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Big Loser in Murdoch/ Apple Partnership: The NY Times

As the media world awaits the arrival of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's newspaper designed specifically for the iPad, early next year, what's wrong with this picture?

Going back to the launch of the iPad in January, the main promotional images that emerged from Steve Jobs and Apple at that time displayed a prototype of The New York Times, not one of Murdoch's newspapers.

On his whirlwind tour announcing the new mobile platform, Jobs visited several media companies in New York, including the Times and News Corp.

It seemed obvious to all of us covering the industry that the most-favored media company on Jobs' list was then the Times, widely recognized as the best newspaper in the country.

So what happened?

Why is it that Murdoch has announced an iPad-based news product, while the Times remains silent?

Right from the start, details leaking out from the initial meetings indicated that Apple and the media companies remained far apart on the question of how content partnerships would work on the new mobile device.

As I noted at the time, "major sticking points...include(d) pricing, revenue sharing, and ownership of subscriber information — in other words, pretty much the entire business model that would underlie any content deals for the iPad."

So in order to proceed, someone had to figure out how to close the gap on those issues and that, apparently, is what Murdoch (reportedly with Jobs' active involvement) has now succeeded in doing.

The basic premise supporting a paid model on the iPad was recently clearly stated by the Times' own David Carr:

"When I am on a Web browser and I bump into a pay wall, I reflexively pull back unless it is in front of something I really must have. But when I’m in the App Store on an iPad, I’m already in a commercial environment: pushing the button to spend small money on something I’d like to see or play with doesn’t seem like such a sucker’s bet."

While there remain major questions about how Murdoch's initial $30 million investment in The Daily will reach profitability anytime in the foreseeable future, there is always a competitive advantage in being first*.

So that nagging question remains: Why wasn't it the Times?

* Billionaire Virgin Airways owner Richard Branson is said to have an iPad-based news project ready for launch also, so it is unclear at this time which wil be "first."

Recommended reading:

Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch Save Newspapers — Well, One, At Least

For Rupert Murdoch, There’s No Downside to His Tablet-Only The Daily

Rupert Murdoch's iPad experiment is unlikely to succeed

Old media tackle the challenge of tablets

Forget print and, oh, forget the web: Murdoch to launch iPad-only newspaper

Go Down Moses, Apple Unveils its Media Tabula Rasa

The True Test of the NYT’s Paywall Plan Will Be e-Readers

Juan Williams, Fox & NPR

A recent show, which I participated in.

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Crafting Effective Media Strategies Today: One Example is NPR

It shouldn't be surprising that there's been a great deal of confusion among existing media companies about the words "convergence" and "multimedia" over the past decade plus.

The proliferation of tools and platforms is confusing -- from a relatively static world of radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines to a new world of websites, audio clips, video clips, streaming video, citizen reports, social media, aggregated content hubs, ecommerce apps, sharing tools, blogs, and mobile platforms, just to name a few of the major developments that have affected media.

At a strategic level, however, it is less important what the various media forms are than how your company must be able to adapt to them.

If your core product was print, now you need to have a strategy for broadening your channels to include video and audio; if you were primarily a radio station, you now need video and print components; from a past in TV, you've had to integrate print and audio.

At various points in this process, companies may seize upon one thing -- maybe podcasts or Twitter feeds -- as a key part of their strategy, to the relative exclusion of others, but this isn't smart.

Rather, today's media companies need to have content strategies that are agnostic as to platform; social media strategies that aren't depending on any one source in a rapidly changing universe; and mobile strategies that can adapt as the market there shakes itself out.

At a high level, executives should not get stuck on any one platform or channel, because the one thing we can say about this environment is that it is going to continue to change.

When I hear Anderson Cooper of CNN these days stress that you can "follow us on Twitter," I cringe. First of all, even though what people primarily do with Twitter is follow other people, that does not necessarily equate into a smart public relations plan.

Integrate Twitter, of course, but don't necessarily make so much noise about it, that's using a sledge hammer to deliver a message better delivered by a tiny bird's call.

Over and over again, however, media companies make this mistake, overly promoting their websites, their Facebook pages, their blogs, their iPad apps -- whatever top execs have been told is the latest and greatest trend.

The problem is that by the time they are talking about it, the moment for promoting it has already past.

Properly formulated, a media company's overall strategy encompasses every tool and channel mentioned above as well as some not yet invented. The capacity for digital technologies to remake our workplaces and work styles is endless.

Start from that perspective, remain utterly agnostic about channel, and you'll be off on the right course.

Thus, one of my favorite companies to date has been NPR, which has recognized the need to become a source for print articles to augment its traditional audio offerings. NPR can compete in text forms as well as anybody; video offers additional opportunities.

In that regard, today's announcement that NPR is leading the effort "to develop a digital distribution network that will allow public broadcasters and web producers to combine, create, share and distribute their news and cultural content" is a move in the right direction.

The effort is a joint effort by five national producers: American Public Media, NPR, PBS, Public Radio International (PRI) and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX).

Rather than a collection of multimedia bells and whistles, what is badly needed in so many companies is an old-fashioned editorial strategy, which is the guts of any content strategy.

Know what stories you are good at getting, how best to get them, and which of today's channels provides the best first option for communicating them. Strong visuals imply video, naturally; complex stories require long-form print or documentary capability.

We've seen enough come and go now to predict the future. There will be more tools, more channels, more options. Fine, if that's the way it is to be, we never have to commit so fully to any one option as we did in the past.

Stay open, be experimental, embrace change.

Good advice in all avenues of life, actually, not just in media.

Two Growing Trends: "Delete My Facebook Account" and Google's eBook Store

Could it be that all the recent controversy over privacy at Facebook is having an impact on the social networking site's business?

Search Engine Land reports that in the "how do I?" category of search on Google, one fast-growing question is "How do I delete my Facebook account?"

Meanwhile, Kyodo News Service is reporting today that Google has "the support of almost all publishers in the United States for its digital bookstore expected to be launched as early as the end of June," according to unnamed company officials.

This report says that more than 25,000 publishers and authors have agreed to participate in the search giant's effort to distribute digital books online, which if true would amount to a very large new e-bookstore indeed.

The project is called Google Editions.

Roger Ebert and the Joy of Writing

Recently, I saw the great film critic, Roger Ebert, onstage at the majestic Castro Theater. He was in town to receive another award; he's the kind of person who could never win too many. He's America's greatest film critic, but that is not what impressed me most about him.

It was his indomitable spirit. He's frail from many cancer operations, can speak only through his computer, and cannot eat or drink anything at all.

Despite all of this, the most memorable part of the evening at the Castro was Ebert's beautiful smile, which never left his face during a long ceremony that featured tributes from a number of film's top directors.

He exudes joy. He repeatedly gestured to the audience, indicating that his sense of humor remains undiminished.

In fact, he was the happiest person in the place.

It's hard to watch someone who has been so ill that he has lost almost all of his former robustness, physically. But he's lost nothing mentally.

He writes now more than ever. His website and his twitter stream are among the most engaging in the country.

Roger Ebert is a great writer, and like many great writers, he just keeps getting better.

Here's what he has to say about the current state of film reviewing.

"This is a golden age for film criticism. Never before have more critics written more or better words for more readers about more films.

"Twenty years ago a good-sized city might have contained a dozen people making a living from writing about films, and for half of them the salary might have been adequate to raise a family. Today that city might contain hundreds, although (the Catch-22) not more than one or two are making a living.

"What the internet is creating is a class of literate, gifted amateur writers, in an old tradition. Like Trollope, who was a British Post official all his working life, they write for love and because they must."

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Vocus Finds that Media Industry Outlook is Brightening

The latest report on the state of the media from Vocus Research is out, and it finds that the rate of newspaper closures has slowed considerably over 2009.

During the first quarter of 2009, as the report notes, almost 100 newspapers had folded, including dailies like the Rocky Mountain News and the Baltimore Examiner.

This year a smaller number -- 44 -- went out of business in Q-1 and most of those (30) were weeklies. That is not really what you'd call good news, but no major daily has failed so far in 2010.

Vocus notes that digital news sites are growing and that some new ones (around half a dozen) have been launched so far this year.

Meanwhile, there is one actual bright spot: "Starting in 2009 and heading into 2010, Hispanic media noticeably grew. In print media, the Deseret News launched the weekly Spanish-language El Observador in February. Other publishers expanded the distribution of their Hispanic-interest publications such as the Tribune Company’s Fin de Semana."

More magazines launched than folded in Q-4 last year, according to the report,and advertising revenue appears to be rebounding in that sector of the industry.

The report is bullish on the iPad launch and the implications for media companies, and in general sees digital platforms, including mobile, as driving a turnaround in the industry.

You can read mre about the research report here.


Thank you to Frank Strong for help with this post.

Related Post:

Vocus Report on the State of the Media: It's Really, Really Bad (1/13/2010)
"No one paying attention could have missed the massive downswing in fortunes for traditional media companies in the U.S. over the past two years.But just in case someone did, say by hiding in a cave at Tora Bora or wherever, the Vocus Media Research Team is out with a new report today detailing last year’s carnage..."

When the Business Model Problem Becomes Everybody's Problem

“We have a business model problem, we don’t have a news problem.”

That was Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking to the American Society of News Editors last night explaining that the Internet has replaced the era of content scarcity with an era of content abundance.

Tell me about it.

I've been actively involved with Internet news media since 1995, and over that time I've charted the digital news explosion and how it has buried old media business models that evolved in kinder, gentler times, (at least as it pertains to the speed of the news cycle.)

During all of that time I've been an enthusiast for new media, and I remain so. But it's hard not to notice that the disruptive technologies of today are seriously undermining the ability of those who report, write and edit the news to continue making a living.

Up until recently, many of those affected by the waves of layoffs that have plagued the print publishing industry have been able to find new positions in nonprofits, academic institutions, or new media companies.

But as the recession continues, and advertising revenues lag, the employment world for content creators appears to be shrinking even more rapidly than in the recent past. If so, this is bad news for the entire media industry because no matter what else changes, one thing will always remain the same.

It all starts with those who create the content.

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Murdoch's Paywall Bandwagon Has No Recruits

Rupert Murdoch has been on the warpath against Google for supposedly stealing his content for so long that he's become like Chicken Little: It's hard to take him seriously any longer.

Nevertheless, the media mogul just keeps prattling on.

"We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing, Murdoch said this week. "There is a law of copyright and they recognize it."

Murdoch is referring to the practice by Google News as well as the Google and Bing search engines to publish headlines and snippets of articles from News Corp. publications without paying for that right.

The search giants point out that by grabbing the snippets, they drive the majority of the traffic that Murdoch's web properties get, but he'll have none of that.

He calls their model "a "river of gold" and alleges: "They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model."

Murdoch has been vowing to move his major British news properties behind a paywall like that around the Wall Street Journal. Of course, that is a very leaky paywall; all you need to do is copy a WSJ headline, enter it in a search field, and you'll import a free copy of those WSJ pieces.

Murdoch is already allowing that he won't charge much for online content, which sounds like back-peddling; plus he isn't going to institute these paywalls for another three months or so.

I've long felt that Murdoch has been waging this battle publicly mainly in the hope of driving a lucrative licensing deal with Google and Microsoft, but that also seems like a long shot now. Meanwhile, very few major news sites seem poised to sign up for the paywall bandwagon.

Here's a prediction: Murdoch will indeed institute a half-hearted paywall, it will fail, and he'll retreat. Then, he'll take up a new tack in his battle with the Internet as we know it.

In the end, despite his wealth and power, Murdoch's paywall threats will be nothing more than a minor footnote in the history of paid content online. This is largely because the next stage of the battle over content will be fought over the mobile web, not over the stationary computer platform that publishers have never been able to monetize.

Related Link:
Flush From Avatar, Murdoch Talks Tough Re: Ipads and Paywalls
"You’ve got to hand it to Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born, British and U.S.-based media mogul’s empire is now so vast that he can squeeze a quarter-billion-dollar’s worth of profits out of any random quarter..."

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Information Junkies Love Obama's "Open Government" Initiative

The Obama administration promised more transparency in government and it seems to be delivering on its promise -- at least in a number of specific instances. Today on its "Open Government Blog," the White House pointed to a number of new developments in this regard:

*The Department of Housing and Urban Development is recording all public events and putting them online.

*The Department of Education is publishing Secretary Arne Duncan’s schedule.

*The Social Security Administration has a new toolset on its website to help people (including Spanish speakers) more easily find information and services on the web and schedule appointments.

*The Department of Labor published its new Online Enforcement Database, which makes all workplace safety data searchable and available in one place.

*The Department of Health and Human Services is publishing a large,downloadable database on community health care costs, quality, access, and public health.

*The Department of Justice is building a “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Dashboard” to “shine a light” on the government’s compliance with FOIA. Two other departments -- Health and Human Services and Department of Energy -- announced more accessible FOIA programs as well.

Meanwhile, NASA has gotten into the act with a number of initiatives, one of the most creative of which is a partnership with the Internet Archive:

"NASA has implemented an agreement with the non-profit Internet Archive (IA) whereby IA manages an Internet site, nasaimages.org, to provide free access and downloads of NASA still photography, video and film, including High Definition. Therefore, in essence, IA serves as custodian of much of NASA's current and legacy digital imagery records. In addition, IA will help digitize NASA's historically significant, analog images for inclusion on the Web site, enabling digital archiving with the National Archives and greater public access to these records via the IA Website."

This is the kind of stuff journalists and other information junkies love, because when it comes to transparency in government, there is no right or left, there's just open or closed. The more information we can easily access, the better job we can do.

It's as simple as that.

Photographers Sue Google, Alleging "Massive Copyright Infringement"

The long-running class action lawsuit by some authors and publishers against Google's massive book-scanning project has some company.

A coalition led by the American Society of Media Photographers has filed a new class action suit alleging that Google's effort to create a global digital library represents the "most widespread, well-publicized and uncompensated infringement of exclusive rights in images in the history of book and periodical publishing."

The initial filing in the case uses words like "brazen" to describe Google's behavior, and urges the court to put a stop to it.

Thus continues the long legal nightmare the giant search engine has encountered in its effort to realize one of its co-founders' dreams to establish a "library to last forever."

For background on this issue and a long list of related posts, please visit:

What's At Stake in Google Book Case: Access to History
"The issues in the convoluted Google Book case are so complex and involve so many parties — publishers, libraries, states, foreign governments, academics, writers, readers, and the U.S. Justice Department — that federal judge Denny Chin is essentially being asked to decide nothing less than our collective future access to our collective pre-digital literary history..."

Reporters Without Borders Lists Enemies of the Internet

Earlier this year, with support from Google, Reporters Without Borders awarded its first-ever Netizen Prize to an Iranian women's rights activist site, in the middle of the controversy over the search giant's exit from China.

Now, Reporters Without Borders has issued its Enemies of the Internet List. These are countries that limit the flow of free information over the Internet, some of which, like China and Iran, arrest those who attempt to circumvent the censorship imposed by that country's governing regime.

These 12 countries made the list:

Burma
China
Cuba
Egypt
Iran
North Korea
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Vietnam

The group listed 11 additional countries, including Australia, Russia, and South Korea, as "under surveillance" for initiatives that may endanger online freedoms.

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Smashwords Offering eBooks Through Apple's iBookstore

Over the past two years blogging about the media industry, one of my favorite kinds of stories has been about promising startups with disruptive business models.

One of those is the ebook publisher and distributor Smashwords, headquartered in Los Gatos, CA. Today, the company announced that it has negotiated a distribution agreement with Apple.

"The iPad is a true second generation e-reading device, which I believe will
introduce millions of new readers to the joys of ebooks," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.

The deal will provide a new distribution channel for the authors of many of Smashwords line of 10,000 original ebooks from over 4,000 authors and 150 small independent publishers.

The company says it now publishes over 1,000 new ebooks every month, including many by authors who were previously published by large publishers.

Sales of ebooks are exploding and they are by far the fastest growing segment of the book publishing industry in 2010. Smashwords has been aggressively expanding its partnerships with distributors over the past year and now adds Apple to an impressive list: Barnes & Noble, Sony, Amazon, Stanza, Kobo, Aldiko, FBReader and Word-Player.

These cover all the major, spanning all major mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry and iPhone.

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CNN a Victim of Changing Media Landscape

Last night wasn't the first time The Daily Show lampooned CNN, but this one may hurt a bit more due to the network's steep decline in ratings for Q-1 2010.

Cnn's most popular hosts, Larry King and Anderson Cooper, both lost over 40 percent market share to the more politicized offerings at Fox and MSNBC.

Commentators like Fox's Scott Hannity and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow are on the upswing while the CNN guys fade.

CNN is in a no-win position as it attempts to defend its notion of objectivity in an era that is anything but objective. And although the network has tried to implement more interactive features such as its iReport, it has not been willing to truly transform itself.

Although many will draw the lesson that you have to be more explicit politically in order to thrive in today's cable TV world, (as the ratings suggest) I actually think the problem is somewhat different and much more profound.

Today, you have to become skilled at sharing your brand. All organizations, including media, have to engage on a deep level with their stakeholders, which increasingly means a community of viewers/users active via social media sites.

Objectivity as a content business model belongs to the old media paradigm, where in truth it never worked very well. After all, who gets to determine what is objective?

In today's networked world, the public is pretty much in charge of making that determination. And right now, the most active parts of the public, to paraphrase the immortal Jessica Mitford, care far more about achieving a particular objective than pursuing the ideal of objectivity.

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Refashioned Salon's Traffic Soars

Over the past year, Salon CEO Richard Gingras has retooled the 15-year-old quality-content site in an effort to reverse its flagging financial fortunes.

The first goal toward that end would be increasing traffic, and today the company announced it has succeeded in attracting 35 percent more users during March 2010, as compared to March 2009.

Salon says that for Q-1 this year, its audience is up 22 percent over the same quarter last year.

Gingras places a high value on certain metrics, one of which is referral traffic, which has soared 125 percent year over year. Another key metric -- converting these referred users into regular visitors. The company points to a 35 percent increase in its "branded traffic" (direct visits via bookmarks or typed URLs) since the beginning of 2009.

“Salon is a lifestyle brand,” says Gingras. “It conveys a certain intelligence, a challenge to the status quo, an edge that advertisers like.”

Accordingly, he has expanded coverage in lifestyle topics such as food, film and books.

The key to Salon, since its launch in 1995, has been consistently high-quality content delivered with attitude. So it was a bit of a surprise that when the digital National Magazine Award nominations were announced earlier this year, Salon was overlooked.

Six online-only magazines were nominated: Epicurious; The Daily Beast; Life; Slate; Tablet; and Yale Environment 360.

(Update: Salon says that it no longer consider itself as a magazine, but a news site, so the National Magazine Awards are not a relevant measure of the quality of the site's content.)

Nevertheless, the real test of Salon's success will be on the balance sheet, which in recent years had been miserable. Progress there will reinforce the company's new direction and position it to win awards in future years.

Related post:

Salon.com Relaunch Features New Emphasis on Growing Revenue
"During the latter part of 1995, Apple executive Richard Gingras was in the process of overseeing the dismantling of his company’s ill-fated eWorld offering, when David Talbot and a small band of journalists bolted from the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner to launch an online magazine called Salon..."

Disclosure: I worked at Salon in 1995 and again from 1998-2000.

New Twitter Home Page: Ready for Times Square?

It is great to see the talented designer Douglas Bowman having an impact over at Twitter, after leaving Google to join the social messaging service a year ago this month.

Bowman’s latest creation is a new home age for Twitter that signals the company’s growing awareness that it is in the content business. According to Twitter, the redesign “bubbles up” more of its real-time information, “revealing a sample of who's here, what folks are tweeting about, and the big topics that they're discussing.”

That means an algorithmic selection of top tweets that refreshes every few seconds. There is also a section of “suggested sources,” and the company notes you can “hover over any of them to see a profile summary and their latest tweet.”

There is also new visibility for trending topics, which scroll across the page, a feature that emphasizes the “live” nature of Twitter almost like it is a news ticker at Times Square.

Come to think of it, someone will probably want to grab that scroll and turn it into a real-time, albeit non-vetted, news ticker. If I can imagine it, it has to be only a matter of time…

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Fierce Debate Over Whether the iPad Will Save Print Publishers

With all of the excitement around Apple's iPad and its potential as a game-changer for print publishers, several reports have caught my attention recently.

First, some good news: Magazine websites have been experiencing strong growth over the past year. According to Digital Media Boxscores, some 120 magazine sites grew 20 to 30 percent in both page views and unique visitors in January 2010, compared to the same month a year earlier.

Titles whose sites performed especially well included Cosmopolitan, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire, Martha Stewart, Budget Travel, and Women's Health.

Just like the iPad, magazines are mobile devices. Thus, unlike the relationship between print publications and desktop computers, there would seem to be a natural synergy with the iPad.

But a number of blogger/analysts have raised questions, to put it mildly. about how much magazine publishers will benefit from the introduction of Apple's revolutionary new device.

"The iPad-will-save-our-asses craze is based on a single, flawed premise, argues Henry Blodget. (That) consumers want to read magazines and newspapers electronically the same way they have read them for centuries in print -- in a tightly bound content package produced by a single publisher.  But 15 years of Internet history suggests that they don't.

"To the consumer, the Internet is one vast publication.  No longer are consumers limited to the particular editorial tastes and packaging of a few publishers whose "books" they subscribe to.  Now, consumers can snack on content from thousands of publishers, for free, all day long.  And the iPad is not going to change that."

In a similar vein, Constantine von Hoffmanargues that the iPad will prove to be a far better platform for video and audio than for print. Of course that does not necessarily exclude today's print publishers from the party.

After all, Newsonomics reports that “The New York Times is now producing 100 videos a month.”

The Times itself has reported that lots of major advertisers are already expressing interest in the iPad, so despite all the naysayers, the media industry's excitement would seem to me to be well-placed.


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DW in the Press:

My recent appearance on KQED-FM's "California Report" discussing the controversy surrounding Google's decision to stop censoring search results in China. I was interviewed by Sarah Varney. The audio reported can be accessed here.

Welcome!

Welcome to the new home for my posts on the media business.

The focus of my work over the past several years at BNET has been to document the transition from old media platforms like print and broadcast to new media like the social web and mobile devices.

Since we are still smack in the middle of that transition, it can be difficult at times to see the patterns as they emerge behind the noise of product releases, earnings statements, and rhetorical excesses.

But that is my goal -- to identify the more significant patterns that are rushing all of us headlong into a new era for media, whether we are entirely ready for it or not.

I posted some 700 articles for BNET, and they will remain accessible going forward. As part of making sure you have easy access to the most recent posts, I am including below links to everything I've published to date at BNET in 2010.

(In the future, I hope to be able to port over my 2008-9 posts as well.)

For now, welcome to this new space, which may well prove to be a temporary home once I start searching for a new host site from which to continue this work.

(The image at the top of this post is a box of declassified FBI files from my work as an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone in the 1970s.)

David's BNET posts in 2010 (53):

Mar. 19 Viacom vs. YouTube: Copyright Hypocrisy?
"Not long before filing suit against YouTube and its owner Google in 2007 for uploading content from programs like The Daily Show, Viacom was actually trying to buy the popular video-sharing site itself..."

Mar. 19 The New Media Metric: How Shareable is Your Content?
"Study after study indicates that Americans have developed all kinds of new habits when it comes to consuming the news. But one key upward trend that tends to get overlooked in the fine print of these studies is how popular content-sharing has become..."

Mar. 17 CBS Hopes March Madness Includes Crazy Story Line
"No one is really sure how the term “March Madness” got associated with college basketball, so there’s plenty of room for speculation..."

Mar. 16 Search Not Found: Google Prepares To Exit China
"So, in a real sense, the overall development of a global system of inter-connected communications tying people together all over the world is now grinding to a potential halt in Beijing..."

Mar. 16 Online Revenues Up at McClatchy, But Print Newspapers Wither
"The McClatchy Company, which is second in size only to Gannett among the surviving major U.S. newspaper chains, has been trying over the past year to change its image from a traditional media company to what its CEO calls “a 24-7 news and advertising company that can deliver in print, online, and to hand-held devices...”

Mar. 15 How the Future of eBooks is "Up for Grabs"
"Penguin Books CEO John Makinson’s recent presentation shows why forward-looking publishers are so excited about the iPad (and other eReader formats), while the more tradition-bound remain downright scared..."

Mar. 12 Tweets Hit 50 Million/Day; Where is the Money?
"Twitter recently announced that its content volume has reached 50 million Tweets a day. But many in media are still trying to get a handle on how to best to measure Twitter’s impact, let alone monetize the social media channel..."

Mar. 12 E-Books Now More Popular Than Games in iTunes Store
"For the first time ever, the number of eBooks (27,000) has surpassed games (25,400) in Apple’s iTunes app store, according to the mobile ad company Mobclix..."

Mar 10 How Mobile Devices Offer Extended Access to News Consumers
"At the FTC’s two-day workshop on the “future of journalism” this week, Google’s Hal Varian suggested that the emergence of mobile platforms creates an opportunity for news providers to “turn online news into a leisure time activity." In other words, back to the future..."

Mar. 9 How Google's Translation Gadget Can Boost Your Revenue
"Google continues to aggressively improve one its most promising, if less-known, products — its “website translation gadget.” As we noted when the search giant launched this tool last September, it can be used to quite literally “put money in your pocket,” or — perhaps more appropriately — into your company’s coffers..."

Mar. 8 Stuck Between the Internet and eBooks, Borders Bookstores Struggling to Survive
"Just over a month after cutting ten percent of its workforce, troubled retailer Borders (BGP) has reportedly started yet another wave of layoffs..."

Mar. 5 Google's Patent Shakes Up Hyper-Local Market
"Google’s winning of a patent for its geotargeted advertising system–one basis for what makes its search engine so powerful–shows that Google anticipated the power of local long before the term hyper-local became all the rage..."

Mar. 3 U.S. News Consumers Are Media Hunter/Gatherers
"Amidst the steady flow of polls and surveys, one meta-trend stands out about how Americans are adjusting to what some call “information overload,” but what news junkies might call Nirvana..."

Mar. 1 AP May Charge For Content on Apple's iPad
"If news organizations ever hope to charge for digital content, somebody has to get the ball rolling..."

Feb. 26 Buy Now! Publishers Embrace eCommerce for Mobile Media
"As media executives grapple with the new opportunities (and dangers) presented by the transition to mobile platforms, it’s fascinating to see the realization — slowly sinking in — that ecommerce must be a central aspect of their business strategies going forward..."

Feb. 26 Google in China: Too Big to Fail?
"Six weeks after they exchanged fighting words over censorship and the prospect that Google will leave China, the world’s largest search engine and the world’s largest country have fallen strangely silent — a condition that leads me to suspect a deal may be in the works..."

Feb. 25 The Washington Post Company Thrives as the Newspaper Withers
"So, if you’re looking into a crystal ball at the Post’s future, the question boils down to this: How long will management continue to humor the decline of its hoary old newspaper?"

Feb. 24 Secrets of Google's Famous Search Algorithm
"What happens every 16 hours or so all year long, that has a significant impact on you and millions of others, but that you know virtually nothing about?"

Feb. 23 Experts Say Google Does Not Make Us Stupid
"As one who routinely uses Google Search at least twenty times a day, I’m happy to report that the overwhelming majority of experts surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project believe that using the search engine is making us smarter..."

Feb. 22 Under Pressure, Apple Censors Sexual Content From Apps Store
"In a controversial move, Apple has been purging sexually-explicit and other adult-themed apps from its iTunes App Store recently. The company is acting under pressure from some customers as well as from developers, who complain that such content has reached spam-type levels..."

Feb. 22 What's At Stake in Google Book Case: Access to History
"The issues in the convoluted Google Book case are so complex and involve so many parties — publishers, libraries, states, foreign governments, academics, writers, readers, and the U.S. Justice Department — that federal judge Denny Chin is essentially being asked to decide nothing less than our collective future access to our collective pre-digital literary history..."

Feb. 19 The Winner in National Enquirer's Pulitzer Nomination: Matt Drudge
"The Pulitzer Prize Board has finally conceded and officially accepted the investigative reporting submissions from The National Enquirer for breaking the John Edwards love child scandal last year..."

Feb. 18 Amazon's eBook Share Shrinking, But the Pie is Growing
“Going forward, we can envision a scenario where Apple, Amazon, and Google eventually split the market...”

Feb. 18 Apple vs. Major Media: The iPad Stalemate
"No deals have yet emerged from Steve Jobs‘ splashy tour of New York earlier this month, where he met with executives of The New York Times, News Corp. and Time Inc. to demo the iPad. That’s because, according to details leaking out from the meetings, Apple and the major publishers remain far apart on the question of how content partnerships would work on the new mobile device..."

Feb. 16 Microsoft and Disney to Target Generation Multitask
"There have been persistent reports of high-level talks between Microsoft and Disney for some time now, though no official announcements yet..."

Feb. 12 All News is Local, and Effective, for Outside.In
"Outside.In’s CEO Mark Josephson could hardly contain himself when we spoke for the first time in more than a year today, as I asked about how his company’s “hyperlocal content and advertising platform” has been faring..."

Feb. 11 NY Times: Earnings Good, Survival Still in Doubt
"Yes, the latest earnings report from The New York Times contained plenty of good short-term news. But that only raises a much larger question: How viable will this company be in the future?"

Feb. 8 Google's Super Bowl Touchdown: "We're Lovable, Not Evil"
"...though there may be no objective way to measure the most effective advertisement at the big game, my vote would have to go to the giant search engine itself for its surprisingly touching love story of an American man who meets a French woman at a cafe in Paris..."

Feb. 4 DOJ Files Against Google Book Settlement: "A Bridge Too Far"

Feb. 4 Flush From Avatar, Murdoch Talks Tough Re: Ipads and Paywalls
"You’ve got to hand it to Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born, British and U.S.-based media mogul’s empire is now so vast that he can squeeze a quarter-billion-dollar’s worth of profits out of any random quarter..."

Feb. 3 Blogging Moms Turn Macaroni Kid into an Emerging Network to Watch
"It’s axiomatic in the media business that when it comes to household purchasing decisions, it’s usually Mom who wears the pants..."

Feb. 2 Twitter's "Local Trends" a Precursor to Geo-Targeted Ads for News Media
"Twitter announced to relatively little fanfare last week that it has started tracking “Local Trends...”

Feb. 1 AP and Google Back in Business For Now; Yahoo Renews AP Deal
"There are updates today in the ongoing drama of whether the search engines at Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will continue to pay for the right to display content provided by the Associated Press..."

Jan. 31 Weekend Grabbag: Updates from Startups Bideo, Smashwords, and Examiner.com
"Now that carbon has become the hottest commodity on the planet, under the cap and trade market administered by the European Union, there would seem to be no reason that user-generated news video and images couldn’t be aggressively traded in an online auction setting as well..."

Jan. 28 As Murdoch and Sulzberger Dream of Paywalls, Consider Poor Newsday's Example

Jan. 26 Go Down Moses,* Apple Unveils its Media Tabula Rasa
"If you believe the hype (and I do), Wednesday, January 27, 2010 is shaping up to be a momentous day for the media industry..."

Jan. 25 The True Test of the NYT's Paywall Plan Will Be e-Readers
"Since The New York Times has elected such a long runway (”the beginning of 2011,” according to Arthur and Janet*) until it erects its content paywall, there will be plenty of time to agree or disagree with the company’s plans..."

Jan. 22 The Hellman News Project Should Study Fwix Before Launching
"This just in! The non-profit Bay Area News Project, well-funded by San Francisco billionaire Warren Hellman, has announced the names of its two senior executives, which — as readers of this BNET Media column have known for the better part of a week — are..."

Jan. 20 Flat World Knowledge: The Textbook Case for Disruption
"Now that they have their first full sales cycle behind them, it’s time to check in with one of my favorite examples of a startup bent on upending a publishing industry segment that is ripe for disruption — the college textbook oligopoly, dominated by a handful of huge companies..."

Jan. 19 How Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Support Five Big Newspapers
"According to the metrics service comScore, between a third and a half of all traffic to five major U.S. newspaper sites comes from search engines..."

Jan. 18 As Hellman Project Details Emerge, KALW Launches A Local News Website
"The San Francisco Bay Area may soon sport an embarrassment of riches, comparatively speaking, in the number and variety of local news organizations competing to fill the void created by waves of cutbacks..."

Jan. 16 Post-KQED, Hellman Non-Profit Venture Plans to Tap Frazier, Weber
"BNET has learned the names of the key executives that the troubled Bay Area News Project plans to announce “later this month...”

Jan. 15 Non-Profit News Deal between Millionaire Hellman, KQED Falls Apart

Jan. 14 Scribd Brushes Off "Piracy" Charge to Emerge as Social Publishing Leader
"Way down in San Francisco’s SOMA district, just a couple floors below the spot where — until recently — Twitter was headquartered, another startup, Scribd, is also angling to become one of the Internet’s hottest companies..."

Jan. 13 Vocus Report on the State of the Media: It's Really, Really Bad
"No one paying attention could have missed the massive downswing in fortunes for traditional media companies in the U.S. over the past two years.But just in case someone did, say by hiding in a cave at Tora Bora or wherever, the Vocus Media Research Team is out with a new report today detailing last year’s carnage..."

Jan. 12 Google Throws Down the Gauntlet in China Over Human Rights and Censorship
"In one of the most stunning developments in its remarkable 11-year history, Google (GOOG) today announced that it is prepared to shut down operations in the world’s largest country, China, unless the Chinese government ends its censorship of search results there..."

Jan. 12 Google and Syncplicity Team Up to Coordinate Data Management in the Cloud
"Google announced today that it is “rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs..."

Jan. 11 Understanding the Top Media Trends in Search and Content
"There probably is no greater point of convergence in the way people use media in our time than that between search and content..."

Jan. 9 Standoff: No New AP Stories Appear on Google News
"In a confrontation that has been building for months, negotiations between the Associated Press and Google over licensing fees for hosting the AP’s content on Google News appear to have broken down..."

Jan. 8 E-Readers in 2010: DIY or Partner With Amazon, Sony, Plastic Logic, et. al.
If you scan the many predictions for the media industry in 2010, one consensus is that e-readers will become a much more important channel for content distribution over the coming year...

Jan. 7 Google and Twitter Favor Their Own Blogs to Break News
Google’s blog output increased dramatically, reaching 423* posts for the year in 2009, a 15 percent increase over 2008...

Jan. 6 Author's Estate Accuses Google of Stealing "Android" and "Nexus" Names
"Google’s “Android” and “Nexus One” sound like great product names, but were they stolen from the late author Philip Dick’s novel that resulted in the hit film, Blade Runner?"

Jan. 4 Twitter as the Media Industry's Bellweather Company in 2010