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.