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  • Special Report: Apps

    The app genie is out of the bottle. Local news organizations have moved past the stage of merely having an app and are moving on to the tricky challenge of monetizing those apps, and to do that, they will have to build on the momentum of local mobile search, unlock the power of geolocation and push for better app metrics. Part one of a two-part series. Tomorrow: Part two of the special report will focus on content. More | Add comment

  • Digital DMA: WVBT Raises Ante In Norfolk Digital Battle

    In a market that spreads across 10 cities and has a heavy military presence, two newspapers rule the digital roost, but the area’s TV stations, which expect to see a 65% rise in online revenue by 2015, are trying out new ways to bring more visitors to their websites. Among them is LIN TV-owned WVBT, which has launched an online-only show about the local entertainment scene. More | Add comment

  • AppCheck: Cocktail Compass Pours A Round Of Revenue

    The Portland Mercury's Cocktail Compass barfinder app is not only helping users find nearby watering holes and drink specials but it's also helping the alt weekly use its extensive trove of bar listings to generate new revenue streams. More | Add comment

  • Site Specific: Classifieds, Video Help Seven Days Thrive

    Burlington, Vt.-based alt weekly Seven Days built a decent online following on the strength of its quirky, personality-driven video series "Stuck in Vermont," and has turned the site into a money maker primarily from display ads and classifieds. More | Add comment

  • Exec. Session: Alt Weeklies Tap Roots To Drive Web Rev

    Alternative newsweeklies may have gotten off to a slow start on the digital front, but according to Tim Keck, publisher of Seattle's The Stranger and Portland, Ore.'s Mercury, such newspapers can draw on their iconoclastic voice, strong local entertainment coverage and close relationships with local businesses, to take the online lead in their communities and build their online revenue. More | Comments (1)

  • Agile Alt Media Adapting to Digital Challenges

    Like all media entities, alternative newsweeklies have taken their hits over the past few years but now they are taking advantage of their flexibility and experimenting with social media, video and blogs in an effort to catch up in the digital world, and in some markets, challenge the local daily for dominance. More | Add comment

  • Online Metrics Take A Step Closer To Standardization

    Plagued by inconsistent measurement systems, the industry is seeking to standardize online audience measurements. The IAB, ANA and 4As are working on the Making Measurement Make Sense initiative that could hellp boost digital and cross-platform ad growth. More | Add comment

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Special Reports

  • Apps: The app genie is out of the bottle. Local news organizations have moved past the stage of merely having an app and are moving on to the tricky challenge of monetizing those apps, and to do that, they will have to build on the momentum of local mobile search, unlock the power of geolocation and push for better app metrics.
  • Daily Deals: Local media companies are turning to white-label platform providers so that they can build their own brand in the marketplace and potentially make more money.

Industry Calendar

February 2012
Mo
We
27-29
SNPA, Inland Press Association, Local Media Association, and Texas Press Association.
Key Executives Mega-Conference
San Antonio, TX
March 2012
Tu
Th
13-15
American Cable Association
ACA’s 19th Annual Summit
Washington, D.C., DC
April 2012
Fr
13
National Association of Broadcasters
NABShow
Las Vegas, NV

Net Essentials

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Gannett Plans Paywalls For All Except One
Forbes, Feb 22, 2012, 2:35 PM EST
The company is planning to switch all of its 80 community newspapers to a metered paid model by the end of the year, it announced today during its investor day event. The one exception: national newspaper USA Today. Late Last year, CEO Gracia Martore told Wall Street analysts that the company would be rolling out paywalls in an effort to monetize its online properties. Link | Add comment
March Madness Fans May Face $4 Online Fee
New York Post, Feb 17, 2012, 7:21 AM EST
CBS and Turner Broadcasting will start charging some college basketball fans $4 next month to stream the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament across multiple devices — computer, mobile and tablet. However, fans who can prove they pay for cable or satellite TV will be able to stream every game of the tournament for free on their computers. Link | Add comment
Piano, Paywalls And Lessons From TV Subs
The Media Briefing, Feb 14, 2012, 3:58 PM EST
Tomáš Bella, CEO of Piano Media: "We are trying to get to that situation where people don't think about paying. The thing is, personally, micropayments will not work for the same reason that newspapers will want to sell individual print articles." Link | Add comment
Piano Raises Prices On Slovakia Paywall
NetNewsCheck, Feb 13, 2012, 1:11 PM EST
Piano Media starting March 1 will increase the price for access to content from publishers covered by the company's national paywall in Slovakia. Full Story | Add comment
Chicago Trib Plans To Charge For Web News
Crain's Chicago Business, Feb 8, 2012, 3:18 PM EST
The Chicago Tribune is mulling "creative ways" to start charging online readers for access, the paper's editor Gerould Kern said at the Niagara Foundation in Chicago. Link | Add comment
Commentary
Debunking The 'Original Sin' Of Online Papers
GigaOM, Feb 7, 2012, 8:10 AM EST
Mathew Ingram on newspapers' "original sin" of not charging for online content when the Web was new: "Success in the news business isn't going to come from staring longingly into the past and thinking about some mythical Golden Age in which newspapers all charged for their content and the Internet was not a disruptive force. The disruption has happened, and the business has been irrevocably altered — if they want to survive, newspapers should spend more time thinking about how to adapt, and less time dreaming about how much better life would be if only they had put up a paywall 10 years ago." Link | Add comment
Piano Expands Slovak National Paywall
NetNewsCheck, Feb 6, 2012, 2:37 PM EST
Piano Media today added two daily newspapers and a weekly magazine to its year-old national paywall for news sites in Slovakia. Full Story | Add comment
Commentary
NYT Needs More Than Just A Paywall
GigaOM, Feb 6, 2012, 8:13 AM EST
Mathew Ingram: "There's nothing wrong with having a paywall — although in many cases it amounts to building a wall of sandbags around the print newspaper edition, which provides most of the ad revenue — but if a paywall is your only strategy for responding to digital disruption of the media business, then you are almost certainly doomed, whether you are The New York Times or not." Link | Add comment
Shirky: Paywalls Will Live On Core Audience
NPR, Feb 3, 2012, 12:05 PM EST
Clay Shirky: "In fact, what [The New York Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Chicago Sun Times] are doing, and I think an increasing number of papers are copying them, is saying we will never get a majority or even a sizable minority of our readers to pay us directly, but we can design a system in which some of our most passionate, engaged readers pay us directly, and the rest of the readers, the casual readers, we can keep around for the advertising revenue." Listen to the full interview here .   Link | Add comment
NY Times Traffic Is Flat Since Paywall
Poynter, Jan 26, 2012, 8:06 AM EST
The New York Times counted about 44 million unique visitors worldwide last February before instating its paywall. By December, that figure reached 44.8 million. Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy: "We certainly haven't seen the sorts of declines that people anticipated when we launched the paywall." Link | Add comment
Mecom Puts Up Paywall For European Papers
PaidContent, Jan 25, 2012, 6:25 AM EST
Pan-European publisher Mecom will introduce digital pay models at its top 10 newspapers by the end of the first quarternew CEO Tom Toumazis announced this week. Link | Add comment
Slovenia's National Paywall Goes Up
Journalism.co.uk, Jan 17, 2012, 8:11 AM EST
The country's national paywall, powered by Piano Media, was erected Monday with nine participating publishers — including the majority of the country's major newspapers. Link | Add comment
Paywalls Could Become Norm In Canada
The Canadian Press, Jan 16, 2012, 3:28 PM EST
Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey believes his company's competitors will follow the company's lead and turn to paywalls to help offset tumbling ad sales. Link | Add comment
Piano Wants National Paywalls Across Europe
Nieman Journalism Lab, Jan 12, 2012, 8:31 AM EST
The recent expansion of Piano Media into Slovenia is just the beginning of the company's efforts to bring national paywalls to five European countries by year's end. Link | Add comment
Commentary: Paywalls and Pay Strategies
How FT, NY Times Will Crack The Paywall
Monday Note, Jan 9, 2012, 3:27 PM EST
Frédéric Filloux on how the Financial Times and The New York Times can make their paywall efforts successful: "With pre-existing and different audience segments such as an individual and corporate users, pricing decisions become more complicated and a diversified price list can prevent cannibalization. Link | Add comment
Piano To Roll Out Slovenian National Paywall
NetNewsCheck, Jan 9, 2012, 3:06 PM EST
Piano, which launched a national paywall for news sites in Slovakia last year, is rolling out a similar effort for publishers in Slovenia on Jan. 16. Full Story | Add comment
2011: Not Really Year Of 'The Great Paywall'
GigaOM, Jan 6, 2012, 8:29 AM EST
Bobbie Johnson: "There has been a lot written about paywalls over the past year or two. ... As far as I can see, the jury is still out on the issue. It's not that paywalls can't work — there are countless examples of success over the years. Still, we should be very careful that when they succeed, people take away the right lessons." Link | Add comment
Commentary
Baltimore Sun Paywall Should Emulate NYT
Baltimore Magazine, Jan 6, 2012, 8:29 AM EST
Evan Serpick: "ne aspect of the paywall that I have been critical of from the start is that, unlike The [New York] Times, The [Baltimore] Sun requires its print subscribers to pay an additional fee to access the website. This just feels like to insult to the paper's core customers, those who have stuck by it while others fled." Link | Add comment
Commentary
Newspapers, Paywalls And Core Users
Clay Shirky, Jan 5, 2012, 8:05 AM EST
Clay Shirky: "Against this hugely variable audience behavior, a paywall was all-or-nothing: 'If you won’t give us any money, we won’t show you any ads!' Offered this all-or-nothing choice, most readers opted for ‘nothing’ ... This isn’t a problem with general-interest paywalls — it is the problem, widely understood before the turn of the century, and one to which there has never been a convincing answer. The easy part of treating digital news as a product is getting money from 2% of your audience. The hard part is losing 98% of your advertising base." Link | Add comment
Report: UK's Sun Charging For Archived Content
Wall Blog, Jan 3, 2012, 2:09 PM EST
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Today's Top Stories

Classifieds

The Market

Symbol Last Change (%)
Nasdaq 2936.33 -12.24 (-0.42%)
NYSE 8102.06 -13.37 (-0.16%)
S&P 500 1358.56 -3.65 (-0.27%)
Updated 02/22 3:31 ET Quotes delayed at least 20 mins.
Source: Financial Content
Opinions
Features
Ideas
  • For Future Of News, Killer App Is Credibility

    Robert Hernandez, an assistant professor of professional practice in journalism at USC Annenberg: "With technology empowering everyone with the ability to create and to distribute, I predict — and wish — that in 2012 the new dominating factor will be Credibility. Actually, earned Credibility."

  • Layoffs, Cutbacks Lead To News Deserts

    Tom Stites: "Desertification is on the march, claiming more and more communities as newspapers continue to wither and few Web efforts manage to replace more than a fraction of the original reporting that newspapers have abandoned."

  • Moneyball: Fixing Newspaper Web Sales

    Mel Taylor: "Today's Newspaper industry is like that once great, but now struggling baseball team playing on a new, hyper-competitive field called the Internet. The veteran print team is stuck in a rut using the same, tired strategy that did serve them well for years, but no longer. Today, they get trounced by those with more money and muscle."

  • You Should Only Work This Hard If You Own The Business

    Howard Owens, digital media pioneer and author of HowardOwens.com, writes on Patch editors: "But here’s the thing about the work load for Patch editors: They’re not owners. They are expected to do all of the things they would have to do if they owned their own web sites, but merely in service of building wealth for AOL shareholders. Sure, work hard and keep your job is a nice benefit, and as a former corporate employee I think employees have an ethical obligation to help build shareholder value. That’s what they’re paid to do. ... However, if what we’re hearing is true about the Patch workload, I can only ask: Why are you doing it?"

  • The Metric For Missed Expectations

    Matthew Shanahan: "Here’s the problem: [Click-through rates don't] take into account audience engagement, not to mention the fact that other advertisers are competing for the click-through on the same page."

  • Debate Over Naming Commenters Rages On

    Eric Pfanner on real-name commenting policies: "The complications are enormous. Even self-contained Internet services like Facebook have had difficulty enforcing 'real name' systems. To achieve this on the borderless Internet would be impossible."

  • Communities Lose Out When Papers Close

    Author Ken Doctor on MediaNews Group's decision to consolidate its Bay Area newspapers: "It isn’t simply the sad loss of middle-class journalism jobs, as lamentable as that is, just as so many other good jobs that have disappeared in recent years. It’s a community loss, and points to the wider impact of news cuts on the society in which we live. That’s often forgotten as we focus too narrow on industry loss."

  • Why AOL Should Double Down On Patch

    Maxwell Wessel, member of Harvard Business School think tank Forum for Growth, on AOL's Patch: "Patch is AOL's last, best chance to build a growth engine. Investors shouldn't be calling for AOL to back off the business. They should be calling for AOL to double down ... by increasing commitment."

  • News Orgs Should Use Innovation As A Tool

    Frédéric Filloux: "News organizations ... should view innovation as their main weapon against direct competitors and emerging players such as tech startups."

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