broader range of lessons from online publications - albeit a bit late in the game - and how they may apply to their traditional strengths as direct marketing mavens.

The truth is that Time has been customizing both editorial and ad copy for years based on zip codes and other key demographic groupings. It may not be apparent to the typical person flipping through Sports Illustrated or whatever, but oftentimes they're highly tailored publications. With the technology in place already to do this type of customization on a per-title basis, it's a relatively small step to stage content on a more granular level from multiple titles into MINE issues. So in most respects MINE is an evolutionary step towards enabling multi-branded content in one delivery package. In a way MINE is akin to a "my [name of portal]" type of customization that has been part of online offerings for more than a decade - not only just evolutionary from a print perspective but old, old news from an online perspective.

So while MINE is a positive development, why is it that it is taking traditional publishers so long to develop business models that make more efficient use of print technology as a content delivery system? I for one don't believe that print is at all a dead medium: it's just a horribly neglected medium that has been allowed to die in the hands of very inefficient business models as all of the publishing efficiencies flow to online venues. Reprint services demonstrate every day that print can be a highly effective and profitable targeted communications medium. Yet most publishers derive single percentage digits of their revenues from custom printing. Hmm, tiny slivers of highly profitable printing versus huge swaths of increasingly unprofitable printing...what's wrong with this picture?

It's great that Time is trying out the market for custom aggregations of its own content, but let's he honest - publishers need to be far, far more aggressive in packaging their content in personalized publications tailored for individuals. Unfortunately for some publishers, the greatest opportunities in custom printing lie with those who are willing to let other business models drive the aggregation technologies that make that possible. Some of those business models may yet wind up in the hands of major publishers, but it's far more likely that after years of whining and wrestling, newspaper and magazine publishers will finally surrender to the notion that enabling their content to be licensed through whatever print or print-like electronic vehicle services their audience most effectively is going to be the most profitable and effective way for their print-formatted content to gain exposure. Applying the lessons of the Web to print must be a priority for print publications to survive and to thrive.

While I agree with Clay Shirky that the triviality of making electronic copies of content has changed the economics of the publishing business fundamentally, until some electronic medium has the simplicity, ease and readability of print publications there will be a highly exploitable market for print. In many instances people love to curl up in a time of relaxation to catch up with a print publication, oftentimes on a weekend or during travel. It's a luxury to spend time reading "unplugged" content - a luxury that will only be spent on a handful of print publications. Why not enable people to put whatever content will be of interest to them into that luxury experience? Branded portals for publishers are becoming less and less of a driver for building online revenues: why shouldn't publishers become more aggressive in putting their audiences in the driver's seat for aggregating the content that's of interest to them in print as well?

So kudos for Time testing the waters for their MINE publication, but I do hope that major publishers will finally begin to see the light and start enabling the printing of massively customized print and print-formatted publications that aggregate content from whatever sources interest their audiences the most. The result will be far higher ad rates, far higher returns on investment and a much more healthy print publishing business in the long run. Let's stop allowing printing presses to go dark in major cities just because the one publishing company running them cannot build a business model to support them. Let those printing presses role with whatever content will command the highest interest from audiences from whatever sources produce it, and the money will follow with due haste.

Labels: Business Information, Custom Printing, Inc., Lexus, Mass media, New York Times, Newspaper, personalization, Publishing, Time

Widget distribution networks are becoming a popular vehicle for major content distributors to get their content in context in weblogs, personal Web pages, portals and other content outlets. The New York Times joins the list of self-service widget distributors today with the beta launch of its Times Widgets feature. Using a simple point-and-click online form anyone can select NYT headlines from any of their more than 10,000 topical RSS feeds and get code that you can insert into your favorite publishing software or enjoy a one-click insert into iGoogle, Blogger, Vox or Netvibes. The net result is a display of recent headlines from one or more feeds, each with its own tabbed display. The popular Gigya widget distribution service provides the widget plumbing for Times Widgets, which promises that more platforms can be added as instant-add options soon enough.

It's a great positioning for the NYT's RSS feed content, which is popular enough with RSS enthusiasts but not necessarily getting the referral links out to the pages of news enthusiasts as quickly as news organizations would like. The problem is a familiar one: even with a very simple feed like RSS, only a small percentage of people are willing to do the minor heavy lifting to put an RSS feed into a useful place. Feeds are great, but the technologies to get them into useful places easily have been lagging. Widgets make it easy to manage feeds as part of a published page, ensuring not just the exposure of content but the ability to do more things with a widget payload over time.

It will also make it easier for the NYT to get come data as to which people using widgets are worth approaching to be advertising partners as well: there's nothing to say that money-making content cannnot be in those widget payloads, after all. Moves like the Times Widgets beta are examples of how publishers can use widget distribution technologies to open doors both to referral links and to advertising partners that can add value to their brands in a far more cost-effective way than traditional business development efforts. Not a bad deal for just a little bit of development effort. Kudos, folks, the building may have to go but with efforts like this there are good reasons to hope that mainstream news content can find its most valuable contexts more efficiently than ever.

Labels: embedding, gigya, New York Times, News, widgets

I am looking forward to moderating a panel for the SIIA on the 19th that will focus on cloud computing and its impact on publishing. I am particularly pleased that we have a balance of publishers and technology companies that will be able to address the issue from both a media perspective and an enterprise perspective, an aspect that should be of particular interest to SIIA members. Marc Frons, CTO of The New York Times, Larry Schwartz, the President of Newstex, Charles Matheson of EMC and Matt Turner of Mark Logic will provide a multi-dimensional view of how important cloud computing will be to shaping the competitive landscape of the content industry. Please register soon for this event.

Below are the preliminary questions that I've assembled for our panel, if you have additional or alternative questions that you'd like to have asked please add them to the comments of this post. See you on the 19th in NYC - or online via the webcast!

1. How does your company use cloud computing to provide better services for your clients/audiences? How do your clients/audiences benefit from it? What really is the cloud from your perspective?

2. The key advantages of cloud computing revolve around scalability, economy, ease of deployment, and ease of content and services integration. Which of these are offering you and your clients the most “bang for the buck?”

3. Why should enterprise and media oriented publishers care about cloud computing? What real advantages can it provide to them in the marketplace?

4. When we say “cloud computing” there are three basic types of networks that can support content from cloud computing: enterprise networks, public networks, clouds that combine both enterprise and public networks. Looking at how enterprises are using cloud computing to access content, how open are they today to using cloud computing to combine their internal and external content resources?

5. A cloud is only as good as its ability to have access to everything that ought to be in it. Where are we doing well and where are we falling short today in making seamless access to content in cloud computing a reality? How is content affecting the way in which people think of content aggregation?

6. Cloud computing offers many companies the ability to scale up new content services inside and outside the enterprise very rapidly. If this is so, then how does a company allocate its proprietary technology resources most effectively to compete with potential competitors that can take advantage of the same scalability? Does cloud computing enable more publishers and enterprises to scale up more cost-effectively to be mid-sized and even large competitors more rapidly?

7. Thinking of everything that we’ve discussed today, what would be your recommendations for the best ways for enterprise and media publishers to approach cloud computing?

Labels: cloud computing, emc, mark logic, New York Times, newstex, panel, siia brown bag

Were we surprised that Dow Jones CEO Richard Zannino will be stepping aside for News International executive chairman Les Hinton, key exec for New Corp's business and mainstream news operations?

Nope.

Was it any small surprise that Gordon Crovitz, President of Dow Jones Consumer Media and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, would be leaving along with Zannino?

Hardly.

With a changing of the guard at the top of News Corp expected and Murdoch itchy to start transforming his new property to compete with other quickly moving global news outlets it only makes sense for Richard and Gordon to move on ASAP. This is of course no reflection on their ability to guide one of the world's premium business content brands into a highly profitable stance in the business media marketplace. This duo has to be credited with managing to maintain both an institution and a highly profitable and growing audience through some of the most challenging times in publishing history. But the new boss in town rivals New York Yankees baseball "Boss" George Steinbrenner for his fixation on goals and results. Lip service to tradition, yes, but hitting your mark comes first.

The goal: build the most sophisticated and recognized global brand of business news that can be wrapped around leading executives' decision-making processes in whatever context matters most to them and to monetize it in whatever way hits the bottom line best. Pride in subscription online portals and "the value of real journalism" be damned, it's the first to crack this converging marketplace that wins the gold. And Murdoch is not alone. With Reuters teaming up with The New York Times' International Herald Tribune to deliver business news in IHT's global daily news outlet and Bloomberg, LP choosing a media investments specialist for its top spot the marketplace for business media and information is shaping up to be increasingly complex. Add on The New York Times' stellar traffic growth since dropping its subscription firewall
and it's anyone's game to build a new dominant position in business news and information services.

The odd leg out in this discussion so far, though, is Dow Jones Enterprise Media, AKA Factiva plus the remnants of Dow Jones' enterprise feeds business. The opportunity is for News Corp to enable a more aggressive melding of enterprise and media services as the differences between today's business media outlets and today's enterprise portals begin to narrow. No word yet as to whether Clare Hart is expected to move on, but with relatively little expertise within News Corp in managing subscription business information database services she may wind up being a well-positioned player - that is, if some of the industry's other merging interests don't tantalize her more than playing NewsCorp Survivor. With an established global base of clients Factiva is likely to become an important fulcrum as NewsCorp tries to leverage its way further into global business information circles.

There's a lot yet to unfold in this fascinating merger, but already we can see that promises of journalistic integrity in Murdoch's world view are not synonymous with the status quo for journalists in any sense of the word. In may ways this may turn out to be a great plus, as Dow Jones journalists get to play out their careers in an increasingly sophisticated global marketplace. In the meantime it's time for U.S. business journalists of all stripes to recognize that as much as they have been biting the hand that's fed them pretty well all these recent years this hand has been mightily slow in creating better long-term career options for them. Certainly not everyone will be happy with these impending changes at Dow Jones and some "old guard" insight is surely going to be lost along with this increased global nimbleness but there's no time to waste if NewsCorp is to make the most of the Dow Jones family of content brands. In this landscape the purity of outdated methods can be no match for the purity of mastering new ones.

Labels: Bloomberg, Business Information, business media, Dow Jones, New York Times, News Corp, Reuters, Thomson

When Seattle-based Newsvine launched in Beta form last January we documented its promise enthusiastically and kept a close eye on it. Not surprisingly so did a number of hot prospects for financing a profitable exit, including MSNBC, which Newsvine has announced in its own story as its new owner. No details are available at this time about the size of the deal or how Newsvine will be integrated into MSNBC.com, but MSNBC News' estimate of USD 75 million seems about right given Newsvine's position in the social news marketplace and there are promises by MSNBC to keep Newsvine an independent entity for now.

It's a pretty good first acquisition for MSNBC.com, which is a humdrum online news portal that trails major outlets for cable news such as CNN.com and Foxnews.com by significant margins and seems to be caught in a major identity crisis. Unlike the online portals for CNN and Fox News, MSNBC.com is obliged to promote the broadcast NBC news properties more than the MSNBC cable unit, drawing away precious attention span to TV shows that have little to do with core online audience demographics. Add in an alliance with Newsweek magazine for feature content and the marketing muddle for the MSNBC.com brand gets no more clear.

Newsvine itself is not a traffic leader in overall visits amongst social news outlets and struggles to build momentum behind an intensely loyal core of news, opinion and bookmark contributors. But unlike other social news outlets Newsvine features a maturing mix of original content along with links to external news stories, a combination that will help MSNBC.com to build inventories of unique destination content and a network of popular online personalities that could be leveraged via MSNBC's cable outlet to build visibility for the community. Newsvine has had a few minor but noteworthy news scoops of its own - a member on the scene of the Virginia Tech shootings broke the initial details of the event - but the strength of the community tends to be a core of contributors who opine on and spin key topics in politics, religion, world events and popular culture. With a reasonable mix of views across the spectrum and the ability for talented writers to expand on their thoughts in their own pieces Newsvine offers a rich mix of content that's sure to complement any mainstream news outlet's offerings if managed effectively.

What Newsvine gets most out of this deal is a parent who's willing to put a little more muscle behind an organization that's been challenged to keep up with itself. With only a staff of six and an editorial policy that requires regular and timely monitoring and intervention by senior Newsvine staff to keep controversial content and comments from spinning out of control Newsvine suffers from the typical startup myopia that keeps it from looking at larger prizes at its disposal. Newsvine's features generally do a good job of promoting engaging content to the attention of its members and its social networking features were well ahead of other social news outlets but its up-only voting system tends to promote content that echoes much of the same controversy-for-controversy's-sake content that one finds in major media outlets. Ironically this may turn out to be a plus when you have a cable news outlet that focuses on much the same sort of stories.

Most major news outlets have been extremely hesitant to embrace social media too closely, a factor that has benefited portals such as Newsvine along the way: when The New York Times closed down its online comments features a few months back Newsvine picked up a good chunk of NYT commenters. With the acquisition of Newsvine established news media outlets may be beginning to recognize that this uneasy balance between social media and their own news is tipping away from their operations, creating loyalties tied to online communities creating and discussiong news that is likely in time to eclipse loyalties to news brands tied to established media channels. It's hardly a one-for-one swapout at this point in time, so the initial decision of MSNBC to keep the Newsvine brand alive as an independent unit is a wise move for now, especially given the typical sensitivities in online communities to being "sold out."

But as audiences empowered as newshounds create and discover a widening range of content their ability to build quality inventory and insights rapidly will eventually find more of today's journalists and commentators becoming professional members of online communities like Newsvine. Social news communities are accelerating in their ability to get their articles good placement in search engine results, a factor that certainly contributed to The New York Times' decision to open up its prime columnists' content to get our from behind their subscription firewall and into the mix of these communities. This transition is still fairly gradual and generational, but essential for ensuring future revenues amongst news audiences becoming used to having their peers help them select what's newsworthy - and worth their attention.

Labels: Deals Partnerships and Sales, Digg, MSNBC, New York Times, News, Newsvine, Social Media

While the New York Post's report on a possible move by The New York Times to sunset its premium TimesSelect online service is still in the rumor mill, the plateauing and gentle decline of Web-only subscribers to the package underscores that general news content is not a likely candidate for online subscriptions. When TimesSelect came out a couple of years back, we noted:

The Times Select model provides temporary bolstering of online and print revenues squeezed from those who need their Op/Ed "fix" of established columnists, but in the long run it isolates these columnists from the media mix that's driving much of the value of online news content today.

This seems to be exactly what has happened. While some NYT columnists behind the TimesSelect firewall still have some influence outside of traditional media channels the deafening growth of social media has drowned out many of their voices - and has helped to amplify the strength of new online opinion-makers. In the meantime the NYTimes has slipped in its overall online rank and reach, emphasizing the need to be able to expose more page inventory to search engines and social media for ad monetization. Once conceived of as the cream of their online content TimesSelect has become more like a pricey version of Slate, an online general-interest news magazine which long ago abandoned premium pricing to capture online market share.

While specialty publications like The Wall Street Journal have enough focus and demographic cachet to benefit still from a premium pricing strategy the huge projected growth for online ad spending argues strongly for traditional news organizations with far broader reader demographics becoming far more efficient in exposing both current and archived general news content online as aggressively as possible. As pointed out by Read/Write Web, though, much of the growth in online ads will go to social media sites which do very well with highly targeted contextual ad buys from Google's AdSense and other contextual ad services.

In other words if the readership is going online and online advertising is becoming far less about broadly based selling and far more about selling in microcontexts then the future of news organizations like The New York Times is to get their content into those microcontexts as efficiently as possible. This may still leave room for some premium components, but it's likely to be a set of components built around social networking. Rather than viewing social networking as a dangerous marketing environment, many context-driven marketers are learning how to exploit social media fairly effectively. While major brand advertisers are still nervous about committing their brands to social media it's where the eyeballs are - and it's where news has to prove itself as being able to provide an effective context for marketing.

It's likely that there will be some residual TimesSelect premium package for some time, perhaps built up around a new type of social media experience that allows for more conversational interaction with the news and editorial staff, but the bulk of TimesSelect content is likely to be put out to general ad exposure by year's end. While this may not slow the decay in online readership at "premium" news publications such as the NY Times it will be likely to provide short-term ad revenues more quickly to help fill the gap left by rapidly declining print revenues. So think of the potential fading away of TimesSelect from the NYT perspective as more of a stopgap measure that acknowledges well-established changes in the online ad marketplace.

Unless newspapers can define truly elite communities that will benefit from premium subscriptions there's little reason to think that the failure of the TimesSelect experiment should spell out anything less than the official death of the online premium model for general interest publications. The long-standing relationships between editorial operations and audiences have changed fundamentally but traditional news organizations have moved at the most ponderous of paces away from being isolated teams of experts to acknowledge and adapt to the new conversational world of news-making. Here's hoping that The New York Times can now focus on engaging their audiences more effectively in the contexts that matter most to them.

Labels: advertising, New York Times, Social Media, TimesSelect