Content Bridges

Times Extra Aims to Reclaim the Digital Page One

You remember the fight for the home page in the '90s? The home page was all -- "owning" the reader was news and media companies' intent. In addition, to various presentation strategies intended to increase "stickiness" (is there an online museum of over-used web buzzwords that have had short half-lives?), publishers frantically offered  "make this my home page" buttons and gave awkward tutorials to uncertain newbies about how to change their "preferences."

Long story short, we know Google became many people's home page; to an extent it has become the web starter kit. Search and go. In harnessing paid search, it's made that model work, but has left mostly sloppy seconds for everyone else.

Now we're seeing a new round of "keep 'em on the site" strategies. CNN is the latest to bemoan those itinerant web users, those who cozy up to CNN, only to “bounce” away without so much as a thank-you. CNN.com -- the top trafficked news site on the web -- wants more loyalty, more time on site that will produce more revenue and simply some, you know, intimacy.  “My hunch is that people go to it [CNN.com] more out of habit than they do out of love,” new CNN.com g.m. K.C. Estenson told the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. (The piece was done by TV Newser graduate Brian Stelter, whose work in covering the changing broadcast/cable trade, has increased the Times' media savvy, since his hiring. His blog, TV Decoder, here.)

How to win that love, how to romance fickle newsies is, of course, the bedeviling question.

Among those answering that question is the NYTimes.com's new Times Extra product. Launched at year's end, Times Extra is another attempt to make a media property if not more lovable, then at least more likable. Its plan: Achieve likeability by becoming a more-than-the-Times home page.

Essentially Times Extra is the Times + a non-customizable RSS reader. Toggle it on from a green link at the top of the home page, and you get Times Extra; turning it off is as simple. Its utility is so far limited -- home page only -- but on that home page, you'll see five or six boxes, with nicely highlighted green type for other news brands. In each box, folded smartly below the top stories of the moment, there are contextual web links to related stories.

So Times Extra says this: We know the Times is a great news source, but we also know we're not the end of the world. For Times readers, it's a chance to see what other major and minor sources are saying about top news, without having to go directly to those sites. For the Times, it's a bet, a wager that the value added by contextual content will win NYTimes.com more visitors, more visits and more time on site. So, essentiality overall, and time spent on site more measurably specific.

I appreciate Editor and Publisher giving more attention to time on site, in its monthly tallies, via Nielsen. (Though I'd appreciate a permanent, home-page link to it.) That’s because time on site is key going forward. We can bemoan the relative smallness of dollars going to newspaper online sites as compared to print newspapers; about 10% of all newspaper revenues now come from digital sources. But, consider the relative attention to the two products, and maybe the numbers make more sense.

Sarkozy's French Press Emergency Resonates Here

Just when bought-out and laid-off American journalists are prepping their fast-food pitch, “Would you like Freedom Fries with that Recession-Priced Burger?” French President Nicholas Sarkozy is throwing journalists a lifeline. Surely, Sarkozy’s power starts and stops within his country’s borders, but his stunning action may stir fresh thinking here in the US, and speed the pace of initiatives already well into action.

Sarkozy laid out these plans, given good context in the Guardian:
•    A subsidy of $775 million dollars (600M Euros) over three years;
•    Free one-year newspaper subscription to every 18-year-old in France.  (Let them eat newsprint!?!)
•    An extension of tax breaks for investors in online journalism;
•    Doubling of government advertising in print and online news media;
•    Non-French investors will be able to increase their stakes in French newspapers;
•    The number of print distribution points, constrained by law, wll be expanded.
•    With printing the most expensive proposition for French newspapers, Sarkozy has pledged to support negotiations with printers' unions that might lowere costs by 30-40%.

Already, the French press has seen about 10% of its revenues coming from the government, so the initiative ups the ante, but doesn’t necessarily break major new ground philosophically.

Yes, the form of the subsidy does seem strange to those of us who watch news consumption trends. We know that young people – especially those in their 20s -- take in lots of news, but they do it online. They understand intuitively that’s where the latest news lives.  Online is their preference. They have nothing against newsprint; it just seems so yesterday.

For a moment, though, let’s look beyond the ways Sarkozy is fashioning his lifeline. The idea of government support of the press is itself anathema to Americans. Sure, legal/public records advertising has long been a nice little support of the local press. And public radio’s been able to get a few public funds for news production, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  But: government dollars to the profit-making daily press. Unthinkable.

The world, though, is changing. Talk to daily publishers and their dark humor extends to the transition from profitable to "profit-seeking” companies, as papers like the Boston Globe lose as much as a $1 million a week and others have crossed the line into the red. So while the Global Posts and MinnPosts are plainly asking for voluntary public support of their journalism, it’s kind of unthinkable for your daily newspaper to do the same. Yes, it has seemed unthinkable, just as unthinkable as the closures of newspapers, the cessation of home delivery, the massive staff cuts and the offering of subpar products to readers.

So I expect that much that’s been unthinkable is becoming thinkable, and Sarkozy’s high-profile move may capture some imagination here.

As we think the about the growing gap between the journalism we need and the journalism that traditional revenues is making possible, I think there are four areas to consider, for now:

Strib Bankruptcy: Pulling the Pin...and Let's See What Happens

As long anticipated, the Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy today, now the second company (after Tribune's big splash) to do that. Expect more.

All the parties are now in a mad scramble to protect their interests. The labor unions have been ready, their knowledge of bankruptcy greatly increased. They know they have got to make their cases made in first-day filings, as creditors maneuver to protect their interests. The next dance thus begins, as owner Avista blames labor unions (other than the Guild, which agreed to concessions) for pushing the paper into bankruptcy, looking for a scapegoat. The unions can correctly point out that they are only a (small) part of Avista's problems. Like Sam Zell, Avista thought it was buying a bargain property -- hey, this looks like a half-price sale -- and instead bought way above the bottom, for which all of us are still feeling.

What happens to the workers, the creditors and, oh yeah, the readers, is fairly uncharted as newspaper meltdown, larger economic meltdown and the vagaries of bankruptcy proceedings (a hundred experts, a hundred opinions) proceed.

One thing is certain. As Avista filed for bankruptcy, it pulled the pin. That's a pin being pulled in various ways at various newspaper companies. It's the newspaper business model being blown up. Dailies that aren't dailies. Less home delivery. Hollowed-out newsrooms. 150-year brands disappearing overnight.

So in pulling the pin, you're never sure what is going to happen. The grenade could be a tiny one, or a dud. Or it could lead to new unimaginables.

In the Twin Cities -- my alma mater, where I served as managing editor of the Strib's rival, the Pioneer Press, in the '90s -- this may be just another big step in a vastly changed newspaper landscape. For decades it was Cowles in Minneapolis and Knight-Ridder in Saint Paul, two sensible, if sometimes stodgy, newspaper companies.

Then, with McClatchy buying and selling the Star Tribune, and buying and selling the Pioneer Press to MediaNews, it's a different world. Strangely, it is one of the few metro areas with two competing dailies, both of which have seem big layoffs and buyouts (spawning MinnPost).

So now what?

The Strib is bankrupt.

MediaNews skirts on the edge of default, though Dean Singleton recently assured his top execs that they'd avoid it. Two weak companies, and an economy that seems to be getting worse.

The one thing we can't expect is the status quo. With second newspapers being rapidly dispatched to the guillotine (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Rocky Mountain News), how long can two completely separate operations -- with two big cost bases -- survive? It's hard to see either company buying out the other, given their financial straits. Maybe a third party? The Opperman family, who cashed on in selling West Publishing (remember L.A. background?) to Thomson a while back, is whispered in the cities as a potential consolidating buyer. They're well-connected, with deep community roots and deep pockets -- and one of several new possibilities in a fast-changing market.

How Will Carol Bartz Feel About Consorting with the Press?

And now, putting shivers into executives and managers everywhere, the words, "let's do a reassessment."

It's as predictable as Claude Rains' Captain Renault in Casablanca. Instead of rounding up the usual suspects, thought, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will be rounding up the usual assessments. You know, what do we have?/what should we keep?/what should we get rid of? That's not a stack the newspaper companies want their hugely important Yahoo Consortium ad plans dropped onto. But, there's an inevitability to it.

The fact that Carol Bartz' first act was to announce that Sue Decker is out undoubtedly sent a shiver down newspaper spines. Decker and her protege Hilary Schneider, late of Knight Ridder Digital, have been the high-profile champions of the consortium. So after the Decker shoe dropped, the next one to look for is Schneider's. Golden slipper or Goodwill model? If she stays in place or ascends, the consortium can breathe easier. If she's gone soon herself, all bets are off.

Operationally, the project is in Vice President of US Partnerships Lem Lloyd's well-organized hands. Dozens of newspapers are finding some new gold in selling Yahoo inventory in their own markets. In addition, there are now more than three dozen sites up on the APT ad platform -- the first two (the Chronicle and Mercury News), Belo's four sites and a phalanx of North Carolina properties that are starting to bring the full bore of behavioral targeting to the Tar Heel State. Next up in March: the New York Times Regional Group, Media General, Lee, Journal Register, Philly, Paddock and the Columbus Dispatch. Then more into summer and fall. (Good take overall from Alan Mutter, and to the point of what's going on with local salesforces, Newsosaur.)

In total, Yahoo Consortium members account for about 40% of US newspaper circulation. So the Yahoo deal -- and much-anticipated Yahoo Bump is a big deal. It's one of the few growth stories newspaper companies have any hope of telling in a dismal 2009.

While early sales are good, Bartz is going to be asking the ROI question. With the dozens of Yahoo staffers building and supporting the newspaper consortium, how much ROI is in it -- compared to what else Yahoo could be doing with those resources, if it keeps those resources at all. 

Observers have already pointed out that Bartz has no background in advertising, in the Internet or in media, though her management credentials are well-attested to. Her lack of experience in advertising and media doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate them, but they are clearly not in her comfort zone. Curiously the consortium is a B2B ad play, and Bartz does know B2B, and maybe she takes Yahoo more in that direction. The newspaper consortium has turned out to be Yahoo's first big B2B play, and it has learned some hard lessons -- early uneven execution, the difficulties of dealing with diverse customers who each like it their own way.

Or maybe it's part ROI and part gut instinct. Maybe Bartz reads the (thinning) newspapers and decides that there's not a lot of upside in her company investing its resources heavily in association with what looks like a dying industry.

Yes, the dreaded reassessment, and it will come quickly. Despite her words -- "Yahoo has unfortunately been battered a lot in the last year. Let's give this company some friggin' breathing room." -- she knows the economic times don't provide much air.

Meanwhile, from Mountain View, Google waits, watches and drops 100 recruiters (leaving 300! in place),  understanding it missed a major opportunity to align its ad programs with newspaper companies more than a year ago and considers what it might do with a second chance.

GlobalPost Launch is Luce-Like in Its Timing

GlobalPost  will get a lot of digital ink Monday, and deservedly so. It takes moxie to launch a news enterprise into the deep, winter gloom of The Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression. It's like Henry Luce founding Fortune in 1930.

GlobalPost founders Phil Balboni and Charlie Sennott ("Charlie and Phil's Excellent Adventure") are pushing forward at an opportune time. They are zagging -- assembling a staff of 70 correspondents worldwide -- while the rest of the journalistic world zigs downward. Full-time staff include 14, mostly editorial.

Take a look at the GlobalPost site. Of course on its first day, there's more throat-clearing and set-up then we'll expect to see when the site gets rolling into the news. We can see its breadth though already, and the experience and talent of its writers. It will be fascinating to compare GlobalPost head-to-head with the Times, the Post, the BBC, CNN, AP and Reuters on the stories that matter. It must offer not only excellent journalism, but journalism that stands apart; otherwise, it could easily fade into the Internet ether. 

On the day of launch, though, what I think is most significant about the new site is this:

• It's a membership model. GlobalPost invites its readers to get a "Passport" for $199 a year, $50 for students. As CEO Phil Balboni told me, "You must develop consumer revenue online." I asked Phil, longtime head of New England Cable News (which gets plaudits for its journalism and business smarts) whether that move was a philosophical one -- that readers would have more attachment to something for which they paid. No, he said simply, it's an economical imperative. He says that he hopes that over time, membership fees will make up 40% of the company's revenue, with the rest coming mostly form advertising and some from syndication. Passport members will get several kinds of unique access to the site and its correspondents.

Why is the member initiative so key? Newspapers, as they accelerate their move to digital more rapidly (Detroit, East Valley Tribune, Klamath Falls and many more in the works) are losing one of their primary revenue supports -- circulation, which has been a consistent 20% of revenue over time. That leaves them wholly dependent on an ad economy, very much itself in revolution. GlobalPost's membership model resembles MinnPost, which has something more than 1000 members after a year.

News(paper) readers around the country have been complaining about the reduced size of papers and the fewer stories they're getting. Even as they migrate online though, they haven't had the case made to them that they should voluntarily support good journalism. That's why these models are so important in their testing of how much support can be gained.

• It's a for-profit model, with shareholder stakes for correspondents.  As a globally oriented news service, Balboni understands that he's got a huge, potential reader base. The site is targeted to a US reader -- base of 240 million+ -- and then there's that market of  900 million-plus who speak English worldwide. It is a big business opportunity and sends a different messsage than do non-profit models, which have their place in testing as well. Further, by offering the potential of significant upside to correspondents (who vest over five years),  GlobalPost is aligning the digital news revenue economics of today -- paying correspondents $1000 a month -- with hopes, however wishful, of future payoffs. Balboni has raised $8.2 million to fund a slow burn rate and hopes to add another $1.8 by year's end to make plan.

• It's a newer journalistic model. Lost in the business model focus can be the journalistic innovation. Sennott, a former Boston Globe global correspondent, has pushed hard on having correspondents based largely in single countries. They'll focus on those single countries, getting deep, rather than roving around a continent or sub-continent. So as we see most services cutting back on foreign reporting -- and spreading their resources out thinner and wider -- GlobalPost is trying the opposite tack. Another zag -- in a world that needs all it can get. 

How Well Does Fox News Mix with Reality?

Quiz question. What's Fox? A news network? A regional sports broadcaster? An entertainment network? A reality show company?

Of course, it's all of the above, and therein lies the rub.

David Carr's Monday The Media Equation column, in the New York Times, told the story of Fox's hook-up with Phoenix' notorious mayor Joe Arpaio. The shtick: The Sheriff tells Fox which bad guys he wants hoodwinked out of their hiding, and Fox artfully turns it into watchable TV.

Carr explains how the show got on the air:

“Smile... You’re Under Arrest” was initially conceived as a pilot for Fox Broadcasting. Executives took a pass and Fox Reality, an offshoot of the network, picked up the pilot. Three episodes are being broadcast with an option for more if they’re successful.

Carr makes the point well that the media's partnership with the over-the-line, lock-'em-sheriff poses a bunch of questions.

One question not posed lingered with me though: Since Fox is both a news channel with pretensions of journalistic authority and credibility and an anything-goes entertainment provider, we see how it is getting harder and harder to separate out real journalism from everything else.

Sure Fox Reality has different standards from Fox News, I'm sure. And Fox's entertainment division sounds like it has different ones that Fox Reality. But who's to know, even in the industry. For the public, you've got to believe one Fox is just like another -- otherwise why did they give it the same name?

This isn't an issue just for Fox. The reason it is going to be harder to separate out real journalism from everything else is that journalism operations will increasingly be housed in companies doing journalism and everything else.

Consider NBC, whose brands include NBC News itself, local stations, Bravo, Chiller, SCI FI Channel, Sleuth, Telemundo, USA Network and CNBC and MSNBC. (And recall the dust-up during the Presidential campaign as NBC News pulled back Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert from MSNBC when Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews crossed a line?) Far-flung Disney owns ABC; CNN's part of behemoth Time Warner. These big "broadcasters" are busy recasting themselves for the web age, like Fox, and they have the deep pockets to do it.

Sure, traditional newspaper publishers seem less potentially conflicted or brand-confusing. Standalone journalistic companies, though, are getting to be the exception, where once they were the rule. Knight Ridder prided itself on being a newspaper pure play, and that's where the New York Times, Media News, McClatchy, Lee and others find themselves today. It's not a good place to be. While all ad- and circulation-based consumer media are having a tough time of it, newspapers are by far having the worst. So it helps -- financially -- if newspapers are part of a larger company, with other revenue streams.

News Corp, parent of both Fox and the Wall Street Journal, only gets a little more than 20% of its revenue from newspapers; which explains why the Journal has not suffered the cutbacks other papers have. The Washington Post drew a lucky straw with education company Kaplan, which now represents more than 50% of its profits.

We can, in fact, expect that if journalism is going to be well-funded going forward, it may be as part of larger, entertainment-oriented companies, companies that see that "content" widely distributed and over multiple platforms can be profitable. If that's the case, then Fox's little reality problem becomes a bigger one for journalism more generally. We know that journalism is different from the entertainment trades; without fear or favor is not a phrase you hear a lot in Hollywood. So, to the current mix of challenges, add this one: how do journalists call out their work in some easily noticeable way (especially online) to distinguish it from ... everything else?

New York Times Page One Ad Long Overdue

What a difference a few years can make.

Imagine if the New York Times had been one of the first papers to sell front-page space to advertisers in 2005? It was one thing for USA Today, a paper so totally comfortable with commerce, to put ads on Page One, which it did in 1999, but the Times, that was something else again.

Now in January, 2009, in the belly of the beast, the Times' decision to start the year with a two-and-a-half-inches-high tasteful CBS ad prompts more of a yawn than anything else. Like the Times' dividend cut, its move to re-brand the International Herald Tribune online as the New York Times and its various moves to reach beyond the Times staff for content (Freakonomics and other non-staff blogs, now Times Extra), we can say "good, but what took ya so long?" Decision-making does appear to have picked up steam at the Times over the last year, and that's to the good, given the financial vise tightening each month around the company's neck.

According to the New York Post, the new front-page ad will fetch about $75,000 daily and $100,000 Sunday. That's good money; figure each ad can help pay most of the freight for the care and feeding of one reporter. That makes the decision an easy and a good one. In the past, the Times felt it could sniff and say, "we declined to do that because we thought it cheapened the front page," as new Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth told AdAge in response to the Times' move. Now it is simply a case of the Times, famished for ad revenue -- it was down 21% in the November -- doing what a hungry person does: eat when offered food.

We don't know of course how much of the new ad revenue is really incremental; some's bound to be "switch," but some is. Wouldn't Times readers rather have kept some of the more than 50 editorial staffers let go in the spring, 2008 buyout, and have seen ads pop up earlier on Page One? Wouldn't Washington Post readers gladly trade an ad for a half-dozen or so reporters at the Post, which itself lost 100 editorial staffers to buyouts last spring as well?

There are hard, painful decisions to make in these dark days of daily journalism. Front-page ads, though, shouldn't be one of them. As readers, we get it. Newspapers need the money, and, readers are mature enough to know that putting one on Page One doesn't affect the integrity of journalism.

Whole categories of ads are falling by the wayside. Double-truck ads -- the gravy trains of years past -- have shriveled up. With the US car industry in the empty tank, there are so many fewer colorful "hot dogs-and-bring-the-kids down Saturday" car dealer ads as to make you nostalgic for the garish eyefuls.

Ironically, on the same day, the Times plopped an ad on Page One, JP Morgan plopped a 340-page PDF on the web, entitled "Nothing But Net." Outlining every nuance of online from rich media to Russia, it makes a point transcendently important to the news industry. Online in 2009, it expects pay-for-performance ads (largely paid search) to grow 10 percent to nearly $16 billion, while display ads (largely sold on cost per thousand (CPM), or we-give-you-the-eyeballs-good-luck-making-them-customers-basis) growing only 6.3 percent to $8.4 billion.

Those numbers -- part of continuing trend -- point out another key trouble for news companies in the next couple of years. In print and online, they've geared their sales to display, cost-per-thousand ads, selling first circulation, and now readership. The greatest growth, though, is in pay-for-performance in which ad sellers share more risk -- and may gain more reward -- with their buyers.

So, for now, good luck to the Times in selling more Page One ads; there was none this morning, on Day 2. It will need to grasp any advantage, every attention-getter for marketers now offered myriad choices in reaching customers.