Tag: media business

A push to save City Weekly

Local media and political activist Ron Newman has written an open letter to the Boston Globe asking that it save the City Weekly section, currently targeted for elimination on March 22. Newman writes:

Dear Boston Globe folks,

As a resident of Somerville, I am distressed to read that you plan to discontinue the only section of the Globe that consistently covers news about our city (and our neighbor, Cambridge).

Your internal memo, published at Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation blog, says that “the suburban zones … are too important to readers to dramatically reduce.” Does this mean that the Globe no longer cares about readers who live in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline? How do you expect to keep readers and advertisers if you keep slashing away at the content that makes the Globe unique?

For over 50 years, I’ve lived in houses that received home delivery of at least one daily newspaper. But I’m seeing less and less reason to keep my Globe subscription.

To see the reaction that this decision is getting, I recommend you read the comments on these blog entries:

http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1665644.html
http://community.livejournal.com/b0st0n/6482970.html
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23506
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23389

You still have several weeks to reconsider this bad decision. Please do so.

My own take? Probably unrealistic. But I’d certainly like to see the Globe take some steps to pump up its city coverage online.

Counting the days for Globe regional sections

Media Nation has obtained a memo sent to the staff by Boston Globe metro editor Brian McGrory and regional editor David Dahl. The full text follows.

All,

We just wanted to bring you up to date on the proposed changes that we went over last week. The publisher and his senior management team approved the recommendations late yesterday involving Metro. This means that City Weekly will shut down, and Globe North West will disband as a freestanding zone, its geographic areas split between North and West. The final issue of City Weekly will be published on March 22; the final issue of Globe North West on March 26. The three suburban zones will continue to be published two days a week, Thursdays and Sundays, as they are now.

On City Weekly, we wish there was an upbeat spin to put on this. There’s not. It’s been a singular section since its launch in 1992 — vibrant, filled with voice, often with an edge that the rest of the paper would do well to replicate. Lately, under Veronica [Chao]’s leadership, it’s only grown stronger. The sad reality, though, is that advertising revenues simply don’t sustain it, so we’re losing a strong section put out by a group of talented and committed people.

Where we can sound more upbeat is in the suburbs. For the second year in a row, a group from across the paper studied the viability of the suburban zones and decided that they are too important to readers to dramatically reduce. It’s testament to everyone who works hard on those sections, and we expect that the hard work, the high quality, and the reader popularity to continue. And our suburban coverage will be greatly enhanced as we continue to roll out more Your Town sites — as many as 15 by year’s end.

As far as the zones copy desk, there will be substantial changes made, along the lines of what we said last week — the four day week becomes a five day week, with editors playing a stronger role in the Your Town sites. We’ll brief you on that when we have more, which should be soon.

Thanks for your cooperation and all your strong work through these really frustrating times.

Brian and David

No surprises — the City Weekly and Globe NorthWest cuts were already all but certain. Depressing nevertheless.

Pessimistic Weisberg criticizes paid content

Like most people thinking about the ailing news business these days, Jacob Weisberg is better at describing the problem than at prescribing solutions.

“I do think people approach it in the wrong way when they think about it as a business problem,” Weisberg, editor-in-chief and chairman of the Slate Group, said earlier today. “It is more fundamentally a problem of democracy. And it is a problem of democracy because our system of government is predicated on a free press and an independent media, which allow us to have an informed public and a check on government.”

Weisberg spoke at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, part of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A former editor of the politics-and-culture webzine Slate, Weisberg is now in charge of developing new products affiliated with Slate, such as The Root, aimed at African-American readers, and The Big Money, a financial Web site.

Weisberg expressed pessimism that anything like the newspaper as we have come to know it can survive in the digital age — especially papers smaller than the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. (Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.) Still, he refused to join the likes of Walter Isaacson, Steven Brill and Gordon Krovitz, all of whom have argued in recent weeks that newspapers should charge for their online content.

Asked by Shorenstein’s director, Alex Jones, how many subscribers he thought the New York Times would lose if it started charging $20 a year for online access, Weisberg replied, “90 percent.” He added he’d rather donate $100 a year to the Times than pay a $20 subscription fee, since a paid-subscription model would necessitate walling off content from the larger Internet, and especially from bloggers.

“The political debate exists online, and if you’re behind a pay wall, you’re not part of it,” Weisberg said, adding that Slate’s own 1997 experiment in charging for content is widely seen as having failed.

Though Weisberg would not rule out a role for non-profit, endowment supported projects such as the investigative Web site ProPublica, he said he prefers profit-driven ventures because they are not dependent on the whims and agendas of philanthropies.

“America’s contribution to the news media isn’t the free press, it’s the independent press,” he said. “Countries are better off with an independent media. That’s what we’re at risk of losing.”

The audio of Weisberg’s presentation is online here.

Photo of Weisberg (cc) by Dan Kennedy. For details, see Creative Commons license elsewhere on this blog.

Howard Owens has left the building

Howard Owens, GateHouse Media‘s director of digital publishing, has left the company, according to an internal memo by GateHouse president Kirk Davis that was obtained by Media Nation.

“Beginning today, Brad Dennison, VP News, will assume the additional responsibilities inherent in overseeing our online news operations and support,” Davis wrote in the memo, dated Friday. “Brad will be incorporating Howard Owens’ duties, as Howard has left the company. Howard did volumes to advance our digital strategy and leaves GateHouse with our deep appreciation.”

As you will see, I am missing point #2 of Davis’ memo. [Not anymore. Added at 11:46 a.m.] If anyone would like to pass it along, I will give you a free lifetime subscription to Media Nation.

GateHouse Media is a national chain that owns nearly 400 community newspapers, including 125 in Eastern Massachusetts. Though most of those papers are weeklies, some are among the best-known dailies in the state, including the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the Enterprise of Brockton and the Framingham-based MetroWest Daily News.

Within journalism new-media circles, Owens is a highly respected thinker. Before joining GateHouse in September 2006, he helped launch pioneering new-media ventures at the Bakersfield Californian and, before that, the Ventura County Star, according to his LinkedIn profile.

At GateHouse, Owens pushed a strategy of Web-first journalism, exhorting reporters and editors to post breaking news stories on the company’s Wicked Local sites before running them in their print editions. He was also a strong advocate of quick-and-dirty video for the Wicked Local sites. In addition, he’s a co-founder of the Wired Journalists social network.

Owens’ blog, HowardOwens.com, appears to have gone dark, although a “whois” search reveals that he’s still the owner. Worth keeping an eye on, I’d say. He continues posting to Twitter.

Owens possesses one of the more interesting minds I know in new-media journalism, combining vision and practical experience. Yet his blunt, occasionally caustic manner has not played well with many of GateHouse’s reporters and editors, who work long hours for short money.

I interviewed Owens for a feature on GateHouse Media last fall for CommonWealth Magazine, a time when finances for GateHouse were perilous, but before the economy had gone off a cliff. Owens was particularly proud of the Batavian, a Web-only “paper” he had launched for GateHouse in Batavia, N.Y. (not far from GateHouse’s corporate headquarters, in Fairport), which he hoped could serve as something of a model.

“The overall revenue would be less than what you would get from a print newspaper,” he said, but added that by eliminating the cost of printing and distribution, he hoped the project could break even relatively quickly.

But Owens put his foot in his mouth when I asked him about complaints within the company that people didn’t have time to devote much energy to executing the company’s online strategy while also putting out quality print editions.

“There are some incredibly talented hardworking people in New England who are asked to do an incredible amount of work,” he said. “There are also slackers, and at some point you have to hold them accountable.” The “slackers” comment reportedly got him in some hot water with his superiors.

More recently, an internal e-mail Owens wrote became an issue in the legal dispute between GateHouse and the New York Times Co. GateHouse sued over Boston.com’s Your Town sites, charging that Boston.com’s practice of automatically “scraping” Wicked Local sites for headlines and ledes violated its copyright. (The suit was settled before it could go to trial.)

But though it might look as though Owens was endorsing the sort of copying and linking practices that Boston.com was engaged in on its Your Town sites, the issues were different in subtle and important ways. If you’re interested in learning more, here’s an overview I wrote for the Guardian.

What could be motivating Owens’ departure? Perhaps he left entirely on his own. If not, my guess is that Davis and chief executive Michael Reed have decided to run as lean an operation as possible in order to get through the recession.

In any case, Media Nation extends its best wishes to Owens, one of the good guys in the ongoing struggle to reinvent journalism. Davis’ memo follows.

DATE: February 20, 2009
TO: GateHouse Media Publishers
Regional Managers
GateHouse Media News Employees
Online Operations Employees
Fairport Employees

FROM: Kirk Davis
RE: GateHouse News Division

As we adjust to the challenges confronting us, it is critically important that we remain positive and determined to emerge from this economic turmoil stronger than ever. As you know, the decisions we make must balance many needs ranging from controlling costs, maximizing our resources, evolving our print and online strategies and demonstrating to our employees that we’ll move swiftly and communicate often as we navigate this recession.

Today, I’d like to outline some important changes with the aforementioned context in mind.

I’m pleased to announce an expansion of the services provided to you and our employees through the GateHouse News Division. Beginning today, Brad Dennison, VP News, will assume the additional responsibilities inherent in overseeing our online news operations and support. Brad will be incorporating Howard Owens’ duties, as Howard has left the company. Howard did volumes to advance our digital strategy and leaves GateHouse with our deep appreciation.

In his expanded role, Brad will oversee and foster a stronger alignment of our print and online strategy, organizational structure, training and support. In turn, this will enable Bill Blevins to focus more on accelerating our online revenue performance, but more importantly, devote more time to strategic planning, identifying new digital opportunities and developing business models to support them. While there are many other benefits we’ll realize, I’m particularly excited due to:

1) The confidence I have in Brad and Bill, working closely with me, to bring greater clarity, responsiveness, support and service from a “field” perspective.

2) The opportunity we have to bring greater continuity to our overall content strategy and product development on all platforms, with a premium on scalability. This will allow us to make big plays when we want, where we want. In other words, we’ll benefit from simplified implementation of next-generation products en masse.

3) Our company’s ability to step back and appreciate what we’ve all accomplished together, but to welcome a fresh approach by bringing our vast corporate talent in online development and support together with our premiere news division and its contagious enthusiasm and culture.

4) Our company’s increased capacity as a result of these changes to make a greater commitment to long-term and strategic planning so that we can all feel increasingly inspired about where our hard work can lead us. The possibilities are endless.

As Brad and Bill meet with staff and focus on this transition, I’ve asked them to be prepared to share their plans with us within the next month, which will no doubt allow them to take into consideration any suggestions they receive from you, our digital staff and our outside consulting firm (FTI).

Thank you!

Update: Owens writes on Twitter, “For those who asked: It’s not quite true that I’m out of a job. I’m just no longer employed by GHM. Details in a week or two.”

More possible cuts at the Globe

The Boston Globe may get rid of City Weekly and the twice-weekly Northwest section, according to Michelle Hillman of the Boston Business Journal. She writes that the Globe would “absorb the coverage into other sections of the paper” if managers decide to go ahead with the move.

What does that mean? A fair reading of it is that the Globe is telling us it’s only trying to save on paper and production costs, and that there will be no loss of coverage if the two sections are folded. I guess we’ll find out. (Via Universal Hub.)

The two most successful papers in the U.S. Really.

Let’s take a time-out from the news apocalypse to acknowledge the two most successful newspapers in the United States: the New York Times and the Boston Globe.

What? Isn’t the financially ailing Times selling part of itself off to a shady Mexican billionaire? Isn’t the Globe, owned by the Times Co., losing a reported $1 million a week and eliminating 50 editorial positions?

Yes and yes. This week, though, the Nieman Journalism Lab pulled together a year’s worth of Web site figures — compiled by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor & Publisher — and found that the Times’ and the Globe’s Web sites are far and away the most successful in their respective weight classes.

Among national papers, the Times has built such a huge lead over its rivals that there’s really no comparison. Look at the chart. With nearly 19.5 million unique visitors every month, the Times’ online readership is nearly double that of its closest competitor, USA Today.

The Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, ranked number six in the country, with 5.2 million unique visitors a month. If you consider the Los Angeles Times to be a national paper, then the Globe is by far the largest regional online newspaper.

One other thing. In December, visitors to the New York Times Web site spent an average of 33 minutes poking around. At the Globe, it was nearly 17 minutes. In other words, a substantial number of people are actually reading the paper on line, not just dipping in quickly from a search engine.

To be sure, there are some extenuating circumstances. According to the Nieman analysis, the Times’ average monthly uniques were driven up by the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as New York’s governor last March. The Globe benefited from Red Sox coverage during their September playoff drive. In fact, the Globe benefits from the Red Sox year-round, as Sox fans from around the country check in on a daily basis.

Still, this is further proof that what ails the newspaper business right now isn’t a lack of readers — it’s the collapse of the old business model, compounded by recession and debt.

If there’s any good news here, it’s that there are enough people who want what newspapers are giving them that there may be some way of figuring out the revenue dilemma.

Not as retro as I had feared

Interesting to note that Joel Kramer, editor of the community Web site MinnPost, is also thinking about premium pricing for the print editions of newspapers. Here’s what he writes at the New York Times’ blog Room for Debate:

I do think there is a strategy that might keep a high-quality regional newspaper modestly profitable in the future: Rely much more on revenue from readers. Publish a newspaper worth $2 a day, the price of a cup of coffee, and $5 on Sunday. Raise the quality. Make it more in-depth, more analytical, to complement the immediacy of your free Web site, and do not make that deeper, more insightful coverage available for free on the web. Perhaps make the printed product a tailored mix of sections that appeal to different readers: For $2, you get to pick, say, four sections out of six.

Obviously, circulation would drop. A newspaper that sold 400,000 copies at 50 cents daily and $1.25 on Sunday might sell only 100,000 at four times the price. But there would be a business incentive to keep quality high, because each extra copy sold should increase profit, not subtract from it.

He adds: “I think it has a better chance than going Web-only and charging for the content.” I agree. On Thursday, I floated a similar idea.

Question: If the Boston Globe (or any major metro) raised its prices to $2 on weekdays and $5 on Sundays, what sorts of print-only content would induce you to pay for it rather than simply reading it online? What other services should it make available to paying subscribers?

The trouble with Brill’s not-so-secret memo

My apologies for not being right on top of this earlier in the week. I just had a chance to read Steven Brill’s no-longer-confidential memo, “Turning Around the Times — and Journalism,” posted on Romenesko, and I’ve got a few observations.

First, a bit of praise for Brill, who, near the beginning of his career, wrote one of the bravest books I’ve ever read — “The Teamsters,” about an organization that, at the time of publication (1979), was more a criminal enterprise than it was a union. I don’t know how Brill found the courage to start his car in the morning.

And though I’ve weighed in several times (here and here) on why it doesn’t make sense to think that newspapers will be able to charge a fee to their online customers, I understand the problem. Even though what you pay for a print edition doesn’t even cover the cost of manufacturing and distributing it, the fact — and the problem — is that print advertising is far more lucrative than online advertising. Never is a long time, but it’s beginning to look like Web advertising may never support the public-interest journalism on which a healthy, self-governing society depends.

So I’m sympathetic to, though not supportive of, Brill’s ideas for charging online customers. It’s possible that it might even work for the Times because of its unique appeal. There are probably quite a few people who’d pay for access to the Times, but not for anything else. And therein lies one of problems with his plan, though by no means the only one.

Here’s the biggest drawback I see in Brill’s proposal: it would end blogging, as valuable a journalistic form as has been developed since the inverted pyramid. A really good blog post might link to three, four or five news stories — maybe more. A really good blogger might skim through 10, 15 or 20 stories in the course of synthesizing them into that post. Finally, that blogger might look at many dozens of news sources on a regular or semi-regular basis.

Obviously, bloggers — most of whom are doing it for no money — cannot afford to subscribe to dozens of online newspapers and magazines. Even if they could, they want to know that when they link to particular stories, their readers will be able to follow the links and read those stories as well. How many online news sources is a typical blog reader supposed to subscribe to?

Micropayments, which Brill also mentions, get around this. Properly implemented, they’re deducted automatically. But though 10 cents an article might seem reasonable, do you really want to pay $1 to read a well-constructed blog post and follow all the links? Of course you don’t. No one is going to do such a thing.

Brill says that if the Times charges $1 per month to each of its 20 million unique monthly visitor, that would generate $240 million a year. I’ll withhold my sarcasm, because this is math, and experience tells me that I could be wrong. But it strikes me that Brill has convinced himself that the Times could get a buck out of every person who, at some point during the course of a month, clicks on a link to a Times story that he found via a search engine. Intuitively, it seems to me that they’re not going to do that, and I’m pretty sure Brill would concede the point if he’d think about it.

The only folks who are going to pay $1 a month are the journalism geeks like me, who actually prop open their laptops at breakfast and read a good chunk of the Times online. And I suspect the number of people who actually read the paper that way is far, far smaller than 20 million.

Case in point: Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma told me last fall that 84 percent of visitors to the paper’s Web site come in via search engines, aggregators and blogs. Let’s say it’s the same for the Times. Let’s say you could get every one of the 16 percent who come in through the front door to pay $1 a month. That’s $38.4 million for the year, not $240 million.

I realize that my critique would appear to leave no way out of the dilemma in which the Times and other newspapers find themselves. I happen to think there may be more life left in the print edition than we all imagined a couple of years ago. I’d raise the price by quite a bit, maybe offer some premium, print-only features (heresy, I know, but worth thinking about) and perhaps offer those well-heeled customers access to some special services.

A solution? No. But it might work as a holding action until we can figure out what’s next.