Québec’s daily newspaper La Presse releases brilliant new digital edition for the iPad, La Presse+

The French language newspaper La Presse today has released a new digital edition today for the iPad, La Presse+. The new tablet edition is being offered on a free subscription basis, with readers able to access their daily edition through the Apple Newsstand app each day by 5:30 a.m., seven days a week (the paper dropped its Sunday print edition in 2009).

“After three years of research and development, we are proud to offer users an innovative digital edition that will redefine the way they get their information, while maintaining La Presse’s DNA in terms of content quality. La Presse+ is an exceptional tool that enriches and expands upon the quality and depth of the news experience,” said Guy Crevier, President and Publisher, La Presse in the company's launch announcement.

"We chose the iPad for its outstanding content-presentation abilities and its potential as an advertising vehicle. The iPad is also the most widely used tablet device among our subscribers, and the most popular in Québec. La Presse+ is being offered on a free-subscription basis, because we believe in the irreversible phenomenon of the availability of information free of charge on digital platforms. This launch is a significant milestone, and La Presse+ now becomes the flagship platform of our entire information ecosystem," said Crevier.

"We've made a bet on a new medium, a new way to tell stories," Pierre-Elliott Levasseur, executive vice-president, digital publishing at La Presse, said to The Canadian Press agency. "We've taken so much time over the last two and a half years to test so many dimensions of the storytelling...that it would be a surprise to us if this doesn't succeed."

The App

Most daily newspaper apps are either a replica of the print edition, or else a reformatted version of the paper's website like The New York Times iPad app. The Daily, on the other hand, used a digital magazine-like approach to create its daily tablet newspaper.

La Presse+ is possibly the first real successful attempt to reimagine the daily newspaper for tablets. The front page, like the print paper, is established every morning, but the model is native to the iPad. But further, the stories themselves are also native to the iPad – attractive, native, imaginative layouts that engage the reader – rather than mere text layouts (though those are available, as well, if the reader wants).

The tablet edition contains sections just as your daily newspaper would: news, opinion, entertainment, sports, business and style (Actualités, Débats, Arts, Sports, Affaires and Pause Beauté).

The app also has a button that takes allows the reader to access the latest news from the paper's website, as well. But the importance of this feature is that it is not a refresh of the font page, but simply a way to give the reader access to news that might be new to the website. No, this app is a new take on the tablet newspaper, not attempt to bring the website to tablet readers.

As for the editorial content, that, too, has been reimagined for the tablet edition. I hesitate to say "enhanced" because that would imply simply adding in video, audio and the like. No, this is more than that.

There is great work being done in digital media created for tablets, especially in the area of e-books and magazines. But I think this may be the very first app to be released by a newspaper company that makes on feel that we are turning a corner. Anyone in charge of digital strategy at their paper needs to see this app, and if a month from now they remain unfamiliar with it then one would have to question their commitment to their profession – that's how important I feel this app is.

While the two screenshots give you a taste of look and feel of this tablet edition, I think it is safe to say that viewing the video walk-through is vitally important. Because of this, the video is a bit longer than normal in order to show off at least some of what is in La Presse+. (The video will be at the end of this post, after the break.)

The Business Model

La Presse claims that the launch of La Presse+ represents "three years of research and development and a $40- million investment." That is a claim that I have to take with a grain of salt. The editor of the newspaper, Guy Crevier, came on board in 2001 and there has no doubt been much work done on the newspaper, its website, and its mobile apps. But...

Guy Crevier

That aside, the one thing about La Presse+ that publishers will debate is the issue of giving the app and its contents away free of charge. For younger readers, in particular, there is no question that the product of choice will be La Presse+, not only for its interactive news content, but for it being free.

"How many readers (of the print edition) will be left at the end of the year, the end of next year and in three years? It's the consumers who will decide," Crevier is quoted by The Canadian Press as saying about print versus digital. So the paper, which says spends $90 million a year on print production, is certainly betting that digital distribution will pay for itself.

But La Presse+ is a tablet newspaper worth paying for and other publishers – and circulation manager – would probably insist on attaching a price tag to the new tablet edition inside the Apple Newsstand.

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New Outside LIVE augmented reality app goes live with the May print issue; print, online and tablet products will all be enhanced with the new story telling capabilities

Coordinating app launches can sometimes be difficult, as many publishers know. If you launch an app into the store before your magazine is ready the app will open up to an empty library. In the case of the new OutsideLIVE app released in March early downloaders were left to wonder what the app was supposed to do. But with the publication of the May issue, out now, downloaders will finally be able to use the augmented reality app to bring the May issue to life.

The app, powered by Aurasma, allows the reader to point their iPhone or iPad (or iPod touch) at the print magazine page and see supplemental video content. Until the May issue was published the user wouldn't have seen much of anything, which is why early reviewers seemed confused. But the May issue is filled with both advertising and editorial content that takes advantage of the new augmented reality app.

Six articles in the print edition have a logo placed on them to tell the reader of the added digital content including a story featuring interviews with survivors of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition and video footage of Spanish endurance star Kilian Jornet.

Ads that take advantage of the OutsideLIVE app include Birkenstock, The North Face and Columbia Sportswear.

Now that Outside has the capabilities of enhancing their print edition with added multimedia content the challenge, editor Michael Roberts told me, "is that there are so many ideas."

"Outside covers a pretty fascinating and engaging world. One of the benefits of what we do, and the world we cover is that there is such incredible video that's coming back from these places all over the world from these explorers, adventurers and athletes we work with. It gives us so much to work with," Roberts said.

"We have to decide what will play best in which environment," Roberts said, referring to the fact that Outside has not only a print edition, but a robust website, as well as a native tablet edition which uses the Mag+ platform.

"OutsideLIVE will play a unique role within our ecosystem of content that we provide. You are engaging with people reading and loving the print magazine and you're picking those moments where you see real opportunity to give them a deeper level of engagement, a unique kind of story telling that's going to jump and connect right off those print stories."

Outside has had a native tablet edition, Outside+ Magazine, inside the Apple App Store since the summer of 2011. That app was then updated to move it into the Newsstand when Apple launched that feature in October of 2011, then retina display support was added in April of 2012.

Comparing the May tablet edition with the print magazine seen through the OutsideLIVE app is an interesting exercise. As you'll see in the video below, there may be differences, but each product contains plenty of multimedia content. The tablet edition is not a hybrid – that is, the print ads are not automatically reproduced in the tablet edition. In fact, theres is only one ad to be seen, for Fjord Norway. The ad, as you can see in the video below, contains embedded video (which is very nicely incorporated into the page).

The print edition, combined with the OutsideLIVE app, now actually has more multimedia advertising than the tablet edition – as strange as that sounds. But with the introduction of augmented reality to the print magazine, this might help the sales team sell more tablet edition advertising knowing that there is multimedia content that can be added to the tablet ad creative.

Morning Brief: U.S. consumer magazines see continued slippage in print ad pages in Q1, though rate of declines moderate; Fairfax execs prove rather thin skinned

If magazine publishers were hoping that 2013 would open with a bang many were sorely disappointed as the MPA's PIB report showed that ad pages fell 4.9 percent in Q1. On the bright side, the decline was the smallest in a while, as publishers saw ad pages fall 8.2 percent in 2012, and 3.2 percent in 2011.

Some titles saw good growth in Q1: AARP-The Magazine was up 11.5 percent, Allure was up 8.2, Bon Appetit up 37.7 percent, Eating Well up 35.8 percent, GQ up 11.2 percent, Harper's Bazaar up 23.4 percent, Motor Trend up 31.6 percent, and Women's Health up 24.4 percent.

Magazine titles that saw declines include Architectural Digest down 15.5 percent, Bloomberg Businessweek 32.6 percent, Bride's 49.9 percent, The Economist down 28.6 percent, Forbes down 19.6 percent, Road & Track down 42.6 percent, and Shape down 19.5 percent.

The MPA, in its own post on the report, stressed that magazines "now encompass myriad of platforms," and there is a lot of truth in that statement. Unfortunately, with most larger consumer magazines producing tablet editions that duplicate the ads seen in print, there is not much evidence that print magazines are seeing ad gains in their digital editions. On the other hand, the industry now has a growing segment that remains invisible to most reports: digital-only publications that have new advertising appearing in interactive forms. My guess that compared to print, these digital ads are not amounting to a great deal of "space" and probably even less revenue. Nonetheless, this is a growing area.

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"Today’s rubbishy “First Person” sponsored editorial in The Australian Financial Review is a perfect example of why the business sections of The Sydney Herald and The Age should not be merged with the Financial Review Group — a decision announced by Fairfax last week," wrote Paddy Manning, a business journalist with Fairfax about the advertorial.

The column appeared on Crikey, an Australian electronic magazine. Unfortunately for Mr. Manning, the digital magazine is not one of those industry sites no one reads (like TNM). As a result, Manning was sacked by his employer, according ABC News (Australia).

I don't know what to say about this other than it seems odd that a media executive would be so thin skinned about an opinion piece. I mean, really?

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I'm sure there were a lot of Apple followers who were very curious about what its senior vice president of Apple Retail, Ron Johnson, could do for J.C. Penney. But after only 17 months at the helm, the company’s board has replaced Johnson with Myron E. Ullman III, the former CEO of the company. It is a head scratching move by the retailer, which many thought was eager to make big changes - but then again, maybe the old brand really wasn't that ready.

In any case, now the talk is whether Johnson will return to Apple. Knowing corporate politics my guess is that the new Apple CEO, Tim Cook, will probably say "gee, Ron, guess that move didn't work out. Well, best of luck to you."

Newspaper revenue down 2% in 2012, slowest decline in years, though ad revenue continues to fall sharply

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) this morning reported that in 2012 newspaper revenue declined 2 percent as newspapers found new money in charging for access to digital news products. Advertising, though, continues to fall, another 6 percent in 2012.

The industry pulled in $38.6 billion in 2012 compared with $39.5 billion in revenue in 2011, according the NAA, helped by a 5 percent increase in circulation revenue. But the NAA also reported new services such as digital consulting for local business and e-commerce transactions grew by 8 percent, a category of revenue the NAA said "barely existed a few years ago."

"America’s newspaper media are transforming themselves,” said Caroline Little, President and CEO of the NAA. "In virtually every community they serve, newspapers have the biggest newsrooms, the best-known brands and significant audience market share. Now they are building on those to find new ways to serve audiences and local businesses."

Here are the NAA's core findings according to their statement:

• NAA projects that of the $38.6 billion in total revenue in 2012, $18.9 billion came from print advertising, $3.4 billion from digital advertising, $2.9 billion from advertising from direct marketing/niche and non-daily publications, $10.4 billion from circulation and $3 billion from new revenue sources. (The projections do not include revenue from weekly papers not owned by daily newspaper companies.)
• Combined digital revenue (from circulation, advertising, e-commerce, digital marketing and other sources) made up 11% of total revenue in 2012 for the 13 companies that broke out this data, though that varied by company. It was as high as 29% and as low as 8%.
• The 5% overall growth in circulation revenue was the first gain in this category for the newspaper industry since 2003. Within that total, for the companies supplying detailed breakdowns, digital-only circulation revenue grew 275%; print and digital bundled circulation revenue grew 499%. Largely as a result of more organizations shifting toward bundling print and online into combined access subscriptions, print-only circulation revenue declined 14%.
• Within the 8% growth in new revenue sources, revenue from digital agency consulting for local businesses grew 91%. E-commerce revenue grew 20%.
• Mobile ad revenue, while small (less than 1% of total revenue), doubled (up 100%), according to the papers that broke that data out separately.
• When revenue from print, digital, niche and delivery of preprints outside of newspapers is combined (based on data from 15 companies that provided such breakouts), total advertising revenue made up 65% of overall revenue in 2012. Within that figure, traditional print newspaper advertising fell 9% and now makes up 46% of total revenue. Digital advertising increased 5% and now makes up 11%; pure-play digital advertising (digital only) increased 20%

The Weather Channel's innovative mobile advertising; app uses its most valuable real estate for an advertising

It is no secret that I am no fan of paid content strategies that try and minimize the reliance on advertising. For me revenue is revenue and throwing away on revenue channel to rely solely on another seems like a foolish strategy. It's a bit like the guy who puts the pea under the cups and begins moving them around, only this time he openly puts a pea in all three cups then asks you which cup has the pea... and you hesitate to decide which cup to pick.

For many newspapers (and magazines, too) who have launched mobile apps, the general way advertising is handled is to include a banner ad, often from an ad network. It is a lazy way to think about how to monetize one's mobile apps.

The Weather Channel is trying to come up with new ad solutions and one that is being employed today goes a long way in explaining why it recently decided to stop using animated wallpapers in its apps. Those gorgeous looking backgrounds may be missed, but it is obvious TWC thought it was real estate too valuable to simply give away to the designers.

The backgrounds of the page which shows the current temperature is usually the first page the app user sees. Today an ad from The Home Depot is used as the "wallpaper" behind the temperature. The background stays, even when moving from city to city (as you can see at left), but is gone once the user moves on to the 48 hour forecast or ten-day forecast. (The TWC's mobile media kit can be found here.)

This is smart stuff, and should give inventive ad directors something to chew on. What is your most valuable real estate in your app, and can you use it in an nonintrusive way for advertising. If not, then the creation of this kind of page might be the next option.

(By the way, the iPad app for TWC still is using attractive wallpapers, using a more traditional banner ad approach for the advertising.)

April 3, 2010: Mag+ shares four insights gained since the launch of the original iPad

Today is the third anniversary of the launch of the original iPad. As you can imagine, a lot has been learned about tablet publishing since that Saturday in 2010. Mag+, one of the leading digital publishing platform companies providing native tablet (and mobile) app solutions, has issued a release on the four insights they have learned. Here is an excerpt:

After three years and more than 1,000 touchscreen publication apps, Mag+ and its customers have learned how to unleash the power of this important medium. Contrary to the word of uninformed doomsayers, Mag+ believes with some imagination and intelligent investment, issue-based mobile publishing has a bright future as both traditional periodicals and new content brands take advantage of the mobile app-based environment to reinvent publishing. Clients are finding great new revenue streams, using creativity to win brand loyalty and sales, and the custom content world is taking off...

“There is remarkable opportunity for smart publishers and other brands to make money by rethinking what, when and how they serve their audiences,” says Mag+ Chief Creative Officer and co-founder Mike Haney. “By thinking creatively about the best content for all channels available to them, including mobile, publishers can be the drivers, the innovators of the next boom in content.”

Four Insights Gained

Publishing Reinvented – Thinking about tribes, right content and right time
Mag+ predicts smart brands will figure out new ways to deepen their audience relationships by moving beyond monthly issues to a community membership model, where content arrives in all forms on a variety of devices on a regular and ongoing basis. Membership could include a premium print publication, a dynamic HTML website for up-to-the-minute news, apps that have utility on the go and deliver more frequent issues, push alerts for breaking news, even events, webinars and other ways to connect directly with the brand.

The new 'New York Magazine' app

There is consumer revenue here – Smart publishers can monetize on a mobile publishing platform. Since its inception PopSci+ has grown to 100,000 digital subscribers across all tablets, made $1.56M net from iTunes through 1.6 million unique downloads, and sold 180,000 single copies.

Downloads and revenue numbers are on the rise within Mag+ client American Media, Inc., as well. For Men's Fitness, Sept 2011 - Jan 2012 vs. five months prior downloads are up 200 percent and revenue is up 193 percent, as that brand and others moved from a PDF-replica to custom designed Mag+ version of the magazine. SHAPE Magazine’s Sept 2011 - Jan 2012 vs. five months prior downloads are up 400 percent and revenue is up 218 percent.

Many publications are now able to charge more for their iPad subscriptions than for print. They are also seeing more subscription purchases than single-issue purchases and renewal rates are far higher than with print publications at much lower cost.

Creativity wins the day in both experience and advertising –  Companies that think creatively will be the first to take full advantage of the community membership model. Creative use of video, audio and imagery, such as moving magazine covers, content appropriate soundtracks and even games are the tools content companies now have at their disposal. The Next Web even used the Mag+ mobile publishing platform to create an issue-based app by curating the best of its popular blog content.

Advertisers are also finding new ways to engage audiences on touchscreen devices. Kashi cereal just created an ad camouflaged as a game, (or is it a game posing as an ad?), in SHAPE. While the advertising and publishing industries still have a long way to go in building a touchscreen ad paradigm, everyone agrees we will get there—there are simply too many eyeballs at stake not to make it work. In addition, the technology is the best platform advertisers have ever had to make users see their ads as a service and not a nuisance.

Custom media opportunities abound – While the overwhelming majority of content-heavy apps have been offshoots of traditional publications, Mag+ sees the custom content sector growing rapidly. Museums, comic books, performing arts venues and corporations are all evaluating the possibilities of app-based publishing. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London created an app that showcases exhibitions, so you can see great exhibits wherever you are in the world; Dixons Travel, Europe's leading airport electrical store, launched Dixons Travel app, showcasing a host of gadgets; and Symbolia created an app that is a unique blend of comic book and journalism.

“Touchscreen devices and apps are the future, and content has never been more in demand or as potentially profitable,” said Gregg Hano. “We have never been more excited about this business—for us, for brands and for consumers.”

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Tablet and mobile app editions that are powered by Mag+ include the newly released New York Magazine app, The Next Web, and British Journal of Photography.

Elkhart newspaper launches a tablet edition into the Apple App Store for their special section on local businesses

Three years ago today, a Saturday, Apple delivered the first iPads to those who had pre-ordered them via UPS. As thousands of buyers waited patiently for the UPS truck to pull up to their driveways, Apple released into the new iPad App Store the first new apps.

The first media app looked at here at TNM was, not surprisingly, from The New York Times. My post said that the app looked like a temporary solution.

"There is no question that the Times app is gorgeous to look at -- but even TalkingNewMedia looks great on an iPad! The glossy scene displays rich colors; the text is sharp and easy to read; and the whites are white, the blacks black (news photographers are going to absolutely love the way their images look)," I wrote on that launch day.

Here we are three years later and the Times app has added more content but has not evolved in any serious way, and the NYT has yet to really commit to tablets (and mobile, for that matter) as a serious platform for new product launches. But that has not stopped other newspapers, and media companies, in general, from committing to the tablet platform.

A great example of that might be this new app from The Elkhart Truth, from the family owned media company Federated Media. The company has just released its first tablet edition as a stand-alone app into the Apple App Store, Business and Industry 2013.

The iPad app looks to me to have used the Adobe DPS to create the tablet edition of the print special section. But unlike magazines that use this (which can easily fit in the full page ads into the tablet app, then reformat the editorial), local newspapers have to deal with all those small, modular advertisements. What to do with these in a tablet edition? Dump them? Gather them together on single pages? or blow them up to full page?

The Elkhart Truth solves the ad problem very simply by including them in the articles as if this still were print. The black and white ads look a bit odd compared to the advertising seen in most tablet editions, but I think it works. I'd go further, I see no reason why local papers that are experimenting with tablet editions couldn't duplicate the approach here.

The app was created by the newspaper's creative services department, and while it might, at first, appear rather rudimentary, the app uses many of the common features seen in tablet editions: scrolling with stories, swiping to the next, pop-up captions on photos, and even video links in ads.

The section represented here is the kind of business round-up many local papers like to produce on an annual basis. The section not only serves as a way of promoting the city, but local businesses often make a habit of advertising in the section, much as they would in the Yellow Pages (at least, they used to). Because of this, the publisher has chosen to not charge for the app or its contents.

But these sections will have to evolve in order to survive. This first effort from the paper in Elkhart, Indiana is a great example of one way to do this - and apparently it won't be the last app we see from this publisher as the last page of the tablet edition says to "Look for these upcoming Digital Magazines: Home Projects, Healthy Living. Watch elkhart.com for details and publication dates."

Using digital newsstands as test kitchen (or incubator)

Every once in a while I get a call from a colleague, or even someone out of the blue, looking for a piece of advice – usually regarding launching their first tablet editions. One recently call, though, moved from the subject to the issue of new magazine launches. My publisher friend lamented the increasing costs associated with new magazine launches. Not surprisingly, I stirred to conversation to digital-only launches.

First some background: the publisher in question had just made up his mind that any app launches would be developed in-house. It was a big decision, the publisher told, me. But after looking at all the cost comparisons he finally came to the conclusion that once he had settled on a native digital publishing solution, from a company he was sure would be around five to ten years from now, he could feel more comfortable understanding the cost side of digital launches.

Interestingly, he also told me that he felt far better about publishing solutions with actual costs than from companies trying to offer free services in exchange for revenue share deals. His reasoning was that the new launches inevitably would be all about incremental dollars, and he didn't want to fall into that trap. His goal, he told me, was to build the business the way he used to, a decade or more ago, only this time with digital products not print ones.

The other point he made was that while at first he was taken aback by some of the costs he would have to deal with, it all seemed so minor when he built a P&L for the same product, but using print. He was, I was glad to hear, following the one piece of advice so many don't want to hear, yet can not succeed without: build that P&L – no matter how painful the experience is, it is essential to being a real publishing pro.

From this point we moved on to the real issue he was interested in: new product launches. The B2B publisher was very interested in launching some new titles in tablet-only format but into new markets. My suggestion was that if he wanted to do this go ahead, but I would recommend using his current titles to launch new products instead – to use the Apple Newsstand (as well as other digital newsstands) as a test kitchen.

"Today we're going to make an app!"

This is how this would work. Take a typical B2B magazine title, it is composed of news sections, columns, major articles and assorted other features generally driven by client news (that is, press releases). Each of these sections – especially the columns and client news – could be an area to experiment with a new digital launch. For instance, a columnist that covers a topic could essentially be the new editor, or at least main contributor, to a new title based on the more sharply focused topics the columnist covers (such as legislative affairs, how-to columns, etc.).

The new launch would be able to limit editorial costs because much of the content already exists and has been paid for.

As the publisher went through an exercise with one of this magazines he realized that at least a half-dozen new titles were hidden inside his existing print magazine. At that point we started to go through some numbers: what would the costs be to launch, say, two new tablet editions off this existing title? What additional money might be available for adding content to the existing inventory? Would there be any need for more hardware, software, another art director?

At first the publisher was a little scared of the added dollars he suggested might be thrown at the launches. But after a few minutes he came up with a number. "You know, this is pretty low, especially in comparison to what I'd be prepared to allocate to a new print magazine launch. Peanuts, really."

But that is the cost side of things, I said, we really need to talk about revenue.

The publisher assumed the new tablet magazine would be available free of charge inside the Apple Newsstand. It was a natural thing to assume for a B2B publisher because most apps launched from controlled circulation magazine have chosen to launch as free digital magazines. In fact, the idea of charging is what turned off the publisher to those vendors that wanted a revenue split.

But I pressed him on the idea of charging – nothing ridiculous, say $9.99 a year, with issues at $1.99.

Here are the arguments on both sides: by being free, a new title can build up its subscriber base and then be able to eventually sell advertising; by charging a few dollars will come in that will not only offset the production costs by maybe pay for more personnel. The argument I made was that any new B2B product, in the digital world, that could not find someone to pay for it probably wasn't worth producing in the first place.

Going paid is a hard hurdle to jump for those B2B publishers who have not gotten involved in information products or events such as seminars. But the Newsstand, or Amazon.com, is not a bad place to start.

To make a long story short, we concluded the conversation by agreeing that a program of new launches would have fairly set costs; that the financial risks were fairly minimal; and that the Newsstand could serve as a test kitchen for new magazine titles, with the upside being that the publisher's portfolio of titles would grow and so would the value of his company (you can see where this might lead). I'll be watching for some of those new tablet magazine launches as the year goes by.

Morning Brief: Newly formed TeamRock picks up two rock music titles from Future plc; Prudential features the front pages of the NYT in its new web ad campaign

Future plc announced today that it had sold two of its rock music titles to formed TeamRock, the recently formed venture formed by John Myers, former CEO of The Radio Academy and head of GMG Radio and Billy Anderson, a former GMG radio executive. The two titles are Classic Rock and Metal Hammer. Both titles currently have replica edition apps inside the Apple Newsstand.

The two titles were sold for £10.2 million and included in the deal were the events The Golden Gods and The Classic Rock Roll of Honour.

The new venture was formed last summer and is based in Glasgow and London. When launched TeamRock said the mission of the company was to deliver"a range of services to “rock music” fans across the world via a number of multi-media platforms."

We are delighted to acquire these wonderful brands that will play a significant part in the development of our larger business. They come with a great team led by Chris Ingham and we look forward to investing further in their development,” said Billy Anderson, who has assumed the role of TeamRock Chief Executive.

Commenting on the sale Mark Wood, Future's ceo said "Classic Rock and Metal Hammer are highly successful and well-managed parts of Future, but they have not been centre stage in our current growth strategy. They are great brands with a great team and I am confident they will continue to flourish under new investment from Team Rock."

In January of last year Future sold off Guitar World, Revolver, and Guitar Aficionado to NewBay Media.

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Prudential teamed up with The New York Times on any interesting ad campaign that features the front pages of the paper.

Readers are invited to fill in a form with their birth date which then pulls up the front page of the NYT from that date. The ad message is then "A lot can happen in the average life span, especially now that we're living longer."

The ad features links to LinkedIn and Twitter to help share the ad and its message.

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Forbes magazine looks today at the impact of the Internet on the recruitment industry. The article is actually rather modest in length but is spread over several web pages. The equivalent in print would be magazine pages only two or three paragraphs in length. As a result of this practice one would have to take with a grain of salt any page view numbers coming from the publisher, right?

'Opening Day' sales effort may be surest sign of an impending 'closing day' for one metro newspaper

This Sunday the Chicago Tribune managed to do something that I would have thought absolutely impossible just a few years ago: they published a baseball season preview for the Cubs and White Sox that was complete devoid of advertising.

On Friday I ended the week of posts with a look at the update of the MLB At Bat app. I also wrote about the fact that few newspapers have begun experimenting with mobile and tablets as vehicles for their special sections. Just two years ago there were signs that a few papers were moving in this direction, but a few experiments is all we saw.

Twenty years ago the excuse some newspapers executives would make for not creating new products is that the money brought in from the traditional special section was too great to risk diluting through introducing a digital component. The phrase used by a lot of newspaper guys was "switch business" – as in they didn't want to see any switch business, ads that simply were moved from one place to another. They wanted new dollars to be coming in. On Sunday I was anxious to see if the leading metro paper here, the Trib, would take still have the ability to produce a cash cow of a section – after all, this is a sports mad town with not one, but two major league teams. How hard could be it?

Well, I got my answer when I asked my wife to look at the section (I was busy reading the International Herald Tribune on my iPad). She laughed and they exclaimed "there's not a single damn ad in here?" She was a former newspaper ad sales person herself, and still remembers selling those baseball sections.

Now I have to wonder just how low the sales price for the Chicago Tribune might end up being. You can be sure that baseball section won't be included in the banker's black book as proof of the paper's value. I think a good Kickstarter campaign should be all that's necessary to rustle up the funds to buy the venerable old newspaper property now. So, brother, can you spare a dime?

MLB.com updates its MLB At Bat app one last time before the start of the 2013 season Sunday; newspaper special sections fail to appear inside the App Store

Major League Baseball has a bit of a monopoly when it comes to all things digital: audio and video streams of games are their exclusive property so downloading MLB At Bat, or using the MLB.com website is essential for those of use addicted to the game.

The MLB At Bat app has had its ups and downs. Last year, for instance, I said I had enough of dropped streams, error messages and the like and I cancelled the service. But a late season surge by the Giants – one that would lead to their second World Series win in three years (I love writing that) – convinced me that I couldn't live without the app.

The key to the MLB app has never been its features, MLB.com does a good job of adding more and more goodies. No, the key has been the ability of MLB.com to service the app and to maintain its quality. This year the app has generated few complaints about its quality, and that is a good sign. No, the biggest complaint, which is totally understandable in this economy, is the price.

"I've gotten this app for years, not no more. Everything is going up but my paycheck!" writes one reviewer in the App Store.

Other complaints revolve around issues dedicated fans should already understand like blackouts and audio. The app, after all, works best for those unable to directly follow their favorite teams because they have moved out of the market.

If I were a Cubs fan, for instance, I'd have absolutely no reason to pay for the app's premium features (since I live in Chicago) but might pay the one-time $19.99 fee for the scoreboard and stats.

But complaining about the price probably isn't justified in a world where many fans moan because their favorite team lost a player because they wouldn't pay him what the Dodgers or Yankees were offering.**

In any case, here is what you will find in the last app update to be issued by MLB.com before the start of the season (future updates most likely will involve bug fixes rather than features):

What's New in Version 6.1.0

• Multi-platform live audio access for At Bat 13 subscribers (portable to Mac/PC with a valid MLB.com account)
• Universal support for At Bat 13 subscribers, accessible on iPhone, iPad and other supported smartphones and tablets
• New video section featuring more highlights and search (iPad)
• Sortable batting, pitching and fielding statistics (iPad)
• Re-designed individual team pages (iPhone)
• Updated news section interface (iPhone)
• Classic games library featuring more than 60 historic games dating back to 1952 (iPhone and iPad)
• Re-architected navigations (iPhone and iPad)
• Additional push notification options (iPhone & iPad)
• Closed captioning availability for live video (iPhone and iPad

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In the spring of 2011, I wrote on the few new apps released by newspapers for the start of the new baseball season. The Boston Herald, for instance, launched a baseball app built by DoApp. My only surprise was that there were not more of these kind of apps being produced.

Now, a couple of years later, the absence of new apps for newspaper special sections no longer is a big surprise. The question, though, is why is this? Have newspapers lost the corporate knowledge of how to produce a profitable special section? Is it about their reluctance to embrace app making? Is it because they have lost the loyalty of the the local ad base?

It's probably all these things, or at least some of them. The one thing I'm positive about is that the atmosphere inside most newspapers companies is much different than when I started out in the business.

In L.A., the start of the baseball season meant the annual Dodgers section. While the editorial team at the Herald Examiner felt they were the ones driving the section, us ad guys felt we were the ones driving the ship. We'd have a giant sales meeting, sometimes with Tommy Lasorda giving the motivational sales speech, the peanut vendors would come in to throw bags of peanuts at us, and the management team would finally give out ridiculous sales goals that we somehow always made.

The sections almost sold themselves: we knew which of our clients were Dodger fans and would automatically buy an ad. The big auto dealer would get the back page - to not give it to them would be suicide. Even some of my real estate clients (new home developers) would sometimes advertise.

Today, print special sections at the start of the season still exist, but they are waning. As for digital media special sections, well, the corporate folks who run newspapers today still aren't there.

I could criticize them for their lack of imagination, but I know that the same relationship we had with our advertisers doesn't exist today. Could a special section tablet app for the Dodgers bring in $250,000 or more in ads today? I doubt it. (The one Dodgers app out there was build by a Chinese app developer trying to take advantage of things by launching paid sports apps. Users think they are a rip-off, and they are.)

Some papers such as the two Chicago dailies have launched sports tablet magazines for their teams. But the Tribune Company has apparently given up on them already, after only one year. Right now the real effort being spent trying to figure out a way to sell off their newspapers – digital special sections will have to wait for another publisher.

** Actually, it might Dodger fans complaining after word came out this afternoon that the Giants have locked up their catcher, Buster Posey, with a long contract – 9 years, $167 million.

B2B publisher Penton Media moves away from replicas with its native tablet edition for 'Nation's Restaurant News'

The percentage of revenue that B2B publishers generate from digital media remains pretty low. But according to CDS Global, the percentage of that digital revenue that comes from tablet editions is only 2.4 percent. You don't need a calculator to figure out that this means that most U.S. B2B publishers simply aren't launching profitable tablet editions, if they are launching them at all.

One publisher that has had apps inside the Apple App Store for quite a while is Penton Media. Penton is one of the nation's oldest B2B publishing companies, having been founded in 1892 by John Penton. The media company has been in the hands of the private equity firm Wasserstein & Co. since late 2006.

Penton's earliest apps were for trade shows, created by Core-Apps, one of the leading developers of apps for events. Apps like Club Industry Show 2011 serve a very specific service then become somewhat irrelevant (thought the apps do contain information attendees might find valuable well after the show).

Apps, such as for Fleet Owner, are news apps that deliver to the iPhone or iPad reformatted version of the title's website. Still other apps are replica editions built by Texterity such as the universal app for SQL Server Pro.

But the app released in January, and just updated last week, for Nation's Restaurant News is something altogether different – a native iPad edition.

(Penton acquired the 60K circulation bi-weekly trade magazine late in 2010 from Lebhar-Friedman. The magazine has been an important fixture in the industry since its founding in 1967, which probably explains why Penton allowed the publisher to launch their own tablet edition in the fashion – that is, with a native tablet edition. One would hope that this will become a trend at the B2B publishing company)

"Just as launching an iPad app was an easy choice that came from listening to our customers, so too was deciding to create content specifically formatted for the iPad rather than just presenting a PDF of the print magazine," writes publisher Randall Friedman in the publisher's note inside the latest issue.

The app will be updated twice a month with what the publisher describes as "the best of the best – the most important stories from the past two weeks that ran in our magazine and on our website."

Access to the app will come with a paid subscription to the trade industry magazine. But for the first three months readers can access the issues inside the iPad app for free thanks to the single sponsorship of Mondelez.

As you will see in the walk-through video below, the digital magazine can be read in both portrait and landscape, but by keeping multimedia material out of the app, it allows for the file size to be a modest 111MB. By the way, the sometimes sticky navigation apparent in the video is more the result of the video recording software than the app. I found the navigation to be quite smooth, and bug free.

One decision that I found a bit odd, though, was to keep the app out of the Apple Newsstand and make it a stand-alone app. This will force readers to go into the app at intervals during the month to get their latest issues. Also, the app could use push notifications, a feature that could be great benefit to B2B publishers. Finally, there is no attempt to qualify readers through the app, something that European B2B publishers appear to be experimenting with in their tablet editions.

As many newspapers abandon the ad model digital publishing vendors are there to pick it back up and profit

The biggest trend in newspapering is the paywall, but a related trend is the abandoning of the ad model. Journalists, who generally never sold an ad in their lives, and lived in fear of the power of advertising departments, are advocating paid content strategies and giving up on ad revenue (or if not giving up on ad revenue, deemphasizing its importance).

But outside the newspaper (and magazine) industry, vendors don't see it this way. For them, the way to make money is off those who have it: the newspapers themselves, or their advertisers. Nickel and dimeing readers seems like a suckers game, so the way to make it big is to gather up as many eyes as possible and build their own ad networks. To do this, however, they need newspaper executives who are neophytes at the new digital platforms – they are not finding it hard to locate them.

One of the newest vendors to appear inside the App App Store is Scoopkit, a NYC company that promises to make apps for its customers for free. The proposition is simple enough: the newspaper signs up, uploads a PDF of its newspaper, and Scoopkit makes them an iPad app, all for free. "We truly love local newspapers and want to see them grow!" says the company's website.

The new apps appear in the Apple App Store – 54 as of this morning – all appearing under the name Scoopkit, not that of the newspaper publisher. The apps are stand-alone apps, not inside the Newsstand, and they are free of charge.

In other words, the newspaper publisher makes nothing from the apps, nor do they get charged anything. Instead, Scoopkit sells national advertising into the apps and keeps 100 percent of the profits.

As for the apps, well, they are simply PDF of most broadsheet newspapers without any attempt made to make them interactive, or even readable. When launched, the app descriptions some of the apps do not even have screenshots of the replica newspaper, though I'm sure this situation is corrected at some point.

Yes, we can all laugh at the naiveté of the publishers, but I think the real lesson here is that it is the vendor who believes most in digital media, and the vendor who believes there is a working business model that involves advertising.

But the relationship can not last. A newspaper not investing seriously in digital will die, even the publisher has to understand this, why else would they be vulnerable to vendor sales? But with all the revenue going to the vendor, and neither circulation or ad revenue coming in, the newspaper's days are numbered. Finally then, without the newspaper the vendor has no audience to sell themselves. It is the Ouroboros come to life.

Most vendors, including Scoopkit, will say that if the newspaper wants to sell their own ads into the app they are welcome to do so. But the whole premise is based on free and easy. Most replicas are hard to read and don't even fit the tablet's display properly. Selling an extra PDF pages is not going to get response who would be self-defeating in any case. Only low priced national advertising, sold for pennies per thousand impressions is workable.

Media app updates: Future plc and Digital First Media take opposite approaches to the new digital platforms; RetailMeNot adds AirPrint to coupon mobile app

A large number of media app updates were issued last night and this morning. One of the media companies updating its portfolio of app is Future plc. The UK and US magazine company uses its own platform, FutureFolio, to build and launch its magazine apps – the platform allows for both native and replica edition apps.

Today's updates fix issues with the library and with download errors. Future generally issues updates in large batches to fix issues caused by glitches in its digital publishing platform and today is no exception with updates coming from Mac Lfe Magazine, Cycling News HD and Prog Magazine, as well as others.

Future plc is handling its tablet edition needs in a very corporate manner, with all their magazines on the same platform. What makes their approach unique, however, is that they have built their own platform and developed that platform to give it flexibility in the digital publishing products created. The approach, while limiting options for individual publishers as far as the platform is concerned, gives its publishers options as far as final product (assuming management at the company allows its publishers this freedom).

At Digital First Media and its Journal Register and MediaNews groups, the approach is the ultimate in inflexibility: the company has chosen a third party vendor, Spreed, to build its apps across the company's portfolio. The result is that the company is locked into one solution, and that one solution is pretty primitive and unattractive. Digital First continues to show that is far behind other publishing companies in regards to digital publishing – Digital Last, if you will.

The app updates today for such newspaper apps as the Contra Costa Times for iPad (a MediaNews Group paper) and The Oakland Press for iPad (a Journal Register Company paper) fix issues with video galleries and event listings, as well as general performance fixes.

Spreed has been pretty good at issuing app updates, as it should be for such a large and important customer. But the apps are still an embarrassing example of the companies backward nature as regards to mobile and tablets. The apps for the iPad reformat the RSS feeds coming off the newspaper websites into standard layouts that often lack graphics. In some case, as with the CCT's iPad app, the front page is acceptable in appearance, though the idea of a standard layout for a front page is against basic newspaper design principals. The stories then are laid out in a Kindle-like fashion with little imagination, and no flexibility.

Other newspaper editions, though, look far worse due to poor graphics, or a complete lack of them.

These papers, though, are being destroyed editorially (the CCT's leading off today with the headline "Dancing With The Stars: Season 16 begins with sweet surprises, plus a..."), so it probably matters not what the company does on tablets. But it is sad to watch happen.

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RetailMeNot today issued another update for its mobile app, and the company, which just changed its name from WhaleShark Media, has added yet more important features to its coupon app.

RetailMeNot Coupons will now allow shoppers to search for coupons at nearby malls, rather than having them merely sent to them via notifications. These coupons can then be printed using the iPhone's AirPrint mechanism. This will be especially useful for retailers such as restaurants which might not be able to accept coupons in any form other than printed.

A test of the system, for instance, showed that the coupon for Chili's needed to be printed, while others could be accepted via the app.

This coupon app has been strictly a mobile app, but with the update, the developers at RetailMeNot probably could justify bringing the app to the iPad. Now that search and AirPrint has been added consumers may want to use this app at home, at their leisure, as they would the Sunday newspaper. Bringing the app to tablets would make this type of usage easier and more enjoyable. At some point the company will also want to migrate their app onto a new developer account now that they have dumped the WhaleShark Media name.

This is a great example of how new digitally native companies are quickly stealing away the business from newspapers who continue to stubbornly resist change. While journalists continue to debate and cheer on the building of newspaper website paywalls, the real action is elsewhere. Soon news consumers will be faced with the prospect of choosing between free news websites that also contain the majority of digital advertising, and paywalled newspaper websites devoid of advertising.

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Other media app updates includes AP Mobile, a universal iOS app. The app is now optimized for the iPhone 5 and iPad mini, and a fully localized version is available for Spanish readers (their device must be set for Spanish).

Other updates: The Economist for iPad update is for minor bug fixes; Facebook has updated its iOS app and added cover photos (iPhone only); Reed Business Australia has updated its recently released SMSF Essentials app to add Twitter integration and fix audio playback issues – you read this original write up on the app here.

Morning Brief: WhaleShark Media changes its name officially to RetailMeNot, makes another acquisition; three UK papers come out for new press regulatory regime

Many media people have never heard of Whale Shark Media, the company behind the app RetailMeNot Coupons. But it is companies like this one that is eating away at newspaper and magazine advertising, bringing coupon directly to consumers.

The Austin-based company today changed its name officially – no more WhaleShark Media, now it is RetailMeNot, a company that was acquired in 2010 (frankly, both names are terrible, but whatever). The company also announced that it had acquired its fourth online coupon company in Europe, the site Actiepangina.nl.

If this sounds like a roll-up strategy you might be right. The company is backed by Adam Street Partners, Austin Ventures, Google Ventures, JP Morgan and others. Reuters speculates that the company will want to go public this year, though one glance at the investors involved makes you wonder if a sale could be possible, as well.

More and more ad dollars are being spent in mobile, but more importantly, more and more ad dollars are being spent in direct customer acquisition rather than through traditional media. In the case of RetailMeNot, customers can be driving by a retailer and will be sent a notification with an offer. There is no need to cut out a coupon or to plan ahead, the app does the work.

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Three U.K. editors, Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, Lionel Barber of the Financial Times and Chris Blackhurst of The Independent, today wrote editorials in support of a new press regulation system. The timing of the editorials coincide with a meeting to take place today to discuss recommendations found in the Leveson report, which was the result of hearings held following an investigation into the News of the World hacking scandal – with Rupert and James Murdock among the witnesses.

"How best to supervise the media, while retaining its independence, is no small challenge," The Independent wrote. "But the stalemate that has greeted the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry cannot continue, even so."

"A clause underpinning a royal charter to establish a recognition panel for a press regulator does not, to our minds, amount to statutory control of the press," The Guardian editorial states. "We do not see it as a threat to press freedom. If we're to have a backdoor constitutional fudge over press regulation, it's better that it could be amended only in the open with the agreement of an overwhelming majority of parliament. A royal prerogative that can be unpicked by ministers in private does not feel like a solid bastion of free expression."

"It is hard to make the argument that ministerial discretion should trump parliamentary approval when it comes to amending a Royal Charter," the Financial Times editorial states. "It is even harder now that politicians of all stripes are lining up behind statutory underpinning of the body overseeing a new regulatory regime. Some will argue that standing on the principle of no statutory involvement whatsoever is nobler than offering a compromise which can later be exploited. The FT, on balance, disagrees and has joined The Guardian and The Independent to propose a better way forward."

The three editorials contrast with other media voices who have been calling for only voluntary guidelines, rather than a legislative approach.

NY Daily News partners with travel guide app start-up MyCityWay in major update of its mobile news app

The New York Daily News has released a new version of its mobile app, partnering with MyCityWay, a NYC start-up that makes mobile travel guide apps. The new version of Daily News Mobile is listed as Version 5.0

The update adds a wealth of new content including blogs. But it is the city guide information that has been added via MyCityWay that will be what readers notice most: dining and coffee shops, nightclubs, shopping, attractions, etc.

The main news app remains driven by the RSS feeds originating from the Daily News, of course. Sections include Metro, America, Politics, Crime, Sports, Showbiz, Opinion, Photos, Living. Columnists, Blogs, Horoscopes, Reader Offers and Dining.

A new QR reader links the app to the print edition of the paper so that readers can gain access to online material like video and photo galleries.

The app will allow advertisers to geo-target readers through location services, hopefully opening up new mobile advertising sales opportunities for the Daily News sales team.

"This also opens up new significant opportunities for advertisers who can help influence people at key decision points. The ability to customize content and access tens of thousands of stores, venues and services takes the app to a new level of personalization and relevance for consumers. Now users can quickly find anything from the nearest WiFi hotspots to a specialty food store," said Daily News President & CEO Bill Holiber.

Hallelujah, newspapers are saved, what to buy one now? Publishers and observers look at circulation revenue gains and see real progress in turning around newspaper P&Ls

Maybe it's because I come from the publisher side of the business, as opposed to the journalism side, that I continue to see the media business in a different light than most industry observers. To "the other side" the way forward continues to be paid content, paywalls, aggregation, and more and more conferences (I added that last part to be snarky, but I'm not sure it isn't accurate).

As a revenue (and cost) guy, I tend to go back to the spreadsheets as soon as I hear an argument along the lines of that articulated by Ken Doctor, probably the respected and quoted person when it comes to the newspaper business. Doctor wrote last week on Nieman Lab about paywalls and said, to my astonishment, that the added dollars coming into circulation was "stabilizing the business." Here is the full quote:

It’s money that’s stabilizing the business, really for the first time since 2006. Newspaper revenue trends among those top performers are getting back to that under-appreciated “zero” number (“The newsonomics of zero, and the New York Times”), making up for continuing losses in ad revenue. It also means we’ll see more top-line growth this year — and that’s milestone territory. That’s the reason why the U.S. system of metered paywalls is now being applied around the world.

This is about as full a declaration of victory for paywalls that I've read. But I'm afraid I just don't see it.

Yes, the NYT did report a "meager" 0.3 percent increase in overall revenue in 2012, but then again the paper has just put up The Boston Globe for sale, hardly a sign that the company feels it is in the money now, or that the business is in any way "stabilized".

Things are even worse when you look at another company mentioned in the post, Gannett. That publisher reported a very healthy increase in circulation revenue, one that brought its numbers back up to 2007 levels. But let's look at this from the perspective of how it all would look on the P&L:

Even if Gannett were to add the $100 million that Doctor believes it can, it will at best only be able to get its total revenue back up to 2009 levels, assuming advertising does not fall further – and frankly, I don't think they can do that – nor if they did that it would turn things around.

Another point to make about circulation revenue is that not 100 percent of the new revenue is coming from website paywalls, but simply from paid circulation overall. Paid circulation coming from mobile and tablets are generally considered circulation, and that revenue is would have traditionally been considered coming from new product launches. One could just as easily make the argument that circ gains show the wisdom of digital launches as much as it does paywalls.

To repeat myself again, it is should be said that I am not against paywalls. I've always said that financial newspapers and major national newspaper brands stood the best chance to succeed with a paywall – metered or not. But I've yet to see anything that would convince me that paywalls will work at metro, regional and local newspaper sites. I still think that the verdict is not yet in.

Over at AOL, Patch has not instituted paywalls, as they come from a pure play situation where the concept would feel out of left field. AOL's chief executive seems to feel that Patch is going to be profitable, but 2012 revenue came in 15 to 30 percent below promised, and at $34 million, still seems like a lot of work for little real revenue.

In fact, this seems to be the real issue in the industry: a lot of executives and media consultants chasing so few dollars, while the ad dollars continue to go elsewhere.

According to Kantar Media's latest report, newspaper ad revenue fell 3 percent in 2012. Overall ad spending increased by the same percentage, all going into the pockets of broadcasters. Even Internet spending was said to have fallen 3 percent, though Kantar is only looking at display ads. But I've always found measuring revenue to be difficult. Look at almost any magazine ad report that includes revenue and you'll see that when ad pages fall revenue is said to have fallen by a smaller amount. Real world experience tells you that this is true when in a high inflation setting, like in the nineties and before, but the past decades have found publishers freezing rates or having to discount more, leading to bigger, not smaller declines in their revenue lines.

With the Globe for sale, along with the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and the rest of the Tribune Company's print properties, I think it is fair to say we are in an era of incredible instability. Turn the situation around will take a turnaround in advertising as much as an increase in circulation. Or am I reading the numbers wrong?

comScore releases annual report on the Canadian digital market;The SoDA Report finds most digital marketing budgets to grow at in 2013

The digital measurement and analytics firm comScore today released its annual report on the Canadian digital media market, 2013 Canada Digital Future in Focus – the report can be downloaded on the comScore website.

The report shows what you might expect – that the Canadian market is very similar to the U.S. market when it comes to web usage, video content watching and the like. In fact, Canadians rank second highest engagement across the globe (just behind the U.S.), and first in monthly pages and visits per visitor (just ahead of the U.S.

While in most respects the Canadian market looks similar to the U.S., mobile platform usage is one area where differences show up: Blackberry still at least some penetration of the market remaining. BlackBerry, formerly RIM (as it is shown in the comScore report), still maintains a 20 percent share, while a previously released comScore report showed BlackBerry's share falling below 8 percent in the U.S.

comScore's look at Canada shows that the digital ad market continues to grow at a robust pace – up 17 percent in 2012. Online video also is growing, as you'd expect, with Canadians ranking second worldwide in terms of monthly hours of video viewing and number of videos per viewer.

Again, if you are interested in the comScore findings concerning the Canadian market, you can download the report on the comScore website.

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Another report that does not hold many surprises is Volume 1 of The SoDa Report from the Society of Digital Agencies. It finds that most organizations will be growing the digital marketing efforts in the coming year, with 39 percent of respondents saying that they will be increasing their digital marketing budgets without increasing their overall marketing budgets (bad news for print publishers, but great news for the digital side). 16 percent will be increasing their overall budgets, and therefore growing their digital marketing budgets.

Interestingly, 11 percent said they would be decreasing their digital marketing budgets. While I'm sure some find this a small percentage, it seems high to me and must reflect general decreases in budget levels.

You can directly access the report here.

The newspaper ad revenue problem will not be solved with simple solutions, or by simply giving up

Sometimes newspaper publishers get accused of being solely focused on cost cutting. It is a common complaint heard whenever staff cutbacks are announced, or print schedules reduced. But, believe it or not, it is not always true. There are times when despite the obvious subjects for cost reductions a newspaper executive will be slow to react.

I think a good example of this is the stock market tables, a feature that all but the financial newspapers have eliminated. Any reader today can, of course, simply through a few keystrokes find a stock quote. There is simply no need for those pages upon pages of stock tables to appear inside a newspaper – and they don't, publishers dumped them years ago. But the decision was controversial: the argument against eliminating the tables was that financial advertising would suffer. But many publishers didn't see the issue of ads appearing in the Business section as directly tied to the advertising seen there, after all, the section wasn't being eliminated, only the tables. So the tables went.

But when there is a direct tie in to revenue it is harder to get publishers to act. Take classified advertising. How many papers have eliminated their classified sections?

As a former classified advertising manager I can tell you that no one alive is as big an advocate for classified as I. When I was a CAM my department was the engine that drove profits, always out performing retail advertising and generally allowing me to get my way whenever there was an argument about resources, staffing or most anything else. Thanks to always blowing away my budget revenue goals I could sometimes act like a real son of a bitch, as many of my colleagues would tell you. It also led directly to my first publisher position.

But today, the classified sections of most newspapers are a waste of paper, and a waste of potential. The few dollars brought in by the handful of recruitment ads, for instance, hardly justify the paper and ink spent to reproduce them. But far worse, the continuation of the print classifieds continues to hold back any real innovation by classified managers.

Few, very few newspapers have migrated their classified ads into their mobile apps, where geolocation services could be utilized. Most newspaper chains have invested in classified websites with only the thinnest connections to their print products. So, in exchange for a few dollars coming in from these popular classified sites, they have basically frozen in place their dying classified products. As a result, long gone are the days when we classified managers could fly off to Banff to attend a classified managers meeting safe in the knowledge that out bosses dare not question the expenditure.

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The problem of newspaper advertising is an incredibly complex one, one often simplified by media observers as "ads have gone online." It's not true. In many cases the ads have not migrated, they have evolved, mutated or disappeared completely.

Take bank advertising, for instance. This is still a major category for most metro newspapers. But banks today communicate directly with their customers through their websites, email and apps. The only real purpose for those quarter pages ads appearing in print are new customer acquisition. The same goes for other categories such as cellular and cable.

This Sunday I opened the Chicago Tribune and counted the print ads. Once I left the main news section it was a real effort to find any ads, at all. The second section with national and world news would have been completely ad free were it not for the full page ad on the back from a electronics retailer contracted for that position. The sports section, despite the success of the Blackhawks and Bulls contained exactly one ad.

Read More >

Morning Brief: The Sequestration; Groupon CEO runs afoul of shareholders, Google runs afoul of regulators

Monday's Morning Brief began by stating that this week would be a dominated by talk of the "sequestration", those automatic spending cuts that would occur if Congress did not reach a new budget agreement. But the week went on without any progress – and, well, today is now March 1.

But the news, as it turns out, has not been completely dominated by the looming deadline, despite the best efforts of the White House. Yesterday the big story was the canning of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason who left the scene quickly following the release of another dismal earnings report – but not before releasing a memorable farewell email.

With the Tribune Company now putting up for sale its newspaper holdings the talk has turned to who would buy the papers, which including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. There are a lot of candidates but ultimately I think the buyer(s) will come from a source that looks at the papers less as a financial investment than as a political one.

Google is running afoul of European regulators again over the issue of privacy. Thirty data protection officials have sent the U.S. search and advertising giant a message that it wasn't happy with its progress in making changes.

"In October 2012, the Article 29 Working Party highlighted deficiencies in Google's privacy policy and gave some recommendations to Google on how to address these. To date, considering that Google has not taken any precise measures in response to those recommendations, the requirements of Directive 95/46/EC are still not complied with."

"Data Protection Authorities have decided to continue their investigations in close cooperation and to take all necessary actions according to their competences and powers. Significant progress on these actions will be made before summer. A taskforce led by the French DPA (CNIL) will help to coordinate these actions."