The New York Times' latest cutbacks: Proof its digital strategy is failing? - The Week: "While the loss of 30 jobs pales in comparison to the ousting of roughly 100 newsroom staffers in 2008, it is the latest evidence that the Times continues to struggle despite putting up a subscriber paywall, which was intended to extract more revenue directly from online readers. The company added an impressive 83,000 digital subscribers in the third quarter, and is on track to have more digital subscribers than print subscribers in the next year or two. But print and digital revenues in the third quarter dropped by 10.9 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. The problem is that "digital simply generates much less revenue than the print business," says Henry Blodget at Business Insider. "So, as the print business continues to shrink, the newsroom has to shrink.""
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Hewlett-Packard and the decline in printing
Hewlett-Packard stirs more concerns with decline in printing - SiliconValley.com: " . . . HP executives insist printers, ink and related products will remain essential for businesses and many individuals. But people aren't printing as much as they used to, in part, according to some experts, because of smartphones and tablets, which enable vast amounts of information to be easily accessed from anywhere. And the experts predict the trend will increase, which could further threaten HP's bottom line. They are in trouble over the long term," said Federico De Silva, a principal analyst at the Gartner market research firm. "It's a big business, to be sure, but it's not growing. It's in a slow decline and we don't see it coming back." Gartner foresees global sales of printers and copiers -- which had been $50 billion in 2010 -- dwindling to $47.8 billion in 2014. Just this week, International Data reported global shipments of printers had dropped nearly 26 percent in the third quarter this year. It blamed the soured economy, reduced business purchases and "the shift in consumer spending to other products like mobile devices and tablets.""In business, my printing is down over 90 percent," he said, "It's just becoming antiquated.""
It's a digital world!
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It's a digital world!
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No surprise here--News Corp kills its iPad newspaper
Old media still doesn't "get it"--
News Corp. kills The Daily, its iPad newspaper - Dec. 3, 2012: "In the digital age, the shuttering of newspapers has become routine. But it seems even a newspaper designed for the gadget world can't survive: News Corp. is folding The Daily, its tablet-focused publication. News Corp. (NWS) and CEO Rupert Murdoch poured $30 million into the launch of The Daily, which first hit tablet screens in February 2011. The newspaper was initially available only on Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad and it later expanded to other tablets like Amazon's (AMZN, Fortune 500) Kindle Fire and devices running on Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android. The venture garnered criticism immediately upon launch, withnaysayers questioning the wisdom of targeting a growing but limited potential readership: tablet owners. Just a few readers wouldn't be enough to pay the bills. In addition to an initial $30 million investment, News Corp. also committed around 100 staffers to The Daily and estimated it would spend $26 million a year to keep the newspaper running."
News Corp. kills The Daily, its iPad newspaper - Dec. 3, 2012: "In the digital age, the shuttering of newspapers has become routine. But it seems even a newspaper designed for the gadget world can't survive: News Corp. is folding The Daily, its tablet-focused publication. News Corp. (NWS) and CEO Rupert Murdoch poured $30 million into the launch of The Daily, which first hit tablet screens in February 2011. The newspaper was initially available only on Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad and it later expanded to other tablets like Amazon's (AMZN, Fortune 500) Kindle Fire and devices running on Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android. The venture garnered criticism immediately upon launch, withnaysayers questioning the wisdom of targeting a growing but limited potential readership: tablet owners. Just a few readers wouldn't be enough to pay the bills. In addition to an initial $30 million investment, News Corp. also committed around 100 staffers to The Daily and estimated it would spend $26 million a year to keep the newspaper running."
Google settles Belgian papers' copyright dispute
Old media, paywalls, copyright, and Google--
Google settles Belgian papers' copyright dispute | Reuters: "Google agreed . . . to help boost online revenues for a group of Belgian newspaper publishers and authors, settling a six-year dispute over copyright which it hopes will be a model for resolving similar clashes around the world. Publishers have been trying to get Google to pay them for showing their online content in Web searches as more and more readers of the printed word defect to online media. Under the Belgian deal Google said it will now collaborate with the Rossel Group, which owns leading dailies Le Soir and L'Echo, the IPM Group, which publishes La Libre Belgique, L'Avenir and with the authors to help them generate revenues from their online content. "We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation. From now on Google and Belgian French-language publishers will partner on a broad range of business initiatives," Google said in a statement. These include working with the publishers to ensure that readers pay for the news via paywalls and subscriptions and distributing content on smartphones and tablets. Google itself will not pay for the content on its services. . . . They will also be able to pull out of Google's web search and Google News whenever they want. The case started in 2006 when the media firms took Google to a Belgian court, saying the search engine had infringed their copyright. Google is also embroiled in similar disputes in other EU countries. . . . Google says its services drive traffic to publishers while its AdSense programme, which allows companies to place banner advertisements on a website, pays $7 billion yearly to web publishers worldwide. . . ."
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Google settles Belgian papers' copyright dispute | Reuters: "Google agreed . . . to help boost online revenues for a group of Belgian newspaper publishers and authors, settling a six-year dispute over copyright which it hopes will be a model for resolving similar clashes around the world. Publishers have been trying to get Google to pay them for showing their online content in Web searches as more and more readers of the printed word defect to online media. Under the Belgian deal Google said it will now collaborate with the Rossel Group, which owns leading dailies Le Soir and L'Echo, the IPM Group, which publishes La Libre Belgique, L'Avenir and with the authors to help them generate revenues from their online content. "We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation. From now on Google and Belgian French-language publishers will partner on a broad range of business initiatives," Google said in a statement. These include working with the publishers to ensure that readers pay for the news via paywalls and subscriptions and distributing content on smartphones and tablets. Google itself will not pay for the content on its services. . . . They will also be able to pull out of Google's web search and Google News whenever they want. The case started in 2006 when the media firms took Google to a Belgian court, saying the search engine had infringed their copyright. Google is also embroiled in similar disputes in other EU countries. . . . Google says its services drive traffic to publishers while its AdSense programme, which allows companies to place banner advertisements on a website, pays $7 billion yearly to web publishers worldwide. . . ."
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Content Curation Startup Scoop.it
Content Curation Startup, Scoop.it, Rolls Out Big New Redesign To Help Businesses & Pros Increase Their Visibility Online | TechCrunch: "Scoop.it launched last November to give anyone and everyone the ability to create their own digital magazines — to aggregate and distribute content from across ye olde Internets according to their particular interests — not unlike Pressly or OnSwipe. In December, the startup released its first mobile app and has since been adding integrations with services like Hootsuite, SlideShare and Buffer to expand its reach into social media marketing. As Steve wrote in September, through these integrations, Scoop.it now offers users the ability to optimize their presence on social media by allowing them to time-shift or schedule tweets, posts and updates while they curate their topic-based news items. . . . Beyond its new UI, the redesign’s biggest addition is a customization feature called “Insight,” which allows users to quickly personalize any article, image or video they post by adding their own commentary. The new tool was designed, the company says, to draw attention to the user’s unique voice and perspective. . . ."
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Guy Kawasaki on self-publishing (video)
Author of What the Plus!: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, Guy Kawasaki, the original tech evangelist - Host: Leo Laporte - Guest: Guy Kawasaki
Running time:: 28:41
Guy Kawasaki: APE: "Please visit the APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish Your Book website. This site contains all the information you need to buy, review, and use APE.In 2011 the publisher of Guy Kawasaki’s New York Timesbestseller, Enchantment, could not fill an order for 500 ebook copies of the book. Because of this experience, Guy self-published his next book, What the Plus! and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process. As Steve Jobs said, “There must be a better way.” With Shawn Welch, a tech wizard, Guy wrote APE to help people take control of their writing careers by publishing their books. The thesis of APE is simple but powerful: a successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur. Guy and Shawn call this “artisanal publishing.” Artisanal publishing features writers who love their craft, and who control every aspect of the process from beginning to end. In this new approach, writers are no longer at the mercy of large, traditional publishers, and readers will have more books to read. APE is 300 pages of tactical and practical inspiration. People who want a hype-filled, get-rich-quick book should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want a comprehensive and realistic guide to self-publishing, APE is for you."
Publishing and a "Minimum Viable Product"
Murdoch still doesn't get the "web" but the following article (excerpt below) is worth a read--
How To Publish a "Minimum Viable Magazine" Online | MIT Technology Review: "Shocking no one, News Corporation’s iPad-only publication “The Daily” kicked the bucket today. . .Web startups live and die by a strategy called the MVP, or “minimum viable product.” Arment has applied that philosophy to digital publishing in his publication The Magazine, . . . What makes Arment’s app work–and what could make it a sustainable model for other, more ambitious publications–has everything to do with practicalities of technology, infrastructure, and user experience, not the free-floating abstraction called “journalism”. Mod unfurls these insights in a must-read essay, but here’s a distillation of how to build an MVP (minimum viable publishing) operation: Make it simple so you can make it fast. “Immersive reading experiences” are fine and dandy, but nobody wants to wait for a multi-gigabyte download. Optimize your publication for speed. That means text, not interactive doodads; scrolling single column layouts, not pagination and flashy nav schemes; and small bundles of similarly-sized features, not a print-like stack of sections surrounding a “feature well.” Think Instagram, not Photoshop. . . . Base the thing on HTML so it’s simple, i.e. fast, but also futureproof. This also ensures that every piece of content has “a corresponding, touchable home on the open web” . . . “content without a public address is non-existent in the eyes of all the inter-operable sharing mechanisms that together bind the web.” Exploit a seamless purchasing pipeline. . . . It’s nothing more than savvy digital development and product design strategies applied to a publishing context. Every other digital publisher is doing the reverse: starting with (legacy) publishing strategies and backing into the technology–which leads to bloated, unsustainable operations and user experiences that never feel essential enough to compete with the free web (or even print). . . . "
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How To Publish a "Minimum Viable Magazine" Online | MIT Technology Review: "Shocking no one, News Corporation’s iPad-only publication “The Daily” kicked the bucket today. . .Web startups live and die by a strategy called the MVP, or “minimum viable product.” Arment has applied that philosophy to digital publishing in his publication The Magazine, . . . What makes Arment’s app work–and what could make it a sustainable model for other, more ambitious publications–has everything to do with practicalities of technology, infrastructure, and user experience, not the free-floating abstraction called “journalism”. Mod unfurls these insights in a must-read essay, but here’s a distillation of how to build an MVP (minimum viable publishing) operation: Make it simple so you can make it fast. “Immersive reading experiences” are fine and dandy, but nobody wants to wait for a multi-gigabyte download. Optimize your publication for speed. That means text, not interactive doodads; scrolling single column layouts, not pagination and flashy nav schemes; and small bundles of similarly-sized features, not a print-like stack of sections surrounding a “feature well.” Think Instagram, not Photoshop. . . . Base the thing on HTML so it’s simple, i.e. fast, but also futureproof. This also ensures that every piece of content has “a corresponding, touchable home on the open web” . . . “content without a public address is non-existent in the eyes of all the inter-operable sharing mechanisms that together bind the web.” Exploit a seamless purchasing pipeline. . . . It’s nothing more than savvy digital development and product design strategies applied to a publishing context. Every other digital publisher is doing the reverse: starting with (legacy) publishing strategies and backing into the technology–which leads to bloated, unsustainable operations and user experiences that never feel essential enough to compete with the free web (or even print). . . . "
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