August 21, 2011 – 8:31 pm
TweetNews organizations have an innovation problem. Especially print media. As they gingerly wade into digital, their ability to foster innovation becomes more critical than ever. In today’s fast-changing landscape, they should view innovation as their main weapon against direct competitors and emerging players such as tech startups,. Unfortunately, print media appears ill-equipped to innovate. The [...]
Tweet[correction added about Relay.com's rate] On June 30th, the French consortium ePresse opened its digital kiosk. Six months of hard work for a very small team (the ePresse consortium is a three persons operation: a CTO, a marketing person, and a manager), and still a long way to go. ePresse brought up eight titles: five [...]
TweetToday, both Jean-Louis and I struggle with the same topic: last week’s announcement of the New York Time’s strange paywall structure. For a digital newspaper, there is no such thing as a fair price. Too many questionable assumptions, too many variables, too many ways to play with data. The Monday Note and my day job [...]
Tweet On March 28th, after much handwringing, the New York Times will finally deploy a paywall. NYT fans, your author included, rejoice: We see this as a necessary condition for the newspaper’s survival. Necessary…but not sufficient. A “small matter of implementation’’ remains an obstacle on the paper’s path to greatness in the digital era. A [...]
February 7, 2011 – 12:33 pm
TweetThe PDF document format is digital publishing’s worst enemy. For a large part, the news industry still relies on this 18-year-old format to sell its content online. PDF is to e-publishing what the steam locomotive is to the high-speed train. In our business, progress is called XML and HTML5. Picture today’s smartphone reading experience. We’ll [...]
January 30, 2011 – 9:16 pm
TweetOngo is an ambitious digital kiosk. Launched last week, it was founded last year by Alex Kazim, a high-tech executive who worked at Ebay, Skype and PayPal. Kazim lined up an impressive group of investors: Gannett, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the venture capital firm Elevation Partners whose portfolio includes Facebook, Yelp [...]
January 16, 2011 – 9:24 pm
TweetThere are signs. Not necessarily good ones. At ten in the morning in Paris, you still find piles of free dailies at almost every distribution point. At four in the afternoon, in the business district, outside one of the busiest subway stations, unopened stacks of copies of Metro lay soaked by the winter rain. Two [...]
January 9, 2011 – 6:29 pm
TweetThe iconic French newspaper Le Monde is about to begin a new chapter of its complicated history. Last September, what remains France’s most influential paper changed hands (see previous Monday Note Le Monde’s escape velocity and story in NY Times’ DealBook). Le Monde is now owned by a triumvirate: Xavier Niel, a telecom entrepreneur, provided [...]
November 29, 2010 – 12:16 am
TweetCan it fly? Last week, Rupert Murdoch announced he was plotting a tablet-only newspaper. Or rather, an iPad-only paper — at first; other tablets would follow. The Daily, as it is to be called (how modest and innovative) is to be blessed by Steve Jobs Himself at a media event introducing the new venture. Initially, [...]
October 24, 2010 – 9:34 pm
TweetIn defining business strategies for modern medias such as online newspapers, the most difficult part is finding the right combination of revenue streams. Advertising, pay-per-view, flat fee… All are part of the new spectrum media companies now have to deal with. The gamut looks like this: As we can see, newspapers mostly consist of one [...]
