Category Archives: online publishing

Refining the Model

January 29, 2012 – 8:10 pm

TweetLet’s come back to the business model question. My January 15 column featuring a Simple Model for digital newspapers triggered a number of emails and comments, many  questioning my assumptions (my thanks to readers of the Monday Note who take the time to make insightful contributions to the discussion). Let’s see if we can sort [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (6)

Trying a Simple Model

January 15, 2012 – 8:16 pm

TweetAdvertising still dominates the newspaper revenue model. Depending upon the particular country, it is not uncommon to see print dailies getting 70% to 80% of their revenue from advertising. In the early days of the digital era, when business plans were driven by “eyeballs”, everybody hoped to replicate the tried and true print advertising revenue [...]

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My 2012 Watch List

December 18, 2011 – 11:00 pm

TweetWhen it comes to cracking the digital media code, 2011 involved more testing than learning. Media companies seem to be locked in a feverish search mode. Their sense of urgency is reinforced by the continuous depletion of worldwide fundamentals: digital advertising’s encephalogram remains flat (at best); and when audiences grow, revenues do not necessarily correlate. [...]

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The Best of Curation

December 11, 2011 – 10:43 pm

TweetI love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of developers who wrote neat applications [...]

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Apple’s Newsstand: Wait for 2.0

October 24, 2011 – 3:30 am

TweetCan Apple crack the digital news market the way it did with music? The comparison might not be relevant. Here is why: – Today, in the new business, imperfect as it is, the transition from print to digital is much more advanced than the music industry’s similar transformation was when, in 2001, Apple launched the [...]

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The Capsule’s Price

September 25, 2011 – 9:12 pm

TweetDo encapsulated digital editions make sense? Is the notion of having a “news container”, similar to a newspaper or magazine, a relic of the past or is it still associated with quality journalism? In an era of instant information, is it worth proposing a self-contained, stop-motion shot of the news cycle? For some, the reflexive [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (15)

The (Overly Personal) Litmus Test

September 18, 2011 – 7:44 pm

TweetOver the past three weeks, I’ve been followed. By advertising. Like many, week after week, I land on dozens of sites. Some visits originate from my set of bookmarks, others from the usual click hopping that defines internet serendipity. In numerous instances, I get the same ad in different formats. The advertiser is called Litmus. [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (9)

Innovation in turbulent times

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 [...]

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The ePresse Digital Kiosk: First Lessons

July 10, 2011 – 6:29 pm

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 [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in newspapers | Tagged | Comments (7)

Losing value in the “Process”

June 19, 2011 – 7:07 pm

TweetDigital media zealots are confused: they mistake news activity for the health of the news business. Unfortunately, the two are not correlated. What they promote as a new kind of journalism carries almost no economic value. As great as they are from a user standpoint, live blogging / tweeting, crowdsourcing and hosting “experts” blogs bring [...]

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