The Next Movement in News

On a recent stay in a hotel room, I was struck by something that has always been a bit annoying. Most hotel televisions are programmed to return to a main menu every time you turn them on. Of course, they want to force you through their main screen to try to promote the hotel restaurant or spa or to sell you pay-per-view movies. Isn’t this a bit like traditional media, wanting readers to start at the front page so they can steer people where the editor or publisher wants rather than what the viewer wants?

As I wrote in this piece for Advertising Age, the Internet is at its most powerful when sites remember what you like and provide you with the most relevant content for you. Last week’s hearings focused on behavioral targeting of advertising, but more is at stake here than just advertising.

Let’s make sure we police ourselves and ensure that damaging regulation doesn’t wipe out our ability to make the web a more relevant place for all.

One argument goes that Google should turn Google News into a money maker by adding advertising to its page. Then, this argument goes, it should return a share of this new revenue to the publishers whose news content – in the form of headlines and snippets – makes up Google News. Did anyone who makes this argument stop to run the numbers?

Everyone in the news industry seems to be talking about charging for news content – again. It seems so 2001 (remember when economy last tanked and the online ad market swooned).

Of course, whenever such discussion starts, people inevitably start to assess the experience of The Wall Street Journal’s subscription model, regardless of their level of knowledge or depth of analysis. Quite a few of my former Journal colleagues have weighed in on the subject, but I think even they’re still missing some key elements…. Read post

Bill Grueskin wrote: “Most of the acquisition cost amounted to some cheap advertising and a couple of percentage points to the credit-card company.” This seems to suggest that “cheap advertising” is all it takes to convince someone of the value of a subscription. If that were the case, I’d imagine the Journal would be buying a whole lot more of that cheap advertising and boosting the subscriptions even faster. Read post

Almost overlooked this video from Consumer Electronics Show about digital paper products.

I just got off an Interactive Advertising Bureau webinar about Do Not Track legislation and what the advertising industry and something called the Progress & Freedom Foundation is doing to try to stop it. Is the publishing industry paying attention here?

What intrigues me about the Kindle is that the digital world still hasn’t cracked the code on how to make it pleasurable to read news. Scan and skim headlines and summaries, sure. Get up-to-the-second updates via Twitter, of course. But read full articles and digest them, not quite.

In a journalism world increasingly polarized between new and old media adherents and filled with too much hyperbole, Ms. Heffernan reasonable says: “For old-media types, mental flexibility could be the No. 1 happiness secret we have been missing.”

The increasing loss of print newspapers poses a question about who’ll provide news to those less technology savvy.

It was great to see that newspapers sold out and even did extra press runs on Wednesday after Barack Obama’s election victory. I just wonder if this might be the last historic event where we’ll still be saving the print newspaper as a keepsake. How will online be able to preserve history? Yes, we have [...]