Interesting story from the New York Times last week on how Esquire Magazine reinvented itself in the face of increasing competition and eroding revenue. Story here

Full story from AdAge here.

This effort makes sense. It is just hard to have a lot of confidence in newspapers when they team up for new ventures- their track record is horrible. However, let's hope this works- clearly there is a need. By the way - does this mean that newspapers are for SOPA? Just a few days ago editorial organizations all came out against it.

New York Times, Washington Post Expand Policing of Article Pilfering Online

Newspapers Form NewsRight, a For-Profit Company Tracking Sites That Scrape Content

The New York Times Co., The Washington Post Co., The Associated Press and 26 other news companies began a joint venture today to police websites that use their articles without consent and demand fees for legitimate use.

The NewsRight venture is a for-profit entity spun out of an Associated Press program started two years ago to explore ways to stem content pilfering on the web -- a practice known as "scraping" -- and to capitalize on a news-reading audience that is migrating online. Large news organizations have been suffering financial losses as a result of scraping, according to David Westin, 59, the former head of Walt Disney Co.'s ABC News who became NewsRight's chief executive officer in April.

 

The promotion will run through March 9. The NYT’s Media Decoder, which announced the news ahead of the official Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) announcements (here and here), reports:

The Nook edition of People is $9.99 a month; with a one-year subscription, customers will receive a Nook Tablet, a color device with a 7-inch display, for $199, a discount from its regular price of $249. Customers who buy a one-year subscription for the Nook edition of The New York Times for $19.99 a month, which includes access to NYTimes.com (NYSE: NYT), will receive a black-and-white Nook Simple Touch free or a Nook Color for $99.

The Nook Tablet is discounted by only $50, but that brings it down to the price of the Kindle Fire. The Nook Color is heavily discounted, by $100. The Nook Simple Touch is normally $99. The total cost of a one-year People subscription on Nook is $119.88, and the total cost of a one-year NYT subscription on Nook is $239.88.

Barnes & Noble announced last week that it may spin off its Nook business, though CEO William Lynch said in a CNBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) interview that B&N stores and Nook would “continue to have a very symbiotic relationship.” This promotion is intended to showcase Nook Newsstand, which Barnes & Noble sees as one of the fastest growing parts of the Nook business.

More significantly, the promotion opens the door for other retailers—ahem, Amazon—to start offering free or discounted e-readers or tablets with content subscriptions. Nothing was preventing Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) from doing that before, of course, but I would not be surprised to see it respond now with an offer of its own for Kindle Fire Newsstand subscribers.

It is our understanding that Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and Barnes & Noble are sharing the cost of the discounted Nook Tablet that comes with the Nook People subscription. The New York Times says it is “not divulging terms of our agreement with Barnes and Noble.”

In a bid to boost its digital revenue, the Los Angeles Times has struck a deal with Arkadium, a major online game developer, to add more than two dozen games to that section of its website.

This will add diversions like Mahjongg Dimensions, complete with Twitter and Facebook integrated, to a vertical of the site that already includes activities such as Crossword puzzles and Sudoku.

The audience of the Times’ site has grown substantially this year, reaching more than 17 million unique visitors a month. However, for many newspapers, the problem at the moment is that even increases in online traffic have not let to increases in advertising revenue.

Also Read: L.A. Times Rocked by More Turmoil: Top Editor Quits With Cuts Looming (Updated)

Whether games are an effective method of changing that remains unclear, but this deal is a small step in trying to widen the digital revenue stream.

“Given the ever-rising popularity of casual games, adding Arkadium’s titles allows us to further engage latimes.com’s users and entice previously untapped gaming enthusiasts to visit our site throughout the day,” Jennifer Collins, the Times’ Vice President for Digital Revenue Products, said in a statement. “We are also creating a previously unavailable opportunity for our advertisers to reach Southern California’s casual gaming audience and in the process establish another digital monetization platform.”

Collins statement makes the two motives quite clear -- that these games bring more users each day, and that those customers stick around and get sucked in by advertisements.

The Times hired Collins in late November as part of an overhaul of its digital revenue team. Both she and Andrea Nunn were hired while three other employees were promoted to either fill new spots or replace individuals who left.

At the time, John O’Loughlin, the Times’ chief revenue officer and executive vice president for advertising sales indicated that the Times was looking for new methods to court advertisers on mobile, social and other platforms.

 

 

Great idea- 

Full story here

Why Not A Reverse Pay Meter?

By Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine

So try this on for size: Imagine that you pay to get access to The Times. Everyone does. You pay for one article. Or you pay $20 as a deposit so you’re not bothered every time you come. But whenever you add value to The Times, you earn a credit that delays the next bill.

»  You see ads, you get credit.
»  You click: more credit.
»  You come back often and read many pages: credit.
»  You promote The Times on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or your blog: credit. The more folks share what you’ve shared, the more credit you get.
»  You buy merchandise via Times e-commerce: credit.
»  You buy tickets to a Times event: credit.
»  You hand over data that makes you more valuable to The Times and its advertisers (e.g., revealing where you’re going on your next trip): credit.
»  You add pithy comment to articles that other readers appreciate: credit.
»  You take on tasks in crowdsourced journalistic endeavors: credit.
»  You answer a reporter’s question on Twitter and the reporter uses your information: credit.
»  You correct an error in a story: credit.
»  You give a news tip or an idea for an article The Times publishes: credit.

Maybe you never pay for The Times again because The Times has gained more value out of its relationship with you. If, on the other hand, you hardly do any of those things, then you have to pay for using The Times.

I’ve been thinking about this, too, in light of a few other trends I’ve seen with newspapers online. First, some that are trying meters are finding that very, very few readers ever hit the wall (which papers are setting at anywhere from 1 to 20 pages). That so few hit the wall is frightening. It means that most readers don’t use these sites much. That’s nothing to brag about. Engagement is criminally low. Second, I’ve seen many sites that get a surprising proportion of their traffic from out of their markets—traffic that is valueless (or even costly, in terms of bandwidth) to sites that sell only local ads. This comes from following a goal of pageviews, pageviews, pageviews—brought in with search-engine optimization—rather than valued relationships.

After hearing a few such stories, I suggested that a site with a meter might want to reward local readers by giving them more free content and charge out-of-market readers by charging them sooner.

You see, that values the local reader over the remote reader. My idea for the reverse meter values the engaged reader over the occasional reader — and even rewards greater engagement. And therein lies, I think, the key strategic skill for news businesses online: understanding that all readers are not equal; knowing who your more valuable readers are; getting more of them; and making them more valuable.

Now I’ll tell you why my reverse meter won’t work: When I spoke with all our journalism students at CUNY about their business ideas on Friday, I asked how many had hit the Times pay wall — many — and how many had paid — few. Abundance remains the enemy of payment. There’s always someplace else to get the news. The Times can make its present meter work because (a) it’s that good [the Steve Jobs exception that proves the rule], (b) it’s still sponsoring—that is, giving a free ride—to its most valuable readers, though that is supposed to end soon, and (c) its engagement is still too low and thus many readers don’t even confront the wall (that needs to change).

So never mind the idea of the reverse meter, but retain the lesson of it: Value should be encouraged, not taxed. Readers bring value to sites if the sites are smart enough to have the mechanisms to recognize, exploit, and reward that value, which comes in many forms: responding to (highly targeted and relevant) ads; buying merchandise; contributing information, content, and ideas; promoting the site….

The key strategic opportunity for news sites is relationships — deeper, more valuable relationships with more (but not too many) people. Engagement.

This post originally appeared on Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine.

 

According to the Annenberg Center for Digital Future in five years there will be four newspapers left. Of course, they are the Center for DIGITAL Future, so take their prophesies under consideration.

Full story from New York Times here.

Newspapers: Going...Going...Gone!

By Bruce Watson

For anybody who has followed the news over the past few years (and, let's be honest, you were probably reading it on a computer), the long-awaited demise of newspapers shouldn't come as much of a surprise. But on Wednesday, the bell tolled once again for the printed word when the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future offered some prophesies for the future of media. High on the list was a chilling prediction: Within five years, the report claimed, only four major daily papers will continue in print form.

According to Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the center, the four survivors will be The New York Times (NYT), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post (WPO) and USA Today. It's worth noting that two of these papers -- the Times and the Journal -- already charge for online content. Within the next year, USA Today also plans to start charging, which will leave The Washington Post as the only one of the big four offering its content for free.

Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli and publisher Katherine Weymouth both emphasize that the newspaper has no plans to erect a paywall in the foreseeable future. It's worth noting that the Post has weathered its financial storms better than most dailies: Its Kaplan educational subsidiary has remained largely profitable, helping to stabilize the paper's finances. Coupled with major cutbacks -- the Post has closed all but two of its regional suburban bureaus and almost halved its reporter corps -- this has sufficed to stem the loss of revenue.

Part of the reason for the Post's relative success is that it is one of the rare national papers that also has a strong local audience. In his discussion of the future of newspapers, Annenberg's Cole offered a caveat: "We believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest." In many ways, the Post is both -- a paper with a huge national readership that is also widely read by its hometown crowd. As Politico recently noted, the Post has 30% market penetration in the Washington D.C. area; by comparison, The New York Times' hometown readership percentage numbers are in the single digits.

For media watchers, the demise of newspapers has become a grim joke; one website, Newspaper Death Watch, keeps a running commentary on the bleakness of the print media wasteland. While the increased online presence of many papers offers some hope for the future, lingering questions remain about what the death of papers will mean for the news. As Cole asks, "How will the changing delivery of content affect the quality and depth of journalism?" Stay tuned.