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Business
Can Web-Only Original Programming Finally Stick?
The days of skateboarding dogs holding sway on the web may be numbered. Technology companies and advertisers are professing their belief in the value of professionally produced original content. Portals and platforms like YouTube, AOL, MSN and Yahoo -- once known for aggregating and optimizing video produced by others -- are spending millions of dollars to develop and acquire programming...
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Collaboration
Collaborating for Dollars: How to Raise Revenue With Others
At the recent Collab/Space 2012 event, more hands shot up when Journalism Accelerator's Emily Harris asked who was interested in generating revenue than for any other question. Clearly, there's big interest in collaborating to earn money. Here, then, are some pointers on collaborating to earn revenue and otherwise improve business performance. Share The Pie to Make It Bigger The common...
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Social Media
How the Anti-Social Media Crowd Misses the Mark
Facebook's impending stock offering has rekindled laments about the ills of social media. They largely miss the mark. The toppling of dictators, strengthened familial connections, rebirth of friendships, fanning of imagination, and creation of new methods of sharing -- to these I can add some very personal examples of how social media have helped me.
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TVShift
I'm Mad as Hell, But I Haven't (Yet) Cut the Cord
"You can cut the cable, dad," my teenage daughter has told me more than once when I've grumbled about the poor service, unexplained fees and large percentage increases I've had to pay over our introductory "triple-play" rates to our cable company. We did suspend our cable service for weeks a couple of summers ago when we were away much...
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Business
GigaOm + PaidContent = Perfect Sense
When the U.K.-based Guardian Media Group bought PaidContent in 2008, it was portrayed as an attempt to expand into the U.S. market. The Guardian newspaper was a forerunner in its use of the web, and already got a large portion of its traffic from North America. But I had trouble seeing why a general interest news organization, even a forward-looking...
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Podcasting
Turning Panic Into Money: Marc Maron's Podcast Gold
Just over two years ago, comedian Marc Maron was out of a job, couldn't get standup gigs and was going through a debilitating divorce that had put him in debt. With "nothing to lose," as he put it, he launched the WTF podcast, by sneaking into the New York offices of Air America radio, from which he'd just been fired....
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Business
2012: Why the Web Is Not Dead and Other Flashpoints
First the easy predictions for the new year: In 2012 we'll see a rise of politics in the digisphere, along with reporting as if the phenomenon is a surprise; more strum over the Murdochs' drum; and a snazzy new iPad 3. But, there are bigger rumblings afoot in the year ahead, too. Here's my second annual round of predictions for...
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Business
How Did My Predictions for 2011 Turn Out?
It's not too hard to make predictions. What's harder is to honestly evaluate how you did. In that spirit, I'd like to ask your help. Early this year, I predicted how 2011 would go in digital media. I'd love it if you gave me a letter grade with a Tweet to @dbenk (#gradeDBenk), message to Dorian Benkoil on Google+, or...
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Business
7 Ways Salespeople Can Better Understand the Editorial Side of News
There was quite a reaction to my previous column, suggesting editors learn more about, and cooperate with, the business sides of their organizations. This time, I'd like to talk to people on the business side about how they can cooperate with the editorial side to work effectively to keep a news organization solid while also increasing revenues and ensuring the...
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Business
Tear Down the Wall Between Business and Editorial!
For too long, reporters and editors have been unaware, even hostile to the business sides of their organizations. Those attitudes have helped push the news industry into its current dire state. And that's why I say: Tear down the wall between business and editorial. Before you start sharpening your pitchforks, hear me out. I'm not proposing a free-for-all money-grab that...
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Business
Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson: School's Not Enough for Media Entrepreneurs
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson was talking to a class of master's degree students last week, telling them their education wasn't necessary if they wanted to be successful entrepreneurs.
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AdvertisingShift
6 Tips to Support Digital News Through Advertising
This is the first in a series of columns on new business models for news and other media. You'll be able to find other stories in the series by clicking on the Business Models tag. One of the toughest ways to support a digital news operation is via advertising. Over my years working in advertising, helping many and talking to...
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Business
E-Book Publishers Must Provide Flexible Access to Avoid 'Media Hell'
Trying to consume an e-book can be an infuriating experience. Consumers like me want to enjoy the digital version of a book when, where and how we want. We love to be able to read it from multiple screens, search it automatically, share annotations, even have the text read aloud as we drive or do dishes.
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Business
5 Questions Publishers Should Ask Before Committing to a Social Platform
J Crowley, Foursquare's head of business development and media partnerships, greeted a study group then showed off pages that some of the best-known media companies had created on the location-based social sharing service.
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Media Usage
Traveling Back in (Technology) Time With Hurricane Irene
Hurricane Irene brought home for me how our media technology defines eras. On the eastern end of New York's Long Island on Saturday evening, as the storm approached, my family and some friends were having a pizza party for my younger daughter's birthday at Emilio's, a local restaurant in Greenport. As the technology receded, then came back, intermittently and in...
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Business
Publishers Doing an Apple End-Run to Deliver to iPad
Major publishers are starting to deliver content to the iPad outside Apple's App Store, avoiding the company's rules and restrictions that limit what they can do and how much they can earn. Instead of building native apps in iOS, the proprietary operating system for the iPad and other Apple devices, the publishers are using HTML5, the latest version of the...
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Business
3 Ways Google-Motorola Doesn't Make Sense (And 5 Ways it Does)
Google's $12.5 billion deal to purchase Motorola Mobility was foolish, savvy, naive or clever, according to various analysts commenting over the last two days. In fact, it's probably all of those things, and how well it pans out will depend on how it's executed. Let's start with the reasons the deal looks foolish, then some ways it could work. 1....
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Media Usage
How to Control (Or At Least Influence) Children's Media Access
This week, MediaShift will be running a special series on navigating the relationships between kids and media. Stay tuned all week as we explore topics like this one. Once you have a child old enough to use a remote, the angst begins over how to control access to media. And absent the will to live a technology-free existence, media...
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AdvertisingShift
Search = Content? A Case for Google as a Media Company
With recent reports that Google is in the running to buy video site Hulu, it's getting harder to make the case that the search giant is not a media company. A lot could be at stake for Google in that definition and its ability to co-exist peacefully with media companies that rely on it for traffic from search and revenue...
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AdvertisingShift
NY Times Paywall May Be Working, Could Work Better
There's been a lot of hand wringing about pay walls in digital media lately, but not a lot of discussion on how they're working or how to improve them. The pay wall that's gotten the most press, of course, is that of the New York Times -- instituted on March 28. The Times asks people to pay for access after...
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Business
Mirror Awards Celebrate Media: Hoping It's Not Same, Old
The media universe is more multifaceted, and confused, than ever, something Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley alluded to at the Mirror Awards on Tuesday. "Even though we're a technology company, we behave like we are a media company," he said. "It's a question people ask all the time: What is a media company?" By giving Crowley and co-founder Naveen Selvadurai the...
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Business
Dan Gillmor Excited by Experiments by Entrepreneurial Journalists
Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here. He's an entrepreneur, author and outspoken evangelist of entrepreneurial journalism, but Dan Gillmor wants you to know he doesn't...
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AdvertisingShift
13 Principles for How Media Companies Should Use Data
Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here. Access to, and control and ownership of, data is playing a big role in everything from debates over privacy...
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World View
How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster
The reports and pictures of the devastation from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week reminded me of reporting on the earthquake that leveled Japan's port city of Kobe in 1995. On a personal level, I am praying for the people in a country I have come to see as a second home. As a media observer, what struck me...
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Business
8 Ways Publishers Can Protect Users' Privacy
In the digital age, there's an inherent tension between running a media business effectively and protecting its users' privacy. On the one hand, the business wants as much information as possible about everyone it touches. It wants to be able to serve them with the most relevant content, connect them to those with similar interests and affinities and, yes,...
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AdvertisingShift
2011 Flash Points: Open vs. Closed, Google vs. Apple
We don't know exactly what media and technology stories will occur in 2011. Will Facebook finally go public? Will Gawker Media achieve mainstream respectability? Will Jon Stewart start his own cable network? But we can be sure that a lot of stories will occur around a few areas of tension. Here, then, are flash points I predict will define media trends in the coming year and beyond.
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Public MediaShift
The Business of Public Radio: WNYC Bulks Up, Builds Out
New York Public Radio, which includes WNYC, the most listened to public radio station in the country, has in recent years developed a lot of ways to, in the words of CEO Laura Walker, "diversify revenue streams." It has increased its member base, used new fundraising techniques, attracted new grants, conducted capital campaigns to buy radio licenses and build new offices and studios, made financial investments, developed new sponsorships, increased web revenues, rented out its event space and more.
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MagazineShift
Are Magazine iPad Apps Profitable in the Long Haul?
Magazine editors and publishers are excited about tablet devices like the iPad. In them, they see a chance to give consumers the best that digital media can offer -- and to be able to charge them for the content. But does the profit from the apps justify the expense of building and marketing them? And even when the apps are...
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EducationShift
Business, Entrepreneurial Skills Come to Journalism School
For decades, journalists in mainstream news organizations were shielded from the revenue side of the operation. Many argued their lack of knowledge helped avoid even the appearance of commercial influence in the editorial well. But with increased stress in the news industry and new disruptive technologies giving even entry-level reporters an understanding of audience behaviors and income streams, things have started to shift.
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Philosophy
From a business perspective, traditional journalism is rather inefficient. Stories are chosen by a small group whose members often have similar experiences and outlooks. With little knowledge of true market demand, they assign the stories to a limited pool of writers and reporters who may not have the knowledge or contacts to quickly do a top-notch job. The stories...
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MarketingShift
Why The iPad Is A Hit (And Why I Won't Buy One Yet)
Even before any consumers had received Apple's iPad, it was being proclaimed a hit. I didn't find that surprising, because from the beginning there were signs this day was coming. Here are a few: There was a business and tech press feeding frenzy since before the initial announcement of the impending device. The announcement had the same kind of shoulder-to-shoulder...
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Philosophy
Portability, Participation Rule for New Media Consumer
We're spoiled by technology. Today, we expect more from our media than we can get from print, radio or linear TV. If you're like me -- and, increasingly, evidence shows people are -- you crave portability, fungibility, the ability to listen to a book or article, to watch a TV show or movie or YouTube clip whenever and wherever you...
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Philosophy
How Journalism is Getting Better
Michael Arrington's recent TechCrunch post about old media "guys" who don't get it made me realize how far things have come -- and how much better they've gotten -- in the world of journalism. I worked for more than 15 years in what's now called "legacy media" as a reporter, news editor and business person. All along, there were a...
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MarketingShift
For years, the digerati have been declaring the end of email as a useful tool. Back in 2003, experts said RSS feeds would spell the death of the inbox. In 2007, Wired and CNET said younger generations were using IM, Facebook and MySpace instead of email. More recently, PC Magazine's John Dvorak proclaimed "9 Reasons E-mail is Dead," and The...
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