The Inquisitr » Media Industry

E.Republic Acquires Times Publishing’s Governing Magazine

AHN — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:11:32 +0000

St. Petersburg, FL (AHN) – The Times Publishing Co. agreed Friday to sell Governing magazine to California media company e.Republic for an undisclosed price.

Governing began publishing in 1987 and claims governors, mayors, lawmakers, local council members and policy advisers among its 85,000 readers.

The Sacramento, CA, based e.Republic publishes Government Technology magazine and operates several web sites concerned with state and local government and education. It also runs the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute.

Times Publishing publishes the St. Petersburg Times, a free daily tabloid, business magazine Florida Trend and the political fact-finding web site PolitiFact.com.

E.Republic’s chief operating officer, Paul Harney, said in a joint statement that the acquisition creates the largest media firm providing news, research and analysis of the $2.9 trillion state and local government market.

“The Times Publishing Company takes great pride in Governing, which we nurtured from its inception 22 years ago into the powerful brand it is today,” said Times vice president Andrew Corty. “As part of this combination, Governing has a bright future educating and informing its senior-level readership across the nation.”

This is the second publication Times Publishing has sold this year. In July, Congressional Quarterly was acquired by the Economist Group, which publishes Roll Call magazine.

The deal will close after Thanksgiving.

Governing will maintain its offices in downtown Washington, D.C., under the same editorial leadership, according to the statement.

Nation’s largest publisher of gay & lesbian newspapers shutters titles suddenly

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:20:19 +0000

Window Media LLC, the publisher behind gay newspapers Washington Blade, Houston Voice, Southern Voice and South Florida Blade has shuttered the titles suddenly due to financial problems, the Associated press is reporting.

In an interview with the AP, editor of Southern Voice Laura Douglas-Brown states that upon arriving at the offices of the paper this morning, she found the locks changed and a note on the door that Window Media had “closed down.” Douglas-Brown expressed shock, saying that employees knew the titles were changing hands but that complete closure was unexpected.

Steven Myers, co-president of Window Media in Washington, D.C, declined comment to the AP about the closure for now, but said that he would offer information on the closures later in the week. The closure is thought to have stemmed not only from across-the-board declines in print media sales and the economic downturn, but also from increased coverage in mainstream media of gay and lesbian issues.

[Image]

The Epic Wordpress + MediaTemple Failure

Kyle Brady — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:53:40 +0000

A week ago I, Kyle the Invincible!, was hit by an injection attack on the majority of my own sites, and it took a large handful of hours to even figure out what was wrong. Once I discovered that a file had been somehow uploaded to my server, which executed itself and inserted malicious code onto my site’s pages, I wrote about it – in fact, you can find the full technical details on my blog and some more details on the Wordpress bug ticket.

Everything seemed like it was OK afterwards, since MediaTemple (my host) had worked pretty heavily with me to find the problem and determine the solution – I even wrote about how I was happy with the interaction and name-dropped the techs who had helped me. But then when my post on the issue started getting popular, because this is apparently a common problem at the moment, they stopped talking to me, especially when I started pushing for more answers.

The key to all of this is that a file is somehow uploaded to the server, which I had initially thought might be a fault of my CMS. Wordpress claims it isn’t their fault, but they released a security update (2.8.6) pretty quickly after my security and bug reports on the issue. MediaTemple claims it’s not their fault either, because Wordpress is “notoriously insecure”. But when the same issue started appearing for other users that don’t even use Wordpress, I became concerned – even more so when I learned most, if not all, of them are MediaTemple (gridserver) customers.

I’ve been pressing them for answers for the last four days, since I decided it was a hosting security issue, and have been ignored pretty stoically. But imagine my surprise today when I notice that I’ve been hit by the exact same attack, just a week later, this time running Wordpress 2.8.6.

If there’s a security issue floating around, you’d imagine that those behind the problem would be extremely interested in fixing it as soon as possible… right? Well, apparently not. It seems to be more important for both Wordpress and MediaTemple to act more like the Camel Lights camel rather than Boris from Goldeneye, and this is absolutely unacceptable from a user standpoint. Any vulnerability that allows unauthorized access to data, breaks a site, makes a huge list of SPAM links to porn, and redirects links to a malware distribution site is entirely not something to laugh at.

This is not a chain mail letter you can ignore without repercussions – this could effect a very big swath of the Internet, no matter who has caused the security hole.

I’ve been relatively happy with the (gridserver) plan from MediaTemple, and I know most people have been too. If this keeps up, however, I’ll be leaving them for someone who’s more interested in my data security than they appear to be, especially since all evidence points to this being a server issue rather than that of public-level software.

MediaTemple: step up, and do what we pay you for. If not, there will be a user reckoning.

Wordpress: you need to make an announcement. If it’s not your fault, that’s fine – but recognize the issue publicly, publish steps to fix the issue, and make a definitive claim against MediaTemple; however, you better have concrete evidence that it isn’t your fault.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Canadian television is about protectionism

Steven Hodson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:10:09 +0000

There is a big discussion going on right now in Canada about the whole idea of a fee-for-carriage ‘tax’ being added to our cable bills in order to insure the survival of ‘local’ television. This tax being asked for by the over-the-air broadcasters is suggested to be in the area of $10.00 per month and you would see it added to your monthly bill.

While this might be an interesting discussion (see the embedded video of a recent discussion about this area of contention) Prof. Michael Geist points out another area that the over-the-air broadcasters are pushing for the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission – a government regulatory body similar to the FTC in the US) to force the cable and satellite companies to create a new policy of “program deletion”.

Currently in Canada our the television networks that are carrying US programming work under what is called “simultaneous substitution”. What this means is that our broadcasters must broadcast their purchased show (which has been purchased from the originating US broadcaster in most cases) at the same time that the show is being run in the US.

Part of the argument that Canadian broadcasters have used, and is being used in the current fee-for-carriage bullshit argument, is that this puts the Canadian content show, which they are required to carry as a part of their licencing with the CRTC, at a disadvantage since the US shows get the prime slots.

What the Canadian broadcasters want is for the CTRC to step in and mandate that when a Canadian broadcaster buys the Canadian rights to a US show the US based broadcast would be blocked coming into Canada for a seven-day window.

In other words, rather than the current simultaneous substitution policy, which allows for the programs to air at the same time and for the substitution of the Canadian broadcast on the U.S. channel (thereby leading to the annual complaints about Super Bowl commercials), the U.S. broadcast would be blocked altogether. That would allow Canadian broadcasters to air the U.S. program whenever they like and block the U.S. version altogether. – Prof. Michael Geist

On the note about “saving local television” and the fee-for-carriage argument that is going on before the CRTC I have been a cable subscriber on and off since it was first available in our community, as well as any city across Canada that I have lived in, and I can count on one hand that has had it’s fingers removed how many times I have watched any local television, cable or otherwise. The only thing that adding yet another $10.00 to an already outrageous cable bill that keeps climbing each year would be to either cut back to the most basic package or to cancel it altogether.

As far as t he idea of totally blocking the US broadcast version for seven days – well, good luck with that plan. As you can hear in the video below the old media mouthpieces still don’t understand that access to media is changing. For them PVRs and Internet streaming are still just blips on the horizon. As one person puts it everyone wants to watch their favorite shows in hi-def and on big flat screens.

All the arguments that are before the CRTC currently are nothing more than efforts to drag out the control of television to the benefit of the broadcasters for as long as they possibly can. None of the arguments put forth do anything to benefit the people who actually use the service instead we are be treated like never-ending cash cows.

Murdoch and News Corp don’t deserve web traffic so STFU and pull the plug

Steven Hodson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:13:14 +0000

I’m getting really sick and tired on this waffling back and forth by old screwed up news organizations like the AP and News Corp. All they seem to do is constantly whine and cry about how all those evil news aggregators are being lead by the very devil itself – Google.

The newest shot across the broadside of course was a interview in Australia with Murdoch where he alluded to the the fact that all News Corp properties; in order to show Google who was boss, were considering pulling it’s content from the search engine.

Look, there is already a way that Murdock and company could have done this before now; as he has been told many times already, but if News Corp is staffed by a bunch of idiots that don’t know what a Robots.txt file is then News Corp, and Murdock, deserve everything coming to them.

At any point News Corp could have added a couple of lines to the Robots.txt file found on 99.9999999% of all websites on the Internet and Google couldn’t have indexed News Corp content one iota. Zip. Nada. Done Like Dinner.

But of course that wouldn’t have given Rupert the PR platform of the wounded and wrong businessman whose multi-billion dollar business is being destroyed by these evil upstarts that are out to destroy everything we hold dear.

Not only that but Murdock is trying to question the legality of the Fair Use Doctrine as actually being illegal – good luck with that ya putz. Better men and businesses have tried that route only to be slapped back to their boardrooms with their tails between their legs and licking each others wounds.

As Jolie O’Dell at ReadWriteWeb points out at the end of her post about this ‘threat’ one has to wonder just how much the pulling of News Corp content from Google would really hurt the search company

If, however, News Corp decides to deny Google bots access to its content, Google news will likely suffer little. Between the Associated Press, Reuters, and other print and broadcast news services, one wonders how much the absence of News Corp listings – primarily represented by the Wall Street Journal and FOX – will affect Google News.

Look this crap forever spewing out of Murdock is getting old, boring and more like hot air bluster from a man who doesn’t have the first clue of how the whole new industry is changing. Changing in such a way that it won’t care if News Corp decides to come along for the ride or not.

So here’s a suggestion Murdock. Shut the hell up already, tell your obviously deficient web jockeys to get a clue about the Robot.txt file, and pull the plug. No-one is going to miss you then just as nobody really gives a damn about you now.

An era is coming to an end and you Mr. Murdock don’t have a clue so please close the door on your way out because we’ve all got more important things to deal with than whether you are dumb enough to commit corporate suicide or not.

Ralph Peters and the Islamofascist Fort Hood boogeyman

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:56:47 +0000

Ralph Peters is at it again, this time with a nutty, fearmongering New York Post op-ed that’s full of conspiracy theory insinuation about how the President is a seekrit Muslim.

Peters, who you may recall for his loud death-wishing at missing American Soldier Bowe Bergdahl, (whose status remains “missing/captured”) has a recent book and it appears he is trying to promote it by preying on xenophobia and general free-floating fear in the wake of last week’s Fort Hood massacre. Completely peeing all over the many Muslim men and women who serve this country bravely overseas and at home every day, Peters weaves an islamofascist conspiracy so thick and colorful it made that Da Vinci Code writer guy jealous. True story.

Peters seems unable or, more likely, unwilling to connect the tragedy at Fort Hood to the countless other lone-nutbag shootings we see in America. He happened to be Muslim, but Timothy McVeigh happened to be white and American just like many other lone mass killers before him. Peters claims Obama is “unwilling” to call the act “terror,” “let alone the phrase ‘Islamist terror,’” instead cautioning Americans not to “rush to judgment.” Urging to think critically rather than tar a whole segment of the American population with a terrorism brush is, to Peters, an offensive level of inaction. Peters says:

Imagine if, instead of Fort Hood, the massacre had gone down at a mosque in Detroit — carried out by a maddened Christian or Jew. Obama would’ve been aboard Air Force One before the pilots had time to file a flight plan and he would’ve been on site before the gun smoke cleared, hugging and boo-hooing and dispensing stirring rhetoric for the evening news.

Okay, so we should assume instead if a Jew shot up a Mosque, Obama would come out with guns blazing against Israel because it was some kind of Jewish conspiracy? No, that would be crazy. Because Peters’ assertions are crazy. And offensive, and ugly and misguided and pandering to the portion of our population that thought we should melt down part of Saddam Hussein’s palaces to rebuild the World Trade Center. Understanding- truly understanding- who attacked this country on September 11th and why is far more important to national security than making tenuous connections between lone acts and real, large scale terror attacks.

Peters feels that the Army is colluding to obscure the fact that shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan was motivated by his Muslim faith. Newsflash, sir. Crazy killers are often motivated by faith, whatever faith to which they subscribe. They frequently have large delusions surrounding their significance in the world and feel that they and they alone can carry out God’s will on Earth. Muslim has little to do with it, aside from it coming in this flavor this time. Arrogance and religious fervor is the true culprit in many situations like this.

Peters asks:

How many more Americans have to die, at home and in war, before our president admits that there is, indeed, such a thing as Islamist terror? Will he ever admit that it played a role in the tragedy at Fort Hood?

Could it be- could Americans (and countless Iraqi and Afghani civilians) be dying because of an ill-conceived, totally misguided foray into a tumultuous region with no clearly defined goals and no exit strategy, and of course, no strong connection to the attacks they were carried out to avenge? Peters also mentions that President Obama didn’t “lose his fabled cool” when told of the attack. Yes, he sat in a classroom calmly reading The Pet Goat while the lower half of my city burned from the deliberate sacrifice of two crowded airliners. Oh no, wait. That was his predecessor.

To lay this tragedy at the feet of the current administration is deliberate self-deception at its very worst- if anyone sowed what we just experienced at Fort Hood it was most certainly during the preceding eight years and not this one. If Army policies of deliberate political correctness truly spawned this tragedy, wouldn’t those have been in place far longer than the ten months President Obama has been in office? Indeed, one criticism heard time and again of the Obama administration is that he hasn’t done enough yet. Are we to believe he’s quietly been working behind the scenes all this time to… facilitate a random murder of troops on our home soil?

A boatload of trouble

Steven Hodson — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:52:42 +0000

Fox News and Bill O’Reilly are gloating over the numbers they got during the 8 o’clock slot over the news of the Ft. Hood shootings, saying that they wiped out CNN and MSNBC. Even scarier is that they seem to be under the impression that they are now the new voice of the news.

“We did 5 million viewers at 8 O’Clock, wiped out CNN and MSNBC, wiped them off the face of the earth. The guard has changed in this country. The media guard has changed. And you know why people came in here, because they knew they were going to get an honest story. They weren’t going to get spin that Hasan is some kind of post-traumatic syndrome victim. Some kind of victim of a terrible public policy gone awry. They’re not going to get that….. I almost said a bad word. They’re not going to get that garbage here.”

Source: TVNewser

If Fox News is the new guard of the old media then we are in for a boatload of trouble. Any shadow of old media impartiality just flew out the window.

O’Reilly and guest gloating over how Fox is getting the news right

The coming world of the multimedia journalist

Steven Hodson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:32:53 +0000

We hear the scare tactics everyday. The news industry is tanking and the only way to save it is by returning to putting everything behind the paywall or instituting some sort of micro-payment schemes. News can’t survive by being given away for free is the mantra of the old school media companies.

News organizations after news organizations are crying the blues and cutting back on staff in order to keep the industry profitable enough for the owners and well placed editors. You would think that the coming news Armageddon will see the end of news as we know it.

The problem is that this is a specious argument that is put forth in order to protect the status quo of the news delivery systems. News will never die. Seriously. News is something that happens around us every day, every minute and nothing we do will ever stop news from happening.

What will change is the way in which we get our news and this is what is scaring the shit out of the old guard of the news industry – because at its root news isn’t an industry, we have just been led to believe it is.

While the boardrooms of the old world media companies are struggling to maintain any control they can over their profits that feed their million dollar lifestyles there are journalists and reporters who are finding a whole new freedom that comes from being exactly that – reporters of the news as it is happening. They are finding new freedom in being able to create content that will outlast even the outmoded methods of our current news delivery systems.

Even as these dinosaurs of newsprint carry on about returning to behind the paywall long time journalists are say no to the idea. Case in point is Saul Friedman who has been writing a column for Newsday since 1996.

Then he found out that Newsday, owned by Cablevision, would be returning its content back behind a paywall. It was a paywall that saw anyone other than a Cablevision and Newsday print subscriber having to pay $5 a week to access the site. This for Friedman was the breaking point and decided the time to quit had come. The idea of losing readership because of this paywall wasn’t acceptable to him.

Just as some journalists and reporters are deciding that the time is coming where they have to consider doing their job outside of the normal confines of a newspaper there are also a growing number of them that are looking to expand the way that they can keep on reporting on the news.

It is people like long time crime and court reporter Ron Sylvester who have seen the future of the business and realized that it is no longer just about the written word as published under some newspaper’s masthead. For Sylvester the role for journalists is going to become one of being a multi-media journalist where things like the written word are included with podcasts and videocasting.

As well it will mean being a part of the social media movement both as a way to promote one’s work as well as a way to find out about new stories that might be of interest. Journalist and reporters are becoming their own editors and ad departments. They are becoming their own sound man and videographers.

In Sylvester’s case he is also lucky enough to be able to draw on the skills of like minded contemporaries for projects that exceed his abilities to properly cover a story. This is almost the beginnings of the independent mobile teams of experts who can react quickly and without having to deal with the bureaucracy of an established newsroom.

While there is plenty of room for the independent journalist maintaining their own blog or being a part of a larger one I think the real power of a new world of news delivery will come from people like Ron Sylvester and other like him who will utilize all the aspects of technology in order to bring the real news to their readers. It will be the news without the preconceived filters that established old media organizations dole out what they think we need to read.

Regardless of what the dinosaurs of news might have us believe with their scare tactics news will never stop being delivered – only the methods of delivery will change.

Mainstream Media’s Death – Pending

Kyle Brady — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:10:10 +0000

Everyone has seen it coming but those effected by it: the mainstream media has been in a long, slow slide that will inevitably end in its death, and they have long since decried this as outrageous – but the cracks are beginning to show. Newspapers are asking for federal permission to collude as an industry, magazines are failing left and right, and all forms of publishing media has seen extensive layoffs and the closure of “extras” like non-local bureaus.

But what about the venerable media institutions that fall somewhere in-between newspapers and magazines? These are the TIME Magazine’s, Newsweek’s, and U.S. News‘ of the world.

TIME, along with it’s weekly brethren, typically has historically had more journalistic integrity per paragraph than any newspaper does per page – this is common knowledge, and it was assumed by many that they would weather the perfect storm of media collapse better than most. This, apparently, was an incorrect assumption.

Looking over the last three issues, disturbing trends begin to emerge.

The November 9th, 2009 issue of TIME has 64 pages: 25 are ads, and 11 are the beginning filler nonsense no-one reads – that’s over half the magazine, and another 5 pages are dedicated for entertainment “news” that doesn’t belong in a publication like TIME. But here’s where it gets good: there’s two “book adaptation” articles that total 6 pages. All told, that leaves just 17 pages for true journalism, half of which are actually commentary pieces.

The November 2nd, 2009 issue has 80 pages: 44 are ads, 11 are introductory filler, 10 are entertainment “news”, and there’s another 5 for commentary – leaving just 10 pages for journalism. The trend continues in the October 26, 2009 issue: 64 pages in length, 17 are ads, 5 are full-page “infographics”, 12 are intro filler, 3 are full-page pictures, 5 used for entertainment, and another 5 for commentary – 17 for journalism.

Did TIME think its readers wouldn’t notice? That people who care enough about politics and world issues to read lengthy stories are somehow too busy or ignorant to realize the content they pay for is dwindling substantially? The content I personally pay for now only represents somewhere around 20% of the magazine each week, and this is somehow supposed to be acceptable?

There was a time, just a few years ago, where the magazine took well over an hour to read – and it was an enjoyable, informed, educational timesink. Now it takes less than half an hour of mostly brainless reading, depending on the week’s content, because the majority of the magazine gets ignored. It’s understandable that such publications are going through tough financial times, due to a decreased readership and a number of other issues, but the way to increase your membership, or even maintain the status quo, is most definitively NOT to follow TIME’s current behavior.

To all the media moguls out there, here’s an important point you might want to write down for future use: when you need to increase your publication’s readership, replacing content with ads and journalism with reprints or filler is not going to net you the results you desire. This, in all honesty, should be common sense.

It goes without saying that I am not only disappointed in TIME for such behavior, but also that it deserves to fail in a miserable and public fashion, because it has proven itself incapable of making rational editorial decisions when threatened with existential questions. Since I don’t subscribe to Newsweek or U.S. Magazine, it’s hard to say definitively whether they are acting similarly, but this industry has proven to be very open to groupthink…

In short, let TIME and its ilk die the slow, painful death that they deserve.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Journal to Close Boston Bureau, Lay Off 9 As Ad Revenue Falls

AHN — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:49:40 +0000

New York, NY (AHN) – The editor of the Wall Street Journal thought the unthinkable on Thursday and announced the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston bureau is closing, resulting in the layoff of nine reporters.

Managing Editor Robert Thomson revealed the decision in a memo to staffers, saying that “we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable.”

The affected reporters will be able to apply for other jobs within the Journal, the memo said. The Journal is owned by News Corp.

An “investigative function” will stay at the bureau, according to Thomson. Coverage of mutual fund companies in the Boston area will be transferred to the Money and Investing Team, which will remain in place.

The Newswires bureau and Marketwatch staff in Boston will not be affected.

The staff reductions come as media publications are experiencing a dramatic drop in advertising revenues, which fell 29 percent in the first six months of the year.

Combined circulation of the Journal’s print and online editions rose 0.6 percent in the six months through September compared to the same period in 2008. Print-only circulation fell 2.4 percent.

In 2007, two Journal reporters at the Boston bureau won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for stories about back-dated stock options for corporate executives.

The Journal has a news staff of about 750 people.

At mid-afternoon, trading in News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWSA) was up 4.7 percent.

Those ads are just so fly – literally

Steven Hodson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:35:37 +0000

I’ve seen some pretty ingenious advertising in my time but the idea of using flies – yes flies – to help deliver your ads is definitely out there in left field. I’m not sure who thought up this idea but they deserve a bonus.

The video is of a German trade show where one of the exhibitors released a whole bunch of flies with advertisements attached to them. You got to admit it is rather clever and a hell of a way to get people to look at your ad.

Book publishers, book sellers face being WalMarted to death

Steven Hodson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:35:03 +0000

If there is one thing you can say about the Web it is that it is responsible for the disruption of more businesses than just about any recession. We hear daily about the newspaper industry facing annihilation, the music industry trying to suck out the last dollar it can, and the movie industry trying to constantly stuff the genie back in the bottle.

What we don’t necessarily hear a lot about is the book industry whether it be from the point of view of the authors, or book sellers, or book publishers. Every once in awhile stuff will bubble to the surface but on the whole much of the discussion around books get quickly overshadowed by its more loud mouth industry cousins.

That doesn’t change the fact thought that the book industry is facing a full frontal assault that will have as much an impact on the industry as the ones facing our other entertainment related industries.

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, gives a great overview of this assault in a post yesterday. In the post he outlines how companies like Amazon, WalMart, and Target are cutting the prices of books well below that of the publisher price, to the tune of 40-50%, in an effort to shore up their book sales. This is creating a multitude of problems for everyone in the business as this kind of subsidizing isn’t sustainable.

At some point something has to give. Publishers will be forced by retailers right across the board to cut their prices.

Publishers. For right now, publishers are getting paid an amount equal to the customary discount for hardcover books. But no one in the industry I have spoken with expects this to last for long. Amazon, Walmart, and Target are systematically conditioning consumers to expect these lower prices. Eventually, these retailers will be in the position to force publishers to lower their retail prices.

Book retailers, especially the small mom and pop shops, might be willing to discount some of the bestsellers but that is used to bring in consumers who the hope will buy additional books while there. By putting them in a position where they have to cut already slim margins in order to keep those customers hopefully returning this cheapening of their stock will make keeping the doors open even harder.

When it comes to authors Michael Hyatt has this to say

Authors. If retail prices collapse, it will mean that royalties and advances will also fall. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that 10–15% of $9.00 is dramatically less than the same percentage of $25–35. Most authors have a difficult enough time making a living now. This will lower the income of all authors and force many to get out of the business altogether.

Now of course the freetards out there will suggest that this is actually beneficial for the authors in that it could allow them to deal directly with the consumer given the ease of creating ebooks and the availability of self-publishing services. There are also those that suggest that like bloggers, musicians, and newspapers book authors need to find different ways to market their books and provide auxiliary tangible goods to make up for what they might lose by giving away their books.

I don’t profess to know all the ins and outs of the book publishing business and I am sure that someone like Michael Hyatt would be able to provide more accurate numbers but the fact is that the large portion of authors out there aren’t making the big bucks. Not all authors are Steven King or Dan Brown and as much as we might think that all authors are racking in the cash nothing could be farther from the truth.

So when companies like Amazon and WalMart turn around and start slashing book prices to the bone because they are big enough to absorb the losses – for now – in the end this house of cards is going to come crashing down. While we might like to think that this will only affect the already rich book publishers the fact is that the ripple effect is going to me much larger and much deeper than we might think.

Free isn’t the answer for everything regardless of what the self professed experts might have us believe. Sometime paying for something tangible at a fair market price with actual real money is the right thing to do as that money spent often has a far wider effect that just clicking on a purchase button.

A Very Wordpress World

Kyle Brady — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:05:52 +0000

Since 2003, an open source, Internet-oriented software package has done what is exceedingly rare within that community: becoming not only immensely popular and wildly loved, but also profitable. Matt Mullenweg has managed to turn what began as a fork of an aging content management system (CMS) into a worldwide empire that doesn’t even technically have a central office – Automattic’s Wordpress.

And there’s more coming.

Wordpress has evolved into one of the leading CMS packages in the world, in large part thanks to its many features and intense focus. Over the years it’s morphed from a rough-around-the-edges, but useful, software tool into a fully featured and easy-to-use content management endpoint with de facto deployment status. With built-in features like automatic upgrade, an increasingly intelligent editing interface, and an extensive plugin system, it’s easy to see why, and viewing the list of features in the upcoming 2.9 release is evidence enough that they’re moving toward a singular goal, given their prior history.

One of the complaints with Wordpress has always been relatively simple: while it’s easier to use than Drupal or Joomla for non-programmers, a basic familiarity with programming and advanced “Internet skills” are necessary to establish an enjoyable and highly functional site/blog. Themes use direct PHP references, plugins (until recently) had to be uploaded via FTP, and content was typically written externally – none of these facets of software lend themselves to attracting the proverbial Grandma as a user. Yes, the interface is more slick and friendly than their competitors’, but the Wordpress team still has far to go.

Wordpress 2.9 will supposedly see public access to easier rich-media embedding, inline image editing, and an operating system-like Trashcan – these are the most standout features of the impending upgrade, and they are definitively GUI- and Grandma-oriented. For some time now, Automattic has been playing both sides of the coin by enhancing the software backend and functionality while simultaneously smoothing over the user experience for the world-at-large, and this is admirable. It is, therefore, not a significant stretch to assume that Wordpress is intended to one day have rich functionality and extensibility, but with an interface that caters to the general public – the Gmail, Facebook, or Firefox of CMS packages.

There is, however, a problem.

Unless a user chooses the watered-down, hosted version, a site/blog using Wordpress in any fashion still requires significant setup and configuration – hosting, databases, and the initial software setup are all required elements to achieving functionality, and they all require some technological knowledge. Even worse are those sites that use Wordpress and begin to see traffic, because there is still a significant memory/load issue at its very core. The Inquisitr uses Wordpress, and I’ve always used it for my own site, business, and clients, but it is almost always heavily modified for any popular or load-bearing use.

All of us use some sort of content caching option, but a step further is still required: in my case, all sites are hosted with MediaTemple’s (gridserver) plan, with extra database-only memory resources, but in the case of the Inquisitr, an extensive hosting solution, involving Amazon’s AWS products, was necessary for the site to remain functional. How is this still a problem for Wordpress installations?

For Wordpress to achieve its high-minded goals, it needs to begin work on the core immediately. Given that Automattic has been slowly acquiring plugins and other software that advances its ideals, it would make more sense for Wordpress to come prepackaged with certain features, not as plugins, in order to enhance its basic usability – page caching should be first on the list.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic, and Wordpress, I salute you. You’ve done an admirable job and the world generally loves you – but it’s time to step up to what you’ve created, and do things right.

You don’t want to become the Microsoft of content management systems, do you?

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Newsday To Charge For Online Content

AHN — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:52:16 +0000

Long Island, NY (AHN) – The online version of Newsday will begin charging for access to content beginning next week.

The announcement was made in a report in Newsday as well as a printed statement by publisher Terry Jimenez. The subscription service will begin Oct. 28.

While some of the stories will continue to be free, most content on newsday.com will require a subscription of $5 a week unless the reader is already a subscriber to Newsday or Cablevision, which owns the paper, according to the account.

Free content will include the home page, school closing, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings.

The $5 weekly fee is the same that the newspaper charges new subscribers for the print edition.

Cablevision claims a customer base of 75 percent of Long Island residences.

In making the change, Newsday joins a small group of print media who charge for online content: the Wall Street, Financial Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Albuquerque Journal.

Newsday.com’s subscription cost is at the high end of those charging for online content. The Wall Street Journal charges $1.99 a week, while the Democrat-Gazette is $5.95 a month. The Albuquerque Journal is $110 a year.

The Denver Post recently lowered the subscription price of its print edition to $5 a month.

The fallacy of using “the public’s right to know” to support traditional media

Steven Hodson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:39:39 +0000

It is a well accepted fact that once survival instincts kick in we will use anything and say anything in order to survive. This isn’t an instinct just regulated to men and woman as we have seen companies that are drowning in their own missteps and mistakes come out fighting using specious and ridiculous arguments as to why they shouldn’t be left to rot by the roadside.

Both the music and video, albeit movies or television, are famous for trotting out all kinds of dire warnings about how we will lose those industries if something isn’t done to save them. Things like a 3-strike law that will see people kicked off the Internet if they are caught “stealing” music or videos. Of course this is all under the assumption that these businesses are doing to save the artists involved from never being able to earn an income.

Then we have the news industry which is currently performing the waffle dance about going back to a paywall subscription system in order to save the news industry. After all without the corporations being able to make massive profits as they have in the past we all know that news will disappear forever.

One of the arguments that the news industry likes to trot out as a reason why we can’t afford to have their businesses go tits up is because with out the news industry the way it is now the public’s right to know is in danger of being taken away from them.

Bullshit.

Besides the fact that there has never been a better informed public than ever before (as long as they are willing to get up off their asses to look for it) the idea that the news industry is our conduit to all that we have the right to know is stupid.

What it really boils down to is that the news we get is only the news that news organizations feel will bring them the biggest viewership numbers and what they – and them alone – decide they want us to see or read. There is no public right involved in any of this. It is all about them being the gatekeepers and deciding what is best for them – we don’t enter into the picture.

New York Times To Cut Another 100 News Staff Jobs

AHN — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:41:24 +0000

New York, NY (AHN) – The New York Times will cut its newsroom by another 100 jobs, the newspaper announced Monday.

Buyouts will be offered to all union and non-union employees. Layoffs will be instituted if not enough people respond to the buyout.

The planned cuts represent 8 percent of the 1,250-person newsroom. An earlier round of buyouts and layoffs in the spring of 2008 eliminated about 100 positions.

Other staff reductions are planned in the editorial and op-ed sections of the newsroom, as well as in the business side of the paper, executive editor Bill Keller said in a memo to newsroom staff obtained by the New York Observer.

“I won’t promise this will be easy or painless,” Keller said, “but I believe we can weather these cuts without seriously compromising our commitment to coverage of the region, the country and the world. We will remain the single best news organization on earth.”

Earlier this year, employees took a 5 percent pay cut in an attempt to forestall further personnel cuts.

The announcement comes less than a week after the Times said it cancelled the sale of the Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times, after receiving bids considered insufficient. The Globe is projected to lose up to $85 million by the end of the year.

New York Times Goes Hyper-Local With Weekend Bay Area Edition

Paul Short — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:36:29 +0000

The New York Times has added a San Francisco Bay Area metro report to its Northern California editions on Fridays and Sundays.

The new addition to the paper went into effect Friday, Oct. 16 and includes content written by New York Times staff as well as other local contributors. The Times already had a staff of 10 people in the bay area who, along with contributors, will write about public affairs and local lifestyle.

In the past, the Times had shown an interest in partnering with local news organizations and building a cooperative news outlet. Warren Hellman’s Bay Area News Project was one of those organizations said to be considering a partnership.

From Mediabistro:

“At a time when so many news organizations are in a forced retreat, it’s exciting to be part of a venture that has set out to build more and better news coverage,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, in the official release. “And as someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I’m proud that we can play a role in enriching the quality of reporting about the region.”

The day that radio was killed

Steven Hodson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:22:59 +0000

Technology didn’t kill radio.

Satellite radio didn’t kill terrestrial radio.

But as of today radio stands a very good chance of becoming an ever increasing wasteland to the point that we will see a massive shift away from radio stations playing music. If you think that talk radio is big now you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This is going to happen all because the very basis of how music radio works has shifted. Instead of record companies using radio stations as a way to promote new artists and new releases from established musicians the passing (with a heap of lobbying entertainment backed groups like the RIAA and musicFirst Coalition) of the Performance Rights Act radio stations will now have to pay to play that same music.

The argument put forth by the lobbyists is that this is a revenue stream that the artists are not seeing and therefor not getting paid for their work. Radio has been getting a free ride forever – getting rich off of the backs of musicians by not having to pay royalties for the music they play.

It’s a nice argument and would make sense if the musicians were actually going to see any of that royalty money. As it is they already don’t see a large chunk of what is suppose to be their money that is collected supposedly on their behalf by SoundExchange. The excuse used of course by the organization is that they can’t find the artists in order to give them the money.

So what happens with all that money?

Well the SoundEchange gets to keep it which ends up making this suppose to be non-profit very wealthy - to the tune of over $100 million as of 2007.

Now this is the group that is going to be able to collect some pretty hefty royalty money from radio stations all on the basis that it is for the musicians. The problem is that by changing the economic landscape by which radio works they are removing the incentive for any stations, other than the big conglomerates, to play new music from anyone other than the really big established musicians or bands.

Radio play has always been considered to be the biggest promotional play a musician could hope for. Even though the power of the hit lists may have lessened in our Internet world they still hold considerable power. It was advertising at it best (or worst during the payola years). That power is now gone.

As Michael Masnick at Techdirt notes

Besides, all this will do is harm up-and-coming musicians. Because radio stations will now need to pay more for playing music, they’ll play less music, and if they’re playing less music, they’ll focus just on the big name acts. Smaller up-and-coming artists should be furious with the RIAA for giving radio stations less incentive to play their works. Remember, this is the opposite of payola. While payola got new records on the air, this will make sure fewer get on the air. But it will sure put a bunch more money in the pockets of the major record labels.

This new tax revenue stream for the entertainment industry through its watchdog groups might not truly kill off radio but is sure is going to lengthen its time on life-support.

The AP hooks up with Microsoft to battle Google

Steven Hodson — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:03:57 +0000

Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press was in Hong Kong recently where he would tell anyone who would listen that the times are a changing and Google had better watch out. During the Xinhua Beijing Media Summit Curley once more made it quite plain that he thinks that all the AP’s woes can be traced right back to the doorstep of the evil money grubbing Google. All that is about to change according to him because the “real content producers” aren’t going to be giving away the farm like they have in the past.

Part of this new policy of “play with us or don’t play at all” will include their recently announced News Registry and most likely the plan to allow some providers to cough up extra money to be able to access AP content before their competitors. No more favorable conditions for the providers as far as Curley is concerned. It’s all about bowing to the wishes of the AP as was caught on an audio tape during the conferences and provided to Zachary M. Seward at Nieman Journalism Lab.

We are only going to work with those who use our principles. We are not going to work with everybody. So if you don’t agree to our protocols, if you don’t agree to give us real-time metrics, we aren’t going to work with you. So when I sat down in the portal negotiations, you know, I said, this time is different. You have got to be able to give us the metrics. This is not about money. We’ll get to the money part of the conversation later. If you want our content, these are the things you have to do. And that’s what I outlined. If you can’t do that, or if you won’t do that, let’s not waste time. And so far, everybody’s doing technical due diligence, including us.

When asked if Microsoft was willing to kowtow to what the AP wants Curley had this to say:

Someone asked Curley if Microsoft was willing to accept the AP’s demands. “They have said very strongly that they would,” Curley responded. A bit earlier, he said of Microsoft, “They know how to have a conversation.” And what about Google? “I’m not talking about Google,” he said. “We haven’t talked. We haven’t talked. We haven’t talked with them in any serious way.”

Along the way Curley also blamed the DMCA for letting companies like Google to get away with shafting the real news content providers. As well with some allusion to some new multimedia technology from Microsoft (which apparently they’ve been one of the only companies it has been shown too) being a game changer there is supposedly some huge looming partnership deal coming between the AP and Microsoft.

If Curley is really deluded to the degree that he thinks The AP can be saved by hitching its future to Microsoft/Bing/Yahoo then I think he’s been drinking too much sake. As for the idea that companies like Google, Microsoft, and other news providers are going to turn back the hands of time to a period where The AP might have been the king of news then they are in for a rude awakening.

For every new demand that The AP decides to throw down on the negotiating table there will be umpteen different companies out there that will willingly provide better alternatives. Just ask Reuters – they’re already doing it.

FTC guidelines take aim at guerilla marketing as well

Steven Hodson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:02:07 +0000

While a lot of attention surrounding the new guidelines being issued by the FTC is regarding bloggers there is also another who section of advertisers that is going to get hit hard by these new guidelines. Ignoring the fact for now that newspapers are being given a clear path to maintain their current status quo of self-regulation guerilla marketers are going to have a very hard time doing business under these guidelines.

For those not familiar with the term guerilla marketing it is a type of marketing where for example sake you are sitting at the bar having a nice cold beer and some-one you don’t know sits down beside you and you both start talking about brands of beer and why you like certain ones. This person beside you starts really talking up the brand of beer, one you’ve probably never tried because it’s new, their are drinking and then offers to buy you one, or two.

That is what is commonly referred to as guerilla marketing.

To the FTC this type of advertising would require full disclosure

A young man signs up to be part of a “street team” program in which points
are awarded each time a team member talks to his or her friends about a particular
advertiser’s products. Team members can then exchange their points for prizes, such as
concert tickets or electronics. These incentives would materially affect the weight or
credibility of the team member’s endorsements. They should be clearly and
conspicuously disclosed, and the advertiser should take steps to ensure that these
disclosures are being provided.

(page 81)

As I said earlier the only medium not covered by any of these new guidelines is the traditional print media – anyone else … well you’re fair game.