Paper Not To Be Wasted

Paper costs are rising not by a few points but by a whooping 25% this year.

That pressure is coupled with other cost rises and makes the newsprint market very edgy. It's one thing to face such a steep rise, it’s another to face it when everyone is talking digital and when other costs are rising. Those with a cover charge can pass some of the costs on through the jacket and some on through advertising, but those with no cover charge face some difficult challenges.

The cost of the raw material of newsprint itself is not going up - it has gone up. It is already forcing newspaper to consider closures, reduced pagination, reduced print runs and even changes in frequency of publication. The impact of the price rise has already started to be passed on and already some free papers are tottering in the UK.
It could prove a difficult time for the likes of a London Evening Standard or Metro and also cheap tabloids that rely on large print runs sold at a cheap price.

Will Fish and chips be the same without that newspaper wrapping. One member of bibliophilebooks.com proudly suggested that their 36 page tabloid newspaper pages could be used as novel wrapping paper, which would give the receiver something special to read when opening their presents and make effective use of already recycled paper.

But paper is paper and a rise in cost doesn't just impact one sector, but all.

The Times Readership Drops With Paywall

Rupert Muroch made a big statement and said that The Times, had to move to a paid-content online subscription system and made the transition. We now read the figure for July from ComScore which shows a 1.2 million user drop for May’s 2.79 million-strong readership, to 1.61 million. More disturbing is the drop in the visitors' average time on the site from 7.6 minutes in May to 4 minutes in July.

News Corp head Rupert Murdoch is quoted "With our paywall around the Times, we have had an encouraging number of people subscribing at a good price,"

However, trends in July impacted the free Telegraph and Guardian who both recording losses of online readership whilst The Mail Online and The Independent, strengthened to 9 million and 3.54 million unique visitors, respectively.

So who is right and who is wrong and who cares? The one thing that is certain is the Murdoch will not admit he was wrong easily . It’s said that obne swallow doesn’t make a summer and it will take more then one readership drop to herald Winter.

Brown Backs News For Free

One has to guess who is quoted as saying

“People have got used to getting content without having to pay. I don’t think you are going to be able to put things behind paywalls in the way that people think. People will pay for certain things, and should pay for certain things, but I think there’s a whole sort of element of communication that’s got to be free. People mind paying for basic news.”

The quote is from UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and was given in an interview with the Radio Times. So at a time when the Digital Economy Bill is hardly dry and on the table and a general election is only weeks away, Brown has decided to speak his mind against Rupert Murdoch's plan to implement paywalls to access the Times and Sunday Times online, arguing that internet users will not abide being told to pay for news content.

Murdoch plans to start charging for online content from June, with the Sunday Times and Times, with the Sun and News of the World to follow.

So is Brown's opposition based on the fact that Murdoch's Sun recently switched allegiance from supporting Labour to backing the Conservative, a support for the creative industry and journalists who the recent bill said needed to be rewarded, or is it a realisim that business models must change and the ‘free’ economic models are here to stay?

It will be interesting to read how Murdoch’s editors react.

The Radio Times has a weekly circulation of 1,000,648.

The State of Digital News

How we access news and what news we consume is changing. The annual assessment of the state of the US news industry ‘Project for Excellence in Journalism's’ was released last week by the Pew Research Center. It contains a comprehensive review of the news and insights into the habits and beliefs of some 60% of Americans who are estimated to get some news online during a typical day.

Only 19% of all surveyed, which includes people who already pay for news, said they would be willing to pay for news online. 82% of those surveyed who had preferred news sites said they'd look elsewhere if their favourites start demanding payment. That clearly demonstrates the size of the challenge news services has in moving to a subscription or pay to view models.

Readers tend to roam to gather their news with only 35% of consumers saying that they have a favourite site that they check each day. However the big sites; Yahoo, CNN, AOL, New York Times, MSNBC dominate the market. The top 7% news sites attract 80% of the traffic with the top 20 sites attracting the majority of that. Pew's survey claims that 25% of readers now get some news on their mobile phones and sourcing news more frequently on social Web sites.

Advertising continues to struggle and saw its first decline since 2002 and some 80% of those surveyed said that they never or hardly ever click on ads. In 2009n newspaper advertising revenue fell 26%, local TV and radio 22% and network television ad revenue was down 8%. Newspaper industry-wide circulation is falling by 10.6% and a loss 25.6% in daily circulation since 2000. These declines, show a loss in print revenues on top of a loss of ad revenues. Without charging for online newspaper are being hit by a double wammy.

The Wall Street Journal already charges and The New York Times has announced a metered system, allowing readers to click on a certain number of stories for free each month, with fees kicking in for readers who exceed that level. The Associated Press will charge for an application it is developing for use on the iPad, Apple's tablet computer.

The news media is no longer finely segmented into cable, online, network, local tv, magazines and newspapers. They are all going after the same online dollars. Some are part of conglomerates that cross media forms. Finally aggregators are now offering snippets and choice at a click and news on demand. How will news adjust its economic models and its resource in what is certainly a Brave New World?

To read to full report click here:The State of News Media

The Evening Standard Gambles On Free

Newspapers can’t seem to decide what to charge or not charge for their content and the impact is not just with digital but physical copy too. Rupert Murdoch had said his websites which include the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal will start charging for digital content. The Financial Times announced it planned to rely less on advertising revenue and more on subscriptions as it charged readers to access much of its web content. However in a move that somewhat took many by surprise the London Evening Standard is to give its physical paper away free after 181 years of people paying for it.

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev bought a controlling stake in the loss-making London Evening Standard in January for a nominal sum of £1 after almost a year of secret negotiations with Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail & General Trust. The colourful Lebedev is a former KGB agent who developed a love for the Evening Standard when he was based in Britain at the Russian embassy.The Standard, which is 75.1% owned by Lebedev and 24.9% owned by Associated Newspapers, will go free from 12 October. In August the paper sold just 107,680 at the full cover price. A further 8,500 copies were sold at below the basic cover price. The Evening Standard is understood to lose more than £10m a year.

The Standard plan to increase from about 250,000 to 600,000 copies a day and in doing so hopefully double its current readership. The aim is to be more attractive to advertisers and increase its appeal to readers across London. It could certainly mean the end of the existing free evening paper, London Lite, only a few weeks after the other London free evening paper The London Paper withdrew from the streets (perhaps they got wind of the Standard’s plan). The thing that differentiates the Standard from the free papers is its quality and content and its going to be interesting if this can be maintained under the new model.

The Standard is taking a huge gamble and one that has little room for manoeuvre if it fails – they can hardly reverse the policy and say they got it wrong. They also have doubled their costs in their print run and distribution and also upset their distribution channel in small shops and sellers on the street. The Standard are also widely reported to be in advanced discussions with Network Rail, WH Smith and Canary Wharf about distributing the 182-year-old title.

ABC: Mobile Is A No Brainer

A survey from the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveals that print publishers are focusing on the Mobile market as a prime opportunity; to build their brand, reach new audiences, generate new revenue and offer advertisers locally targeted audiences.

ABC and its digital subsidiary, ABC Interactive, has some 4,000 members in North America and is a forum of the world's leading magazine and newspaper publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. They recently conducted an online survey of its print publisher members. "Going Mobile: How Publishers Are Preparing for the Burgeoning Digital Market," offers an insight into some of the current initiatives in the mobile market.

The survey found that; over 80% of newspaper and magazine respondents believe users will increasingly become more reliant on mobiles as a primary information source in the next three years, 70% agree that mobile is receiving more attention at their publication this year than last, Over 66% believe their publication already has a mobile plan, 44% say that the devices increased visits by up to 10% today. 50% believe mobile traffic to their Web sites will increase by 5 to 25% in the next two years. So mobile is certainly on the agenda.

56% of senior executives have plans to develop a smartphone application in the next 24 months and 17% already have an app in production. However they do not plan to abandon print with 75% believing their publication will be available in a print form five years from now. Over 50% of thr respondents believe that the future business model of mobile content will be supported by both advertising and subscriptions and importantly 33% believe in the 3 next years that mobile will have a significant impact on their revenue.


To learn more, visit http://www.accessabc.com

Media Déjà Vu

Whether you believe that newsprint is solid and just going through difficult times, or it’s terminally ill, or just struggling to change its business model in a digital age, it offers a fascinating insight into a media sector from the outside. We often look at music and film as media sectors similar to books but in many ways newsprint and magazines offer as much if not more.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the annual meeting of the US Newspaper Association of America and although he would like to focus on technology and the mobile challenges the debate on the use of news snippets on Google News is “fair use” under copyright law or an infringement. Google has long insisted that its use of snippets and headlines in Google News is legal. It also said Google News drove a huge amount of traffic to newspaper web sites, which the publishers can then monetize through their advertising. The argument sounds fairly familiar and we couldn’t help thinking we were suffering from déjà vu.

This week, The Associated Press said that it would work to require web sites to obtain permission and share revenue with them. Newspapers are in the often usual position of questioning whether they are consenting parties or want to stand up and face the potential economic position of being outside cutting off the traffic they get from Google’s search and news services and from other search engines and potentially find themselves alone in nowhere.

William Dean Singleton, chairman of The Associated Press and chief executive of the MediaNews Group, is reported saying “We don’t plan for anyone to use our content unless they pay for it. The licenses we do in the future will limit how and where our content is used.”

If we strip away the ecomomy, business models, the plight of editors and journalists and even digital change we appear to be left with something very familiar – the question of fair usage and infringement. The other familiar story is the incentive of money over rights. Interestingly we also see a few speaking for the majority but perhaps we are overly cynical.

Are News Corp to Have Their Own Colour Reader?

Rupert Murdoch is widely reported saying that News Corp is investing in a mobile digital device for reading newspapers on a larger screen than the typical ebook reader device.

News Corp is apparently investing in a potential Kindle rival which would not only have a larger screen but importantly, four-color capable display. This means they are either pre announcing something that isn’t here today or on the horizon, a colour ink device, or they are following the lead taken by Fujitsu which however has a full colour not four colour display.

So is it investor city talk or does it have substance. If News Corp were to back a new reader could it hold its own against what is getting a crowded space. Is he looking to back colour so he can exploit all his family of assets; TV, video, news and books through one device? Time will tell but when Murdoch wants some would say Murdoch gets.

A gauntlet if ever there was one, but he didn’t stop there.

In reference to the newspaper business model problems Murdoch is reported in the Wall Street Journal saying that ‘People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change." He also questioned whether the newspaper industry should continue to allow online news aggregators, such as Google Inc., to aggregate newspaper content without being compensated for it.

News Change Continues

The newspaper industry, America’s source for news and opinion for so long, is clearly struggling to change in these difficult times where ad revenues are tightening and moving online, news is being made available free over the Internet and what and how we read is changing.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will produce its last printed edition on today and become an Internet-only news source, leaving the city with only one mainstream daily, the Seattle Times. This in turn will put additional pressure on the money losing Times, as the two papers had a joint operating agreement, where The Times handled all non-newsroom operations for both, like printing, delivery, advertising and marketing.
The agreement is now effectively dissolved and leaves the Times in the same situation that The Denver Post found itself in after its rival, The Rocky Mountain News, folded late last month when its owner, E.W. Scripps Co., couldn’t find a buyer. In Arizona, Gannett Co.’s Tucson Citizen is set to close Saturday, leaving one newspaper in that city. Hearst has also said that it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the newspaper couldn’t slash expenses in coming weeks.

Media companies continue to fall at an alarming pace, with four newspaper companies, including the owners of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in recent months.

Detroit Media Partnership (DMP) has announced that it will launch a trial with 100 Plastic Logic e-readers to gauge reader reaction to electronic editions of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. DMP has been cutting down its print distribution costs and a cut in home delivery of its papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday. However the Plastic Logic large screen reader will not be fully released until 2010 which may be too late for some and makes 2009 a difficult year for all.

The demand for news I not in question but its creation, editing, collation and distribution is certainly under increasing pressure. However it is not alone and like most media sectors change is clearly gathering pace. The only thing that is certain is that tomorrow will be different.

Google News Adds Ads

Google have started to run small text ads on the pages of its Google News service. This again raises the advertising debate between Google and the newspaper sector. Since it began, some six years ago, Google has not placed ads on Google News. This has helped calm newspapers who believed that Google would build a competing news site based on their own material.

Google News automatically collects headlines and news from over 4,500 news sites and links users to the original articles on those sites. This drives significant traffic to many news sites. Google has maintained that its use of headlines and snippets was permissible under “fair use” provisions of copyright law.

In 2006, the World Association of Newspapers demanded that Google News stop indexing its member sites on the grounds that Google was profiting from the use of their copyright material. Agence France-Presse sued Google for the same thing in 2005. At the time, Google News carried no advertisements and hence, no obvious revenue stream.

The addition of AdWords to Google News was inevitable as the economy continues to weaken and Google looks to expand its revenue streams. But what will be the reaction from the newspaper sector now that they also feel the advertising downturn?

How Do You Want Your News Tomorrow?

The financial burden from an advertising downturn, rising costs for newsprint, the migration of readers to the Internet, the huge debt some have to service and the general lack of a visible business model that will support the sector in the digital world, has caused many US newsprint operations to question if they can survive and what survival means.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for bankruptcy, the Chicago Tribune has its debt problems, the New York Times has suspended its dividend, and the story goes on to cover what looks like many of the major cities in the US.

Now the Journal Register, publisher of 20 local daily and weekly newspapers, primarily in the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Michigan has filed has for bankruptcy. Also Philadelphia Newspapers, which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, has also filed for bankruptcy protection in a bid to restructure its $390 million debt.

We have written about the plight of the strip cartoon and how cartoonists have seen the writing on the wall and redefining their relationships.

However there doesn’t appear to be a quick fix to any of the mounting problems of this sector. Some would say that although they fed us the news and offered advice to us all, they just were unprepared for the bad news and change themselves. Is local and specialist news now becoming democratised and are we seeing a fundamental change in how news is created, communicated and digested? Can we honestly see ourselves still buying paper newsprint in the near future and would we be prepared to pay a digital subscription for what is in many cases syndicated news? Why would we pay for news when its free on TV and better tailored to suit our individual needs view the Internet?

I Want 'My News', Now and for Free!

Much has been written of late about the state of the newsprint industry. The US market appears to be in free fall, with the operative word on many tongues being ‘free’. Journalists are losing their jobs, papers are up for sale, or sailing closer to the wind and the advertising revenue, which once made this sector so lucrative is either drying up or electing to go elsewhere. Newsprint publishers are ceasing to print on paper and going free online.

Does this mean that newspapers will disappear tomorrow – No? Does it mean that some will fall – almost certain?

Newsprint has a long history which has local, regional and global pressures. What once was local copy in Malaysia, a city in Scotland, national press in Australia is now available instantly to us all globally, 24 x 7. Services such as Google aggregate the news and segment it to fit our tastes, alerts constantly feed our favourite key words. Journalism is fast becoming democratised, where every blog, web article is becoming a potential news feed and the letter to the editor is often no longer mediated, but instantly posted and encouraged.

It seems a long time from the birth of the tabloid at the beginning of the 20th century. This explosion was fuelled by mass literacy, world events and the public’s insatiable appetite to read ‘spicy news’. In the late 20th century restrictive practices were broken in the UK and everywhere we saw the rise of the free local paper. Established local papers were driven to change or die. The the whole advertising model came under threat from the free classifieds such as Craiglists and the Google online ad machine. In the UK market, the downturn in the economy has hit the spending of big newsprint advertisers such as estate agents and the motor trade.

The increased demand in recent years by advertisers for 100% colour resulted in UK publishers investing in newspaper presses, but now publisher/printers are looking to close shifts or working with other newspaper Groups to close presses altogether. Many UK publishers are now looking to reduce costs by outsourcing their production facilities overseas. To compound this further, UK newsprint has just seen one of its largest cost increases in recent years.

Mass connectivity and technology literacy is now fuelling change. Increasingly everyone is connected and online. The person on the street with a mobile, has often became the photographer and sometimes even the journalist.

In an attempt to create loyalty and broaden their appeal UK papers in recent years have started to trade on their brand. Bookclubs acting as white label stores, glossy inserts full of gadgets and special offers, clubs from wine to dating were all born, CDs and DVDs were enclosed as special ‘extras’. Is this the future of newsprint or merely an attempt to raise revenues and cross subsidy?

Hard economics have started to bite and along with technology are opening up both new opportunities and new threats. Newspapers, so long a safe and predicable media has failed to respond. Readers have become more discerning and eclectic, wanting not general, but ‘My News’. Today the industry appears like rabbits frozen and caught in the glare of the digital headlights. Layoffs, closures, debt are all hovering like vultures around many well known names. Journalism is torn between authoritative column inches and democratised blogs. We have previously written about the cartoonist, who are now changing their own model in response to the pressure on their strips.

Papers such as the Kansan in Kansas City may point the way forward for a community press , The New York Times and others have to grapple with the challenges of general or what is now ‘commoditised news’ and although it seems that the ‘specialist’ papers such as the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have a captive model based on their insights and commentary, we note that 80 jobs went yesterday at the FT.

The one thing we can be sure of is that the landscape and business model is changing. ‘My News’ is real, ‘Free’ is real, many want their news ‘now’ and fed to them 24 x 7.

Newsprint and Magazines Under Threat

So we read this week of major shifts in the world of Newsprint and magazines which by themselves may not mean much but collectively show a potential big problem for those reliant on advertising spend. Today all sectors that are reliant on a shrinking and fickle spend which is being spread across an increasing number of media. Television is already reeling from decreasing spend which effects production and investment, which in turn impacts viewing figures, which results in reduced advertising revenues. A cruel and clear circle.

The big news was obviously the filing of bankruptcy of the Tribune Group which includes those iconic brands Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Tribune. US advertising revenues are expected to fall by some 5.7% and the tribune group are not the only newsprint group feeling the pinch. The New York Times is considering potential asset sales and is in discussions with lenders. Its New England newspapers – including the Boston Globe and its 17 per cent stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team are potential sales.

Newsquest, the UK regional news group and UK arm of US publisher Gannett plans to close 11 newspapers in the north-west of England in the face of declining revenues.
The magazine market is also in deep trouble as they not only depend on advertising but its recent growth has been fueled by a greater percentage of ‘non-renewable circulation’ than previous and this now combined with reduced reader demand has impacted circulation profitability. The advertising decline and increase in paper and postal costs exposes the whole magazine model.

Reed Elsevier can’t sell its business magazines division which includes Publishers Weekly and Variety. Such is the scale of the issue Newsweek is considering cutting 1.6 million copies from it’s current 2.6 million rate base. The newsstand sales of Newsweek and Time have fallen some 40% in the last four years.

American Media, the publisher of Star magazine and the National Enquirer moved a step closer to filing for bankruptcy when it failed to meet it deadline on interest payments. Cutbacks at Condé Nast Publications have been announced.

But against all this doom and gloom comes the New York Times ‘ TimesWidgets’ , a new service that lets you make embeddable widgets for your iGoogle homepage, blog, etc., of New York Times homepage headlines, blog posts, movie reviews, and more than 10,000 topics. We doubt it will stave off the debt knocking on their door but it keeps the technicians busy and doesn’t even carry advertising today!
Just when you thought that should cover it we read that Google Book Search now archives millions of pages of magazines from the likes of New York Magazine and Ebony to Popular Mechanics.

You can browse different covers of a magazine, select a specific issue search it or turn the pages complete with the original adverts, zooming in and out and even subscribing to the magazine. Google Map has been integrated to show all the places mentioned in various issues, with links to the pages where those places are mentioned.

So we are seeing the demise of newsprint and magazines as we knew them and the changing spend in advertising. We are also seeing the rise of the omnivore across all media sucking in content in its attempt to dominate all. The big question all the archival quest leaves us to raise is one of who will create the future articles, features, pictures, books when they have the destroyed the ecosystem that creates them today, or do they want that as well?

Newspaper Futures

The survey of 435 editors-in-chief, deputy editors and other senior news executives from around the world provides an interesting insight to a content industry in change. The "Newsroom Barometer," conducted by Zogby International for the Paris-based World Editors Forum and Reuters, found that 85 % of editors are very optimistic or somewhat optimistic about the future of newsprint in the digital age.

The survey also found:
40 % of editors believe on-line will be the most common way to read the news ten years from now with 35 % believing print, 10% mobile , 7% cite e-paper. And two out of 10 respondents say it will be technologies that are still in the emerging stage.

50% the respondents believe that journalistic quality will improve over the next 10 years, versus 25% who think it will worsen.

80% view online and new media as a welcome addition. Those with high volume web traffic -- more than 200,000 unique visitors per day -- are more likely to view new media positively, but the majority of editors at newspapers with modest traffic or no web sites also viewed new media positively.

30% respondents view free newspapers as a threat to the market, while 34% welcome them, 28% consider them negligible.

Training journalists in new media is cited most often by editors as a priority to increase editorial quality. Hiring more journalists is the second most frequently cited priority.

According to the survey, 56% believed that the majority of all news would be free in the future, up from 48% who answered yes a year ago. In the emerging markets such as South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia 61% believed news would be free. In Western Europe this reduced to 48%.

Who Pays the NewsPiper?

We read today of the demise of the Nielson booktrade web site The Book Standard. There are certainly many wishing to compete within this crowded space and with limited financial reward many face uncertain futures.

The web is redefining journalism. It is changing the content, how it is delivered and the business model that has long underpinned it.

Newspapers now have to develop better ways to sell their ad space online and have to compete with new gorillas such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo has over 264 US newspapers distributing their content on their portal. Google's PrintAds program enables its customers place ads in 600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. These programmes are among others that are redefining the landscape.

Now four major U.S. newspaper groups have launched an online ad network that enables customers to book national campaigns to over 50 million readers a month in the US through a single point of contact. This group includes flagship newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. This move is clearly aimed at protecting the business model and control over both web and print property.

This collaborative approach may negate the need for them to share revenue with the likes of Yahoo and Google. Both corporate and classified advertising is changing and being redefined online.

Wall Street Journal to be Free Online

Rupert Murdoch today confirmed that he is planning to drop subscription fees for the digital version of the Wall Street Journal. The plan as we reported earlier this year would be to substitute subscription revenue for a larger audience that will drive greater and more sustainable advertising to the financial news site.

Instead of having 1 million subscribers generating around £25m revenue a year, the objective is to have at least 10 million to 15 million in ‘every corner of the earth’ and generate significantly higher numbers.

WSJ.com has long been the most successful example of a paid-access news site, attracting a wealthy readership that values the site's influential markets news.
It si interesting that only 23% of News Corp's existing revenues were generated by advertising and this obviously leaves significant scope in many areas of the empire…