Media Hunter » Press

A peek behind the News paywall

Media Hunter — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:38:24 +0000

“The ten year free trial is over” say the executives at News Ltd referring to plans to commence charging for digital subscriptions to The Australian.

The much anticipated move to paid digital subscriptions will take place in the next few weeks Richard Freudenstein, CEO of News Digital Media and The Australian, told a selection of bloggers last night.

Freudenstein was candid in his acknowledgement that this is a very necessary move for the organisation as the current model of free websites with display advertising is not enough to support quality journalism. When asked if this was a big risk they’re were taking, the general consensus at News was that it was a bigger risk not to try subscription. The current model just didn’t add up economically.

News will begin their subscription experiment with The Australian newspaper, the more “premium” of their daily news journals. Following the lead from The Times in England and the New York Times, The Australian will be serving up news content on a new website that leads to walled content. Headlines and the first two paragraphs will be viewable on the website but payment would be required to go further.

The key to success, News believe, will be the bundling of offerings. Pricing is anticipated to be:

Digital pass of $2.95/wk accessible across multiple platforms.

$4.50/wk for a digital pass & the Saturday Australian newspaper.

$7.95/wk for a digital pass & 6 day a week Australian newspaper.

At this stage News do not expect that this will be something to lure new readers to The Australian, but will appeal to a percentage of existing subscribers who they hope to migrate to the digital products.

They cite the experience of the music industry that moved from a pirated free period back to a paid digital product as evidence that people will favour convenience and reliability over free in the long run.

News also draw on their experience in another subscription model, Pay TV, where Foxtel took year to grow and become profitable but is now the most profitable TV model in Australia.

One suspects that if this gambit is to succeed that bundling of all of the News products will come into play. Foxtel, news press and niche publications could all be bundled for a larger, but more cost effective combined spend. Tellingly, News acknowledge that they now consider The Australian a “media franchise” rather than merely a newspaper and they are exploring how it will be utilised on “bigger screens”.

Of course there are plenty of cynics who believe that digital subscription will not succeed. One respected pundit I had breakfast with this morning scoffed at the plans to charge for The Australian online, adamant it would fail.

However News have done plenty of homework on this and feel they have no choice but to launch subscription models. They admit that they don’t have all the answers and the experiment will continually evolve. They have deep pockets and seem prepared to patiently see the industry follow suit and join them on the other side of the paywall.

News Ltd has launched a new website to take the discussion further. Read more and have your say at Future of Journalism

Other coverage of the #newsdigsub briefing at:

Wikileaks: is this a significant moment in history?

Media Hunter — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 02:44:50 +0000

I can’t help thinking that what is happening with Wikileaks and the strident opposition Julian Assange and his cohorts are enduring from governments around the world is a significant moment in history.

will the wikiLeak become a flood?

While the traditional press have been fretting about copyright and free distribution affecting their business models a much bigger threat has been bubbling up via the Wikileaks model.

It seems to me that Wikileaks is to journalism what Napster was to the music industry.

Sure, Napster was shutdown, but only after interrupting an entire industry and spawning many copycats, some of whom still exist today. The damage was done and the music industry will never be the same again. Out of the ashes rose legitimate business models for easily buying music online, such as iTunes.

Will Wikileaks, which apparently intends to go down fighting despite extraordinary international Government and corporate pressure, lead to a reinvention of journalism? Or will it lead to massive censorship of the Internet with governments using Wikileaks as an example of it’s potential threat to national security?

Today during the Media Panel at LeWeb ’10 in Paris, France, Weblogs SL’s Julio Alonso said, “This is a turning point for the Internet — it’s not just about WikiLeaks anymore. What happens to WikiLeaks will get applied to others later on.”

“This is the first attempt at censorship of the Internet by all the governments of the planet,” Wikio’s Pierre Chappaz added. “Despite all the attacks, I’m optimistic that the information will survive,” he added.

“We have to speak about what’s happening,” Chappaz said. ”I’m amazed by the silence of the traditional media. This is a systematic attack. We have to explain to the traditional media. The stakes are about the free press,” he continued.

Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera added that the leakers aren’t going to lose this war. He cited mirror sites, Twitter accounts, Facebook messages, and all kinds of things that keep popping up to continue the data spread. “The leakers will win,” he said.

And if that’s the case it would seem that this style of journalism will become the new normal. As with the music industry, business models will change and new leaders will emerge.

Interesting times for sure.

Updates:

Gavin Heaton has posted two items you should read regarding Wikileaks, Wikileaks Payback Targets and A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Excellent post by Mark Pesce – WikiLeaks a blueprint for things to come

from SMH: GetUp gets behind Julian Assange

Internet overtakes newspapers for US advertising revenue

Media Hunter — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:33:58 +0000

Internet advertising has overtaken press in USA

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report issued yesterday in the USA claims that the internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television.

This is a significant moment in advertising as traditional media have steadily been overtaken by the Internet in less than 20 years. How long until Internet advertising rolls past Television? And here in Australia, how long until the Internet becomes the number two advertising medium?

Here is the story in full from The Australian….

Internet overtakes newspapers for ad revenue

June 16, 2010 12:00AM

THE internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report issued Tuesday.

The online ad business, excluding mobile ads, is set to expand to $34.4 billion in 2014 from $24.2 billion in 2009, according to PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014.

Newspapers, meanwhile, continued to suffer from a decline in advertising revenue. According to numbers released by the Newspaper Association of America earlier this year, print advertising revenue dropped 28.6 percent in 2009 to $24.82 billion.

“Although the internet did not fully escape the impact of the recession, its decline in the United States was much less severe than that of other advertising media,” the PwC report noted.

Shifts in consumer behavior, potential for inventory on the internet, and increased broadband penetration in the U.S. were key factors in PwC’s projections, according to David Silverman, a partner at PwC.

In 2005, the broadband penetration in U.S. households was at 34 percent. An estimated 64 percent of households now have a broadband connection.

The study noted that the federal government’s allocation of $7.2 billion of the stimulus plan for the expansion of broadband services, as well as the increased availability of triple-play packages, which bundle internet service with television and telephone service, were catalysts for growth in U.S. broadband access.

The report was particularly bullish on the growth of advertising across interactive media, video and email and predicted that this segment of the market will reach $6.6 billion in 2014 from $4.7 billion in 2009.

Is Apple about to save print media?

Media Hunter — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:01:39 +0000

Will Apple save print media too?

A very familiar scenario could be about to play out.

A decade ago the music industry was reeling from the sudden loss of revenue thanks to the likes of Napster and other peer-to-peer networks. Free downloads were “robbing” music publishers of sales. They got aggressive, sued individuals for downloading and chased Napster into oblivion but the fact remained that the music industry hadn’t kept up wit the changing digital landscape and didn’t have a model for the 21st Century.

Then along came Apple with the iPod and the iTunes store. They made it easy, legal and affordable to download music and quickly struck deals with almost every music publisher. A new model was created. It wasn’t necessarily as lucrative for the publishers but it kept them alive and in the game.

Fast-forward a decade. Newspapers are losing readers and their online content is being passed around and indexed by all and sundry. The big players are screaming blue murder as they accuse the likes of Google and news aggregation sites of being thieves and “parasites”. Rupert Murdoch is making threats about not allowing Google to index his news sites and beginning to build pay-walls.

Like the music industry, the press hasn’t prepared well for the 21st Century digital reality and haven’t yet designed a successful model to replace or co-exist with their very lucrative old model.

Seems familiar doesn’t it?

But wait, who’s that on the horizon? Its Steve Jobs. And he’s holding a new toy called the iSlate (probably). His new gadget allows us to quickly access and read vast amounts of text in a much friendlier way than a smartphone, and in many more locations than a PC. It allows us to subscribe to our favourite magazines, journals and papers quickly, easily and cost-effectively. Its like a Kindle, but with so many more uses.

Oh, and he’s done deals with a whole bunch of publishers to get the ball rolling.

Rumours abound that Apple is set on redefining print with the iSlate / iTablet just as they redefined music publishing with the iPod / iTunes concept. Several large publishers are allegedly rushing to get their products to iTunes, whilst magazine publishers have been filing into Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

I might be wrong but there’s a very big chance that Apple is about to save print media.

What do you think, is history about to repeat itself?

Hamish and Andy rule at Australian Commercial Radio Awards

Media Hunter — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:22:58 +0000

Source: Mumbrella

The Austereo duo of Hamish and Andy dominated the Australian Commercial Radio Awards in a ceremony which snubbed stablemate The Kyle & Jackie O Show despite it having previously had a strong presence on the shortlist.

The shortlist had been drawn up prior to the scandal of Kyle & Jackie O’s notorious lie detector segment, while the final round of judging coincided with the furore.

Hamish & Andy won the top prize of best on air team along with best networked program, best station promotion, and best multimedia execution. The show’s Sam Kavanagh won best show producer.

Meanwhile, 2GB’s Ray Hadley won three awards.

WINNERS (Section winners are labelled as Country, Provincial, Non Metropolitan and Metropolitan):

Hey Harto, embrace this: A plan for online press

Media Hunter — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:28:18 +0000

Last week Australian News Ltd supremo John Hartigan stirred up every media blogger in the Southern Hemisphere with a speech to the National Press Club. Hartigan took a swipe at bloggers as well as new media sites like Mumbrella and Crikey.

He also toed the company line that we will all be happily paying for news online soon due to the quality of the journalism (which was no doubt aided by the typo in his own paper).

Naturally the blogosphere were up in arms and Mumbrella received a gazillion comments helpfully pointing out that Harto had missed the point and, as @NickHaC so eloquently put it, “you will miss us when we are gone has never been a compelling business model”.

Anyway it occurred to me that this whole episode highlights both the shortcomings and potential solution to the online press predicament. Hartigan is seemingly trying to alienate the blogosphere yet generated substantial links and coverage online with his spray. Why not use the blogosphere (and Twitterverse) to your advantage?

Embrace the blogosphere!

Lets face it, links are the lifeblood of the internet. The traditional press seem to have ignored this fact with their online properties. They actively do their best to avoid linking to others so they can “keep eyeballs on their site”.

The truth is that much of their traffic these days comes from blogs, Twitter and Facebook users linking to their stories. If the end goal is maximum traffic in order to sell advertising, then why not embrace the web’s heaviest and most influential users?

If I was running an online news site I’d be asking quality bloggers to do guests posts, I’d open them up to comments, I’d link back to good bloggers and I’d provide every possible tool for viewers to pass my content around. You know, like all the smart bloggers do. Those people have built large and dedicated audiences online in a short amount of time without spending a cent on promotion; they must be doing something right.

I’d basically do the opposite to what News Ltd is proposing.

Embrace the blogosphere Harto, they may actually be your greatest friend rather than the enemy.

Why Twitter will renew journalism

Media Hunter — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:07:36 +0000

Guest Report: by Renai LeMay of ZDNet.com.au news

This commentary is the modified text of a speech given to the Insight Exchange’s Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism event in June 2009.

In my daily professional life, I often feel as though I am a medieval knight who has been called into action to defend with sword and shield the honour of a great lady of noble birth.

That lady’s name, of course, is Journalism.

Now, there is no doubt that she is currently beset on all sides.

Her bountiful wealth of gold and silver is speedily disappearing as digital mediums demolish her traditional revenue models. Her social media rivals for our attention grow ever more beautiful as time goes on. And of course her virtue is beset by public relations professionals, whose numbers are legion.

And yet, I take solace from the fact that she has chosen the right champion.

I am not one of the traditional defenders of journalism.

I am not a 60-something newspaper editor who cannot understand the internet. I am not the chief executive of a television studio who is suing YouTube for re-publishing his TV news clips. And I am not a media magnate with a sprawling publishing empire that needs to keep his share price up by talking up his print assets.
I am only 28 years old and I am a member of Generation Y. I have an iPhone, a MacBook, Facebook and Twitter accounts, a blog, an Xbox and a Nintendo Wii. I know what re-tweeting is and how to do it, and I am the perpetrator of many a rickroll.

As a journalist, I have been publishing professional articles on the internet for the past 10 years and am currently the news editor of ZDNet.com.au, a website which is Australia’s largest business technology publication.

In short … I am Sir Lancelot. And I and many others like me represent the future of journalism. The media industry is entering the age where Generation Y becomes management.

With this in mind, you may well ask, what is my opinion of Twitter’s impact on the media and journalism?

Firstly, Twitter is not “the death of the traditional journalist” and it does not represent a “threat” to the media. Twitter is a “playground of pleasure” for journalists and represents a fantastic opportunity to the media.

There is one simple reason why.

Twitter represents a way for journalists to get back to their grassroots history and connect with readers and audiences in the most personal way.

There is no doubt that our society’s journalism has stagnated over the past 20 years. In the 1970′s, the lady we call journalism was holding clandestine meetings in parking garages with Deep Throat to expose presidential corruption.

Thirty years later, she’s become a depressed, old and chain-smoking has-been. We know this because university studies have exposed the fact that much of what we call journalism today is in fact composed of press release re-writes.

No wonder Generation Y spends more time on Facebook than reading the Washington Post … or even the Huffington Post. Journalism has dropped the ball. But Twitter represents a way to put that diamond tiara back on journalism’s head.

Every day now, I see Australians using Twitter to connect directly with journalists that they previously had little or no access to. Every day now, I see journalists using Twitter to connect directly with readers and audiences they previously had little or no access to.

This is because Twitter is the greatest tool humanity has yet discovered for facilitating relationships between people who have never met, yet have a common interest.

The only currency it recognises is valuable information.

When journalists succeed in delivering valuable information, Twitterers reward them through recognition, increased distribution and by trusting us with confidential information that will lead to more articles. When journalists make mistakes or simply don’t do a good enough job, Twitterers curse us, demand that we do better and threaten to read the news somewhere else.

In short, Twitter is cutting the fat out of journalism.

The starkest example of this impact that I have personally seen came when, in the closing months of 2008, Australia’s IT industry went through a massive round of layoffs in reaction to the global financial crisis.

Twitter went crazy.

The first thing that I witnessed was an amazement on the part of Twitterers that the media was not investigating the redundancies with the rigour we should have been. This was a righteous anger. Isn’t it “our media”? Shouldn’t they be covering the fact that I and hundreds of others in my company have lost their jobs?

They were right.

So ZDNet.com.au swung into action. Stimulated by our readers and our newfound relationship with them via Twitter, we started investigating the cuts in the IT industry.

After the first few articles went up, we experienced a snowball effect. We started getting dozens of tips through Twitter direct messages about layoffs. We wrote dozens of stories about them. We did what the media is supposed to do; provide an information service to its readers, despite the disapproval of powerful people.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Aussie-ICT-layoffs-the-scorecard/0,139023166,339293142,00.htm

We published information that only an independent press can publish. Information that would end careers if published by those who leaked it to us. Information that demonstrated the value of journalism to society. This ‘snowball’ effect we saw during that period was in fact a strong example of the relationship between journalists and their audiences being renewed in an amazingly positive way; and much of it was done through Twitter.

And we’ve seen that snowball effect happen again and again and again since that time. Journalists being driven by the needs of their readers rather than commercial agendas.

Now you might think that all this is pretty amazing. But here’s the really mind-blowing thing.

You can take that principle of community engagement through Twitter and apply it to any issue or event, no matter how small. Audiences and journalists can and are using Twitter to work together on coverage of issues as large as national politics. But they are also using this snowball effect to build community and coverage of events as small as an under 7′s soccer game.

Any niche coverage is valuable as long as there is an audience interested in it. This sort of reporting is what many in the media industry are calling “hyperlocal journalism”.

Over the next few years you’ll hear arguments that social media can replace traditional media. And there is no doubt that in some ways it can. Twitter as a platform is currently doing a stellar job of covering the situation in Iran: a situation that traditional journalists face political challenges in reporting on.

Over time, you will see the principle of citizen reporting being used in Iran being applied to every situation in life; whether it be as big as an election or as small as a primary school soccer game.

But this won’t negate the need for professional journalists to work with the community to publish and investigate information that nobody else can. The reality is Twitter and journalists need to work together. Many of the best journalists already know this and are getting on the Twitter bandwagon. Others will fall by the wayside as they ignore the wave of the future.

Now the time has come for me to get back to work and return to King Arthur’s round table.

But I want to leave you with one thought: Twitter is not the great evil for journalists and media. In fact it is a playground of pleasure that is helping to renew journalism and bring that great lady back to her rightful throne.

This commentary is the personal opinion of ZDNet.com.au news editor Renai LeMay and does not necessarily represent the view of his employer, CBS Interactive. Renai is one of Australia’s most prolific technology journalists and twitters at @renailemay.

Formerly a senior journalist with ZDNet.com.au, he returned to lead the site’s news team in July 2008 after a stint as one of the Australian Financial Review’s main technology reporters. He has also contributed to MIS Magazine, australia.internet.com and SitePoint.

The Daily Show covers “aged news”

Media Hunter — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:21:57 +0000

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

End Times

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

The press no longer control their destiny

Media Hunter — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:46:57 +0000

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation recently declared “the days of free news online to be over.”

Printing press originally uploaded by Travel Aficionadoonline to be over."

NEWSFLASH for Mr Murdoch: the news press no longer control their destiny. The audience is now in charge.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about newspaper publishers investigating new business models. Most of the talk has been the result of declining revenue for news press as classified advertising has migrated online.

Contrary to popular blogger opinion, newspapers aren’t dying because people don’t read newspapers anymore, or because we all get our news from the Internet. While there has been a small decline in subscriptions and sales of the printed newspaper, this isn’t the killer. Its the evaporation of the “rivers of gold” that classifieds represented which has hit the industry hardest.

Subsequently, declining revenues have resulted in cost-cutting that is now affecting quality journalism. And that’s a major concern.

Meanwhile the industry has been publishing large chunks of their content online for free for years in order to compete and keep their brands alive.

Now publishers, such as Rupert Murdoch, are suggesting that they will be charging for online access of their product, or parts of their product.

This sounds very much like a traditional media titan still trying to impose old rules upon a new digital economy, and maybe still not grasping the reality that the news press no longer control their own destiny.

Google is now the world’s most powerful media company with their search engine and YouTube providing instant access to any information, news or content available. Interestingly the American Press Institute regards Google as both a friend and enemy, a frenemy.

Google is acknowledged as delivering bountiful traffic and advertising income to news sites, whilst being blamed for “stealing” the news in the first place.

Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search product and user experience at Google, says that traffic referral of more than 1 billion clicks a month to newspaper websites and a payout to publishers last year of more than $US5 billion for hosting Google advertising is proof that Google is indeed more friend than enemy.

Whichever side of that fence you sit on, the reality is that there is no going back.

Murdoch may plan to start charging for content via various digital platforms, and may be able to coerce some of his traditional media competitors to do likewise, but is unlikely that all news providers will agree to follow this model.

“The approach, ‘Let’s just take whatever appeared in the print paper and put it on a web page’ doesn’t work,” says Mayer.

In a recent interview with Stephen Hutcheon, Mayer implied that the mainstream media does not understand online and that newspapers are partly to blame for their own predicament.

Now with the rise of micro-media when readers are consuming news in Twitter-sized bites, immediately and from unlimited sources, its hard to imagine that traditional news models will be the dominant force in the future.

New online-only models will be much better suited to future news consumption as they are built on the premise of free access, are easy to share and have lower overheads. By putting publications behind a pay-wall it could be argued that Murdoch will actually be helping the likes of the Huffington Post who will be happy for you to read their content for free.

And how does Mr Murdoch propose to prevent the sharing of content anyway? Hyperlinks are the dominant currency of the Internet. The restrictions required to prevent the linking and sharing of content would be so onerous that surely the backlash would be massive.

Marissa Mayer says linking to more information, engaging readers in dialogue and making the content more interactive are part of the “web fundamentals” that could be used to “end up with a product that will look different than news online does today”.

This is not to say that the news press cannot continue to exist, provide quality journalism and even prosper, just that it is quite likely that they won’t be responsible for creating the model that saves them.

Look at the music industry.

The digitisation of music changed the industry within less than a decade. The power was with the consumer who could suddenly download music for free rather than be forced to purchase overpriced CD’s with songs they didn’t want. It was a disaster for record companies.

Then along came iTunes and similar online models that enabled consumers to purchase the official product quickly and easily for a fair price. It revolutionised the industry and empowered the artists simultaneously.

I’d wager that it’ll be a new player who creates the model that provides us with the news we want online and the revenue the publishers and journalists require to survive. News Corporation and others will dabble with various models, but they no longer control their destiny.

Hunter Advantage kicks off

Media Hunter — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:24:48 +0000

Newcastle and the Hunter Valley will be promoted to the nation as an ideal place to do business following the launch of the Hunter Advantage initiative last week. Here is how The Herald newspaper announced the initiative:

THE Hunter is set to go head-to-head with major growth regions like south-eastern Queensland to market itself as an economic powerhouse.

A new venture with private sector backing will be launched in Newcastle on Friday to send the message that the Hunter is open for business.

Called Hunter Advantage, the marketing project will combine a national advertising campaign with an internet site to build a strong case for business and industry to invest in or relocate to the Hunter and stimulate growth.

Among the backers are business heavyweights Jeff McCloy, Hilton Grugeon, Richard Owens, Bill Saddington, Mark Fitzgibbon and Phil Gardner and a host of Hunter corporations and business groups.

“This is about everyone working together to attract economic prosperity and jobs to our region,” developer Jeff McCloy said yesterday.

“We’ve got so much more to offer here in the Hunter and we’ve got to promote it as a great place to do business.”

The campaign follows Hunter Business Chamber warnings that the region is not immune to the deepening effects of global recession and that a growing number of local businesses will be forced to reduce staff in the next three months.

Figures the chamber released yesterday said 22 per cent of businesses surveyed expected to sack staff in that period.

But some of the region’s most influential business people say the Hunter could reap long-term prosperity, and jobs, by promoting its advantages.

An advertising campaign titled “A Sound Business Case”, will go national from Friday and an internet site will provide information on all aspects of the region, including education and lifestyle.

It will also contain case studies of businesses that have successfully relocated premises and staff to the Hunter.

Mr McCloy said the project, set up with seed-funding from the private sector, was working in conjunction with the State Government through the Hunter Development Corporation.

Advantages the Hunter had over other regions included availability of commercial land, a skilled workforce, affordable residential prices and a good lifestyle.

“Put that together with our educational facilities, airport, access to roads, rail, the port, water and power and I can’t see any restraints to locating business here,” Mr McCloy said.

Wests Group chief executive Philip Gardner said many businesses hit hard by the financial downturn and struggling with the high costs of larger metropolitan areas would look at the Hunter as an ideal place to re-locate.

Hunter development Corporation chairman Paul Broad said the project would help to streamline development activity.