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Short reads on a Saturday morning:
• Was the biggest news in B2B that Reed sold off Interior Design and its entire furniture division to Sandow Media, or that Nielsen didn't announce it sold anything this week? Nielsen did manage to confirm that it had shuttered Sales & Marketing Management.
• The WSJ reported that Apple was "scrambling to secure iPad deals". The story, written with the help of five staffers, quoted no one, provided no proof, but did manage to find new ways to not identify people. The story, of course, was picked up by other sites and aggregators.
But since the way iPad users access e-content from newspapers and magazines would be through either the iPad's Safari web browser or through apps downloaded from iTunes the whole idea of "deals" simply makes no sense.
Then on Friday Apple sent out e-mails to its developers letting them know they are now accepting apps for review and approval. "iPad will begin shipping soon and your opportunity to be part of the grand opening of the iPad App Store starts today. Submit your iPad app now for an initial review by the App Review Team and receive feedback on its readiness for the grand opening.”
Since these initial apps must be developed and tested on a simulator, because only a select few chosen developers have actual iPads to work with, the vast majority of apps won't be submitted and approved until well after the April 3rd "Grand Opening". I suspect you'll find the New York Times and possibly one or more Condé Nast or Hearst magazines with apps on Day One. But there will be a Day Two.
• The real news may have been that the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) decided to once again change its rules and redefine what a digital magazine is. In the past, a digital magazine had to be an exact duplicate of the print version. No more. As a result, tablet versions (read: iPad versions) can now incorporate multimedia and change layouts without risking the wrath of the ABC.
Publishers will have to submit their apps to the ABC for approval, but I suspect that this being the Wild West days of tablet publishing I don't look for the ABC to stand in the way of many pioneers. The ABC has already approved the app for Wired magazine which will be available for the iPad starting with the June issue (has Apple approved the app?).
• Alexx Henry posted several videos to Vimeo demonstrating his iPad work for the online only VIVmag as well as Outside magazine. I posted the VIVmag video here, but no reason not to take advantage of Vimeo's embed code by posting the Outside feature spread now.
Some have called this eye candy but I think that misses the point. Artists are always going to stretch the medium, especially at the medium's birth. Think of the crazy camera work of some of the early silent films. (Not that old, huh?) I personally want to see what the tablet form can do, so I say go crazy and let readers be the final judge of what they like and are willing to pay for.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Week in Review
Friday, March 19, 2010
Photoblogging Friday - 11
It's Friday and Photoblogging Friday this week will be dedicated to Charles Moore, the great civil rights era photographer who died earlier this week. The photography of Charles Moore was often featured in the pages of Life magazine in the 1960s and are familiar to many. Yet the man himself was not a celebrity. I am certainly happy to see that many newspapers, and NPR have seen fit to remember him at the time of his death.
☜ 1963: Demonstrators try and avoid water cannon in Birmingham.
Charles Moore/Courtesy of Black Star
"I fight with my camera. I don't want to fight with my fists. I want to fight with my camera," Moore is heard saying in the NPR story that can be heard in full here.
Moore grew up in Alabama, the son of a Baptist minister (read full New York Times obituary here) who preached against racism. Moore himself, as a photo journalist, tried to get the story, but not get arrested telling the New Orleans Times-Picayune “I’d let people trip me, jostle me, pull my hair and threaten to smash my camera.”
is arrested by Montgomery police.
Moore's first professional work was for the Montgomery Advertiser, but in 1962 he became a freelance photographer and worked for the Black Star agency. Later he went to cover the Vietnam War. Finally he decided to focus on nature, fashion and travel photography.
Claire O'Neill of NPR quotes University of Florida photography Professor John Kaplan: "Everybody in America had seen those pictures and yet, you know, when I met Moore and we just started chit-chatting, I realized there was so much behind the power of the images themselves - you know, how they were made, how he got access. Really has incredible courage. He was really, one of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement."
Team approach to e-publishing may smooth entry into mobile and tablet publishing for many B2B publishers
It was hard enough convincing my employer to launch their first web sites back in 1995, I can imagine what it is like advocating creating a publication for the iPad or smart phones.
The reality is that many media owner only see expenses when the conversation of mobile and tablet publishing is broached. (The reality is that many owners have totally forgotten the word "revenue" even exists as they concentrate all their efforts at cost control.) So getting an executive or owner to let the team enter the tablet or cell phone space may seem like a herculean task.
The solution may be to break out the products based on different content schemes: mobile and web, and print and tablet. The breakout is based on the idea that tablet/reader publishing will be a leisure time activity the way print is (or that readers will be willing to spend more time with both tablets and print, when compared to mobile and web).
Although this is a simple solution it does raise the question again that many have been asking: did we make a mistake by aligning our web sites too much with our print products? The answer is "yes".
It is pretty much a commonly held belief now that web sites should only have a loose relationship with the print products they are aligned with. But many publishers, especially on the B2B side, rushed to launch web sites and quickly gave away the advertising as "value-added" to their print advertising customers. Ad agencies were the co-conspirators in this move, and then for years found themselves trying to pry money for interactive from their traditional print-centric clients. The reality is that print customers were never the best leads for B2B web advertising. These advertisers had a long history of measuring results by reader response card levels and liked getting those silly little laminates at the trade shows. The real leads were the back of the book advertisers who wanted a constant marketing message out there without the hassle of changing copy every month or hiring ad agencies.
For older readers, web reading is something that is task oriented and mainly during business hours. I need to find something and so I surf the web.
Google's chief economist, Hal Varian pointed out in a recent speech that during the week newspaper readers spend much more time each session reading the print products than the online products. "What that says to me is that reading the news online is a work time activity. ... Most people aren't paid to sit at a computer and read newspapers. They're snatching things throughout the day."
Doesn't this also describe mobile reading habits, as well? While I certainly see people reading on their phones I usually see this during the day, and rarely for long periods of time. My guess is that as long as phones have screens smaller than ten inches this will remain true.
So if one team can handle mobile and web, does that mean that the other handles print and tablet? And what about the issue of layouts and app development?
Morning Brief: Pandora reaching 'too big to fail' status? ReplaceAds introduces mobile advertising platform
And then there is Pandora.
If you're not familiar with Pandora then just aadd that to the list of things you have to check out. The Internet and mobile media music company is a dominate player in streaming media. How dominant? Digital Music News reports that roughly 44-45 percent of all royalties paid to SoundExchange, the performance rights entity that collects royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners, comes from Pandora.
In 2009, Pandora paid $28 million to SoundExchange, meaning, of course, that the streaming music industry now contributes at least $60 million to the record companies. OK, it's not exactly a billion dollar industry, but we are talking royalties -- all plus business for the labels. And to think that the government's Copyright Royalty Board almost killed off Internet radio in 2007 before Congress stepped in and made the parties come together.
All that streaming music and video needs to be monetized by the publishers, right?
ReplaceAds announced yesterday the availability of its new mobile advertising platform for mobile streaming radio and video. The platform is from owner Jetcast.
According to its press release, ReplaceAds will have 250 million mobile ad impressions per month to offer advertisers. "Mobile audio and video streaming is growing at a phenomenal rate. Our new mobile monetization platform allows broadcasters to quickly grow their mobile revenues and for advertisers to easily and cost effectively reach our affluent, and highly engaged mobile audience", said John Williams, Jetcast CEO.
Last month the Jetcast announced that it had appointed AdPlayerz as its new advertising sales and sponsorship representatives for the ReplaceAds platform.
And finally, it wouldn't be a New Media round-up without a reference to either Apple or Google. I'm apparently not alone in feeling this way. Take yesterday's story from the WSJ: Apple Scrambles to Secure iPad Deals, a story that should have been titled WSJ editors require another Apple iPad story so we came up with one.
In this bit of fantasy, in which five staffers contributed, there are no names mentioned and no quotes used to support their premise that Apple is struggling to close content deals for its new iPad. According to the story Apple "hoped to work closely with newspaper, magazines and textbook publishers on new ways to digitally present print content on the iPad, but has for now put the effort on backburner." The source of this is credit to "one of the people", whoever that is. It was followed by "An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment" -- what a surprise.
The authors apparently don't own iPhones, or watched the iPad demo. If they had they would know that newspaper and magazine content is accessible through both the Safari browser (it's called the Internet, by the way), as well as those funny icons called "apps". No deals are necessary, just submit your app to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes store and unless the app involves politic satire or barely clothed humans, the chances are the app will be approved. After all, there are over 300 "flashlight" apps in the iTunes store, so how hard can it be for a newspaper publisher to create an app?
But, as the reporters for the WSJ wrote "people familiar with the matter say" . . . just about anything when they are not quoted and their names not used.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Sandow Media acquires eight RBI titles; Reed divestiture picks up steam; Cahners empire now ancient history
Sandow Media announced today that they had acquired eight trade publications from Reed Business Information. Included in the deal was powerhouse magazine Interior Design, along with Furniture/Today, Gifts & Decorative Accessories, Home Textiles Today, Casual Living, Home Accents Today, Kids Today and Playthings.
Sandow's announcement states that the company will take on 100 employees along with Reed operations in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sandow will expand its New York operations, as well. No word on whether, or how many, positions may be lost in the acquisition.
"This is a rare opportunity for Sandow Media to acquire a group of industry-leading magazines and a very strong management team," said Adam I. Sandow, chairman and CEO of Sandow Media. "These brands each have robust print, digital, event and research businesses and hold the category leader position in each of their respective markets."
"We are more than pleased that our valuable brands and our talented and dedicated employees have found a new home with Sandow Media, a highly creative publishing company that has a tremendous track record under the leadership of Adam I. Sandow," said Reed Business Information-U.S. CEO John Poulin. "We wish them every possible success."
Canadian marketer gives the newspaper industry a little good advice: explore new business models
After reading a few depressing columns this morning and reacting to them in this post, I read this column that appeared on The Gazette (Montreal) web site by Mitch Joel. Joel is a partner at Twist Image, a digital marketing agency, and his column, written as an outsider, seemed to offer better advice than what I've been reading lately from the insiders.
I wish I could post the whole column, but I recommend going to the Gazette site and read the whole piece -- Joel is a far better writer than I am, that's for sure. But here is an excerpt:
The economic recession that reduced traditional mass media advertising, along with a newspaper's many legacy systems which pre-date the Internet and mobile device era - unions, printing plants, trucks and people for distribution, leases, office space, etc. - makes things seem more dire and urgent.
The new business models that come into play also confuse the newspaper (and publishing) industry even further. There is no one single thing that is going to save the newspaper industry (like the Internet or the iPad). The Internet and free news on the Web are not the reasons that people are subscribing, reading or caring less for their local newspaper...
...Just last week, Le Devoir held a conference in Montreal on the future of independent media as that daily newspaper celebrates its centenary year. Writing out of the conference, The Gazette's Jason Magder cited Torstar chairman John Honderich as saying that giving away content online has turned out to be a bad idea.
With all due respect to all of the traditional news outlets out there in the world, that's simply not true. Free news online is a very viable business model, and there are many big media publishers making lots of money online offering free news (check out the Huffington Post, Mashable, TMZ, Media Bistro, the Daily Beast and many more).
Mitch Joel is president of Twist Image and the author of Six Pixels of Separation.
The full column can be read on The Gazette web site.
