Category: Business
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The business model is still the elephant in the room
As much fun as it is for me to make clever lists and shout from the hilltops about what I think your news organization should be doing, how they should be doing it, and why they should be doing it, no matter what argument I (or anyone else) has in favor of a certain technology…
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Debunking the coulda-shoulda-woulda myth of online news
I’m trying quite hard to stay out of the business of chasing after curmudgeons with a laptop in my hand, shouting “But you got it all wrong!” Trying. Quite. Hard. So let this be just a generic blanket response to a common misconception about the business of online news. The premise, as laid out in…
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Smart single-copy sales
In the IHT, via Romenesko: “Now The Standard is fighting back, using a new, cashless payment system to try to make it easier for Londoners to buy the paper, even if they do not have the necessary 50 pence, or $1, in their pockets. Instead of handing over a coin or two, readers touch a…
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The one dollar newspaper
Call me some sort of radical, but here’s a simple proposal that I think could provide newspapers with a big boost in single copy sales, and profits, too: On the rack or in the box, your newspaper now costs one dollar. When was the last time you paid less than a dollar for a bottle…
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If you can’t beat ’em, or buy ’em, use the API
Newspapers should produce amazing local databases with great maps, ratings and reviews. A newspaper company should buy Yelp. Yelp now has an open API. Newspapers should stop trying to develop something better, and use the API to provide users with Yelp’s functionality on their own sites, applied to their local businesses. Apply that logic everywhere…
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The innovation gap: Your advertising department could use a hand
So here we all are. In the newsroom, in j-school, in our little corner of the blogosphere, producing great journalism, training great journalism students, and pointing out fantastic examples of both to each other and our peers, doing our best to make the transition to online news. One problem. We forgot to bring the advertising…
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Hope for mobile news
I’ve gotta admit, when it comes to the question of newspapers adopting new delivery systems, I’m usually the one wagging my finger and saying “You better…” But John Duncan over at The Inksniffer has a far more hopeful approach when it comes to the prospects for cutting deals with cell phone carriers and getting headlines…
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Flickr Pro and the freemium business model for newspapers
Given the recent developments around our house and the logical uptick in uploading to Flickr, I went ahead and took the $24.95/yr plunge. What I get for my money: Unlimited uploading, unlimited image storage, unlimited bundling and feeding of images, and all the old stuff that had been pushed out of my top 200 by…
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Will the real online news business model please stand up?
Terry Heaton’s take on the Yahoo/Amigos deal and other attempts to make up for lost print revenue with online advertising dollars turns on this point: “…the essential problem for all local media companies is their insistence in the belief that a model of scarcity online will generate the kinds of revenue needed to offset losses…
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Why are online journalists asked to monetize everything they do?
Rob Curley raises the above question in a comment thread on Melissa Worden’s post about onBeing, the new Washington Post project Curley’s involved in. Curley says: Why are online journalists treated so differently at most newspapers than the print journalists are? I mean, if a print editor was planning a huge enterprise project that was…