November 24, 2008 – 9:17 am
Two recent experiences made me pick Copyright as this week’s topic. The first one took place ten days ago at the Monaco Media forum. Professor Lawrence Lessig delivered a compelling presentation covering the evolution of copyright. The second experience happened at a consultation on the future of the press held by the French government where [...]
November 3, 2008 – 7:50 am
With the violently agitated context of so many platforms and of a potentially unlimited supply of agents, how do we update the definition of journalism? Where do craft or trade begin, where do they end? Inevitably, the profession reacts by circling the wagons, hoping to hold its own against hordes of writers now fragmenting what [...]
October 19, 2008 – 11:03 pm
In less than five years, major newspapers will be giving away more than 50% of their copies. We call this the hybrid model. It works like this: a paid-for newspaper (one posting a price on its first page) with a vast portion it circulation distributed in selected – that’s the key point — areas for [...]
October 5, 2008 – 10:08 pm
Against all odds: In theory, there was no way for Frettabladid (the free Icelandic newspaper) to make its business model work. When its publisher (a local media group) launched the paper in 2001 it settled for two things that are the opposite of the conventional wisdom of the free press business: home delivery and copies [...]
September 29, 2008 – 9:56 am
Let’s kill a myth. The dream of a compact newsroom, able to output a high-intensity general news website doesn’t fly. Numbers simply don’t add up. And here is why.
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First, the cost structure of a daily. In a typical operation, the biggest costs are industrial ones: around 25%-35% for paper and printing; another 30%-40% for [...]
September 15, 2008 – 8:29 am
What’s so special about the Huffington Post? How come that what started as a political blog three years ago now epitomizes the “superblogs” threat to mainstream media? And, perhaps more important, what causes a blog to mutate into something now perceived as a mainstream media — and do the economics work?
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From a content perspective, the [...]
September 7, 2008 – 5:27 pm
This is the Fall season of business plans for the coming year. The numbers will mean pain for the media industry. Below is a set of facts and figures to keep in mind when considering newspapers, advertising, search, mass collaboration… and coffee.
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The newspaper industry’s overall condition
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80% gone: Within the last 12 months, the market value [...]
August 25, 2008 – 9:23 am
A quick summary of the key ideas behind the Daily Information System (DIS) before discussing reactions to last week’s essay:
1) The newspaper as we know it is dead.
2) It survives as one of three information prongs, mobile, Internet and, yes, paper.
3) Off with taboos and sacred cows: periodicity, price and production.
See Monday Note #47 for [...]
August 25, 2008 – 9:20 am
Modest and proud of it, that’s us. Our perch at a center of innovation gives us the “right” to opine about almost anything, from biotech to movies, Net politics, wireless carriers and operating systems. So, why not mull over the future of newspapers?
Let’s deal quickly with the formula: I agree with Frédéric’s prescription for [...]
August 17, 2008 – 10:39 pm
A few years ago, someone involved in the rescue of the French newspaper Libération asked me what would I do to save the paper. The question meant a lot to me. I had spent a total of twelve years at “Libé”, many of those when the paper was at its best (I even enrolled Jean-Louis [...]
Ever heard of companies like Mindworks Global Media, Express KCS, or Affinity Express? Well, in due course, millions of English speaking newspapers will do. Now, this concerns “only” readers of newspapers such as the San Jose Mercury News, The Miami Herald, or the Orange Country Register, to name just a few. In these newspapers, significant [...]
The J-curve is an economics metaphor, a way of saying things will get worse before getting better. That’s the prospect for the global print media sector. For the American press, advertising revenue keeps dropping at a steady yearly rate of 12% to 15%. No industry can withstand a sustained double-digit decrease of its core business. [...]
CEO Eric Schmidt spoke in San Francisco, at an event hosted in San Francisco by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. There, he addressed the collapse of advertising revenue in print media: “It’s a huge moral imperative to help here”. Schmidt didn’t provide any detail on how the search company could throw a [...]
Asked about his outlook for the future of media by the Washington Post, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer answered this: “In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down — my opinion. Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media [...]
To counter the increasing competition from digital media, print newspapers need to take action and set the course for the coming years. The German strategy consulting firm Roland Berger has conducted a study on how to position print media for the future. The average circulation of daily and weekly German newspapers decreased from 31.4 million [...]
Talk with India media executives is always instructive and fascinating. Few weeks ago at the INMA Congress in Beverly Hills, I sat down with Bhaskar Das executive president of the Times of India in charge of marketing.
The Times of India is the largest English language newspaper in the world: 4m copies for 16 editions. Revenue [...]
