Bad job news, bad home sales news- sometimes it feels like the adage “there is no bottom” gets truer every day.

One area not experiencing the depression seen in other areas is sales of online advertising. 2010 was huge for this sector, with a 14.9% rise and $26 billion in sales. Sound encouraging? 2011 is set to be even more dramatic, with a 20.2% jump, to $31.3 billion in revenue. The trend doesn’t seem to be a one-trick fiscal pony, either, with gains predicted for the next few years, according to eMarketer.

While the gains forecasted were somewhat less impressive than this year’s expected 20% increase, 2012 is set to see pretty massive cheddar-flow in online ad sales as well. A 17.6% rise is expected in 2012, and revenues are predicted to jump 12% in 2013, 10.4% in 2014 and 8.8% in 2015- where spending is expected to be at $49.5 billion.

Media Life Magazine quoted principal analyst David Hallerman on why the expected gains are so significant:

…Hallerman says that the internet has become as fundamental as TV to advertisers, and that a couple different factors will play into the medium’s expected growth. “As consumers continue to increase their time spent online and as the resurgent economy continues to bolster ad budgets, we’re going to continue to see an influx of dollars toward the internet,” Hallerman said in a release. According to the forecast internet ad spending will account for 28 percent of total U.S. major media ad spending in 2015.

Online Advertising Set to Jump 20% in 2011 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Yet another “study” that has found out that kids these days would rather get their news online instead of from sitting in front of a television.

Yes folks yet again the Pew Research Center has released another incredible ground-breaking study about something we didn’t realize was happening to our children. It turns out that in 2010  65% of young people, under 30, have turned to getting their news from the big bad Internet. This is up from 37% from the previous year of 2009.

Of all 1,500 American adults surveyed, 41% say they get their national and international news from the Internet, up 17% from 2007. Sixty-six percent cite television — down from 74% — indicating the trend is spreading among other age groups.

Forty-eight percent of those ages 30 to 59 cite the Internet as their main news source, up from 32% in 2007, while television went down from 71% to 63%. Though the number of those in the 51 to 64 age group who consider television their main news source (71%) is about the same, those who turn to the Internet (34%) is nearly equal to the number who cite newspapers (38%). The amount of people 65 and older who get their news from the Internet has risen from 5% to 14%, but television remains the chief source for 79% of respondents.

via Yahoo!

Next up – children with cellphones have Facebook accounts.

image courtesy of New York Times (Florida, 1963” © Lee Friedlander, courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco)

Be prepared to be shocked – kids get their news online not TV is a post from: The Inquisitr

The self-aggrandizing editor of small-town food magazine Cooks Source has replaced the full page apology on the magazine’s website with a passive-aggressive dig at writer Monica Gaudio and a suggestion that Gaudio is at fault for the magazine’s likely eventual collapse.

A few weeks back, Gaudio put editor Judith Griggs on Livejournal blast for failing to pay for a written piece of hers that Griggs sourced off the web, laughing off a suggestion she compensate Gaudio for the work and then suggesting Gaudio should have paid her for the editing work Griggs maintains she did to the piece. (Reading the lengthy missives penned by Griggs leads one to wonder whether she’s capable of even basic editing, though, given a distracting lack of proper punctuation and rampant other errors.) The internet, pretty much as a whole, reared up and breathed fire at the not very remorseful editor after the tale made the rounds.

Griggs, not exactly well-versed in sincerity, attempts again to appear apologetic for her transgression while publicly licking her wounds and blaming Gaudio for siccing the internet on Cooks Source:

Honestly, some of you have been pretty mean. I have been busy for the last week, apologising to these business owners and helping them to get things right again. If my apology to Monica seemed shallow it was because I was angry about the harm she has inflicted on others on behalf of her own agenda.

So let me say this now: Monica I am so sorry for any harm I caused you. I never ment [sic] to hurt anyone, and I think I did a nice job for you, but the fact remains that I took this without asking you and that was so very wrong. Please find it in you heart to forgive me. I sent the check  to the University and also, because so many people really need help, serious help, I am sending one to Food bank of Western Massachusetts (sorry, I got the name wrong the first time, even tho [sic] we did write an article on them).

Griggs then pretty much deflects responsibility for the debacle, as well as demonstrating that she still doesn’t understand why stealing the work of web writers for profit might make them angry. She contends that exhaustion lead to the lifting of the piece, something she wouldn’t have done if she thought she might get caught wasn’t working so damn hard all the time:

But one night when working yet another 12 hour day late into the night, I was short one article… Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and “found” something. Bleary-eyed I didnt notice it was copy written and reordered some of it. I did keep the author’s name on it rather than outright “stealing” it, and it was my intention to contact the author, but I simply forgot, between proofreading, deliveries, exhaustion.

Feeling any sympathy yet, meanies? You can read Gaudio’s response here.

[via, Image]

‘Cooks Source’ editor says internet meanies killed the magazine is a post from: The Inquisitr

In what has to be one of the strangest, yet very interesting, match-ups of old and new media we get news that after Daily Beast and Newsweek joining forces the Newsweek site is going to be shut down. Now this is a site with 3.8 million monthly unique visitors while Daily Beast only manages 1.5 million which makes one kind of shake their head.

From MediaWeek we get this

The Beast is the survivor, said Stephen Colvin, the company’s new CEO, “Because the Daily Beast is a very credible and successful news and opinion Web site. And with great vitality and distinct voice.”

As expected, Newsweek CEO Tom Ascheim (who, ironically, was brought on to pump up Newsweek digitally) is leaving the company.

The Newsweek and Daily Beast staffs will be combined under Tina Brown, the Beast founder who was named the company’s new chief editor. The combined staff will work out of the financial district, where Newsweek was already planning to relocate after its sale to Sidney Harman three months ago. The move is scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

A strange pairing of companies but an even stranger reasoning about which of the two sites to keep alive.

Daily Beast chews up Newsweek and wins the battle of sites is a post from: The Inquisitr

Much maligned regional food mag Cooks Source has finally apologized to the blogger whose article “A Tale of Two Tarts” was ripped off for their print edition.

The furor began when writer Monica Gaudio posted an email exchange she had with Cooks Source editor Judith Griggs after the theft was brought to Gaudio’s attention. Griggs brushed off the writer’s request for token compensation and suggested the author pay the magazine for edits made to the piece. This did not go over well with the internet, who proceeded to flood the magazine’s Facebook page en masse, deluged the publication’s advertisers, and made endless jokes about the ill visited upon the world by Griggs.

Below is the statement posted on the website of Cooks Source- interestingly, every other bit of content from the site has disappeared. Is that to draw attention to their contrition, or is it because they can’t verify the sources of the images and text are legitimate? Does the magazine sound truly sorry, or is there more of a focus on how the scandal harmed them than how their actions were wrong in the first place?

We have cancelled our Facebook page on Thursday, November 4th, 2010 at 6:00PM. It has since been since been hacked by unknown parties and now someone else unknown to us has control of it. Their inclusion of Cooks Source issues and photos is used without our knowledge or consent. Please know that none of the statements made by either Cooks Source or Judith Griggs were made by either our staff or her.

We do not, and never have had a Twitter page, so what is attributed as our presence or our statements have nothing to do with Cooks Source or Judith Griggs.

We also cancelled our website on the above date, as our advertisers were listed therein, and with the harassment that has taken place on Facebook, we felt was unsafe for them.

Cooks Source will not be on Facebook again at any time in the future: hacking is too prevalent and apparently too easily performed by disreputable people. The email and Facebook abuse of our advertisers is the prime example: it is hurtful to people who are innocent of this issue, and can ill-afford the abuse — either emotionally or financially. Small business owners are being bombarded with hate mail, and distasteful messages because someone downloaded their contact information on these bogus sites. These small business owners work very hard to keep their businesses going in a bad economy. We respectfully request this harassment be stopped immediately. If you or anyone knows of this abuse, you should go to the bogus Cooks Source (or other bogus pages) Facebook page, look to the left side of the page and press “Report Abuse,” or else go to How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement, http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php The Facebook Corporate phone number are 650-543-4800, 650-853-1300 and 650-543-4811which hopefully will assist interested parties who feels these snipers who are perpetuating hate have gotten out of hand and want to report it. Interestingly, this phone number and any other contact info is not listed on the Facebook site, and has taken four people a number of days to track down.

Last month an article, “American as Apple Pie — Isn’t,” was placed in error in Cooks Source, without the approval of the writer, Monica Gaudio. We sincerely wish to apologize to her for this error, it was an oversight of a small, overworked staff. We have made a donation at her request, to her chosen institution, the Columbia School of Journalism. In addition, a donation to the Western New England Food Bank, is being made in her name. It should be noted that Monica was given a clear credit for using her article within the publication, and has been paid in the way that she has requested to be paid.

This issue has made certain changes here at Cooks Source. Starting with this month, we will now list all sources. Also we now request that all the articles and informational pieces will have been made with written consent of the writers, the book publishers and/or their agents or distributors, chefs and business owners. All submission authors and chefs and cooks will have emailed, and/or signed a release form for this material to Cooks Source and as such will have approved its final inclusion. Email submissions are considered consent, with a verbal/written follow-up. Recipes created in the Cooks Source Kitchen are owned by Cooks Source and as such approval is given for chefs and cooks in our area to use them. Artwork used is created by our staff, or is royalty-free or purchased “clip-art.”

However: Cooks Source can not vouch for all the writers we have used in the past, and in the future can only check to a certain extent. Therefore, we will no longer accept unrequested articles, nor will we work with writers or illustrators unless they can prove they are reputable people, provide their sources, and who, in our estimation, we feel our readers and advertisers can trust and rely on for accuracy and originality. All sources will be listed with the articles, along with the permission, where necessary.

To say this has hurt our business is an understatement. But worse, it is harming the very people we are here to assist. Cooks Source’s is a small, free, local food newspaper-type magazine (called ‘magazine’ because it doesn’t generally include what is known as ‘news,’) whose mission statement is to assist small businesses and farms in our area and help readers learn about sustainable food issues. We promote small businesses and farms in our area, offer recipes because our readers request them, and because we are offered cookbooks and excerpts from distributors, publicists, agents and authors, non-profits, ag organizations, chefs and home cooks so as to help them promote their works. Cooks Source is so named because it reports on food sources: the farms, the bakers, the chefs and the foodie producers and purveyors– to the home and professional cooks and chefs in our area.

The misuse of Facebook discussed above also applies to Ms. Gaudio: she did what she felt was the right thing, and doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment, either. Regardless of what has been said, we liked her article very much.

[Image]

Cooks Source finally issues half-hearted apology to blogger they ripped off is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you were awake on the internet yesterday, there’s no way you missed the compelling narrative of Monica Gaudio’s stolen “Tale of Two Tarts.”

Gaudio, a self professed “medieval food nerd,” posted the story of how a for-profit, ad-supported magazine Cooks Source stole an article she’d written about the history of apple pie for their print edition. To briefly recap, when Gaudio contacted the editor to express her dismay, a chain of events that set the internet justice machine into motion was set off that was pretty awesome to witness. The editor in question has not been seen since the vengeance of Fark, Reddit, Boing Boing and even some mainstream media readers was unleashed on their Facebook page. (MSNBC was the lone voice sympathetic to reviled editor Judith Griggs during the saga.)

While reaction was swift, it was also comprehensive. One advertiser for the small publication reports having been contacted over 100 times by angry internet citizens in the five hours from when the story first went viral. (The company immediately and publicly withdrew support from the magazine.) Web sleuths quickly deduced that Griggs has been sticky fingered for a long time, and that content has been stolen for the magazine from Food Network, Weight Watchers and NPR for starters. (Lifted images were found in print copies of Cooks Source as well, and the link above lists five definitive instances of items being reproduced in the magazine without permission.)

It seems Griggs really doesn’t understand the internet, because despite provoking its ire rapidly and thoroughly with a condescending attitude towarrds web content, she has seen fit to leave the following message up on her magazine’s Facebook page for over 12 hours at this point:

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad!

You did find a way to get your “pound of flesh…” we used to have 110 “friends,” we now have 1,870… wow!

Griggs has not spoken on her own behalf since her comment on Facebook, but you can read a fairly comprehensive timeline of events over here. Can anyone recover their career after a scandal that is so high profile? Does Griggs deserve any degree of a pass for her crippling ignorance?

Aftermath: Cooks Source debacle emerges as cautionary tale about provoking the internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

There are full-time bloggers, and there are people who just write for the sheer love of sharing their knowledge, perspective or creativity on the internet.

One of the pitfalls of publishing your work on the web (paid or unpaid) is that the risk of having it stolen, misappropriated or otherwise reproduced to someone else’s benefit is rather high, and it doesn’t take too long to experience the joy of having your hard work lifted by some unscrupulous party for their own gain. A woman named Monica wrote a piece for a website about apple pies back in 2005- the kind of post you or I probably refer to a number of times in any given day.

Monica’s apple pie post was reprinted in its entirety by a cooking magazine, an instance that in and of itself is pretty galling, Monica, who is a better woman than I, found out about the article-lifting and requested very simple recompense. She asked for a print apology, a Facebook apology, and a small donation ($130) to the Columbia School of Journalism. The editor of Cooks Source replied graciously. Just kidding! She told Monica that she should be grateful the piece ran at all, and that Monica really should be paying Cooks Source for the editing work that had gone into her “Tale of Two Tarts.”

Monica posted a portion of the email sent by the editor of Cooks Source on her website- an email, it should be pointed out, that in and of itself does not seem to be very well edited. Below, the excerpt- can you believe the chutzpah?

“Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”

You can tell Cooks Source how you feel about bloggers being ripped off by their editor on their Facebook page.

Update: A Facebook page that logs suspected content theft committed by Cooks Source.

[Monica's LJ via Consumerist]

Print editor tells web writer her work is “public domain,” suggests victim should pay for editing of stolen piece is a post from: The Inquisitr

Way to go Rupert.

Not only are your reporters pissed at the drop in traffic but your advertisers are leaving in droves. All because you knew better than the rest of the web and put everything behind a paywall.

As Rob Lynam told Ian Burrell at the Independent recently

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, “We are just not advertising on it. If there’s no traffic on there, there’s no point in advertising on there.” Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges. “That was the same forecast they were giving us prior to registration and the paywall going up, so whether it’s a reflection on reality or not, I don’t know.”

He warns that newspaper organisations have less muscle in internet advertising campaigns than they do in print. “Online, we have far more options than just newspaper websites – it’s not a huge loss to anyone really. If we are considering using some newspaper websites, The Times is just not in consideration.”

I hate to be the one to say we told you so Rupert, but hey – we told you so and so did a whole bunch of really smart people. I realize that Rupert thinks that he is at war with new media and that like Julius Caesar he will triumph but damn man 90% of your traffic down the tubes, advertisers think your not worth consideration anymore.

How you call that winning any war is beyond me, but hey keep it up your competitors will enjoy the increase in visitors and profits.

The cost of Murdoch’s paywall experiment? 90% of The Times traffic. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Forbes has closed new media site True/ Slant after acquiring the site in May for a rumored “single figure millions” price.

Rumors about the future of the site swirled at acquisition, with some suggestions that Forbes might absorb the site into a current property as part of a move to increase its online syndication presence, or that in part the acquisition might have been a platform play.

This closure of the site hasn’t been officially confirmed by Forbes, however a range of True/Slant writers have posted farewells on the site, confirming that it has been shut.

Writer and reporter Neal Ungerleider writes on the site that there have been discussions among writers leaving about forming a new site in the future, writing “So what now? In September, I hope to rejoin some former True/Slanters at a new — as of yet disclosed — project.”

In the final post to the site, Michael Roston notes about what True/Slant has achieved, but doesn’t shed light on to exactly why the site has been closed, other than that operations have been absorbed into Forbes.

In May, True/Slant was doing 1.5 million uniques on what we estimated at the time to be around 3.5 million page views.

Forbes Closes True/Slant is a post from: The Inquisitr

Public-supported news, or as the news industry would have us believe – state run propaganda machines, is a hotly contested sore point in the US. Of course not all countries look at this way as evidenced by the BBC in England or the CBC in Canada. Even within the US there is the often looked down upon NPR which as an organization has to continually defend itself from attacks not just from their peers in the industry but also the government.

The argument used against these types of publicly-supported news agencies is that no matter how hard they try they will always have to kowtow to the government of the day. You will also hear the argument that publicly-supported news agencies don’t have to compete on the same ground that other non-public (big business) run news businesses and that gives them an unfair advantage.

If this is the case then one has to wonder why the BBC of England has been able to continually grow in this new media environment while big business run news agencies are floundering. Not only is the BBC growing but it is seeing its ad revenues triple in the last year an are expecting to double in the next year. In fact business is so good because of foreign visitors to their news site that they will be launching a US site at BBC.com to meet the need.

Even the US’s own NPR is continually striving forward always finding ways to use new media and new technologies to provide a better service while at the same time you have the big names in the news industry talking paywalls and subscriptions.

Given all this it was interesting to read an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University and First Amendment scholar, where he questions this idea that publicly-supported news agencies are inherently biased and dangerous to journalism.

Interestingly, Bollinger contends that our largest threat to journalism isn’t from government abuse but the corporate sector. “To take a very current example, we trust our great newspapers to collect millions of dollars in advertising from BP while reporting without fear or favor on the company’s environmental record only because of a professional culture that insulates revenue from news judgment,” he argues. “This reinforces the point that all media systems, whether advertiser-based or governmental, come with potential editorial risks.”

He concludes, “In today’s rapidly globalizing and interconnected world, other countries are developing a strong media presence. In addition to the BBC, there is China’s CCTV and Xinhua news, as well as Qatar’s Al Jazeera. [Our] system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters.”

Source: Fast Company

It is an interesting argument and one that I believe have a lot of merit. After all one just has to look at the polarization that is happening in the United States and how news organizations align themselves, whether they admit it or not, with those different sides. News has become more and more about the rating, about the mega-dollar advertising deals that sponsor many of these “news” shows that feed into this polarization.

I also find it very interesting to watch the rise, and profitability, of publicly-supported news agencies like the NPR, BBC and other similar “state” news organizations while at the same time the name brand news businesses we grew up with are struggling.

I have never believed that traditional media at its heart was in any danger of vanishing into the sunset. Rather I totally expect it to morph, to grow, to learn from new media, even to blend with it and in the end we will have a stronger and more ethical provider of the news.

The BBC could very well be that model.

Is public-supported news the real evil that the news industry portrays it as? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Associated Press, who have in the past taken a dim view toward quoting and linking to their content in the past, doesn’t seem to mind quoting from other people’s content, unsurprisingly enough.

In fact, the AP quoted from a post by Internet discount powerhouse Woot! when the retailer was acquired by Amazon last week. Woot! isn’t taking it lying down, though. The AP has suggested that bloggers pay for quoting just a few words, a move that largely bars new media from citing AP sources. The AP quoted a Woot! post in one of their articles, so Woot! said:

The AP, we can’t thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we’d get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn’t help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?

Tsk, tsk, AP. And then Woot! suggested the AP follow their own standards, in a totally friendly way:

So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right?

Woot! even gave the AP the option to purchase the two-pack of Sennheiser headphones for $7, which is a much better deal than just a few words- Woot! says:

You see, The AP, we think you’ll find the first pair of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones lightweight and easy to carry, and we think you’ll like how they help you shut out the irritating sounds around you (such as, maybe, people yelling about the actual meaning of “fair use”).

Hee hee.

[Woot! via Consumerist]

Woot bills AP $17.50 for quoting their content is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Wall Street Journal, the daily broadsheet for financial types, is getting a tech savvy makeover with a correspondingly high price tag.

As we haven’t yet had time to acclimatize to and whine about iPad app pricing, no one seems quite sure what to make of the leaked WSJ iPad app pricing. On one hand, getting the actual physical paper delivered to you costs about $29 a month. (That version also leaves an unpleasant newspapery film on your hands and can get soggy in the rain- however, the iPad app can’t wrap glass for shipping, so there’s that.) On the other, the iPhone app for the WSJ tops out at $8 a month.

The WSJ app isn’t ad free either- Coke and FedEx have both purchased three month, $400K advertising packages for it. The new content delivery method is a boon to advertisers, too, because they can target the hell out of you based on your browsing habits. It will be interesting to see how this pans out both for the WSJ app itself and the influence it has on iPad content pricing.

The Wall Street Journal is one of the few news providers that can really get away with setting the bar this high out of the gate. People who don’t get bored easily already willingly shell out for the paper online, and if they’re planning on getting iPads, this will be cost-effective and probably convenient. However, other iPad app purveyors who follow suit may see interest flag tremendously if they expect readers to drop $218 a year on their content. Remember what happened to Newsday when they put up a paywall?

WSJ on iPad will carry $18 monthly price tag is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the biggest things that both the freetard and the Web 2.0 warm and fuzzy crowd have been trying to implant in our heads is that the future of media is online and it will be free. Not free as in beer but rather geotargeted social media data-mined we know what you really want type of advertising.

It’s kinda cute to watch all the hype fly by but really when you stop and give your head a shake – to get rid of the hot air that has built up around you – the reality is far different from the propaganda.

For all the talk about openness and sharing we are slowly finding ourselves being sucked into the same game that has played itself in our real world.

Which considering that this is all happening within a landscape where battles have been fought over everything from operating systems to browsers this spineless walk like a lamb into the wolves dens is both sad and hilarious to see happen.

Facebook has become the defacto center of the social media world with it’s brain sucking games and never ending sucking up of user data. Google still remains the only way to get on the Internet for a large number of people. Newspapers and magazines are planning a return to paywalls while they trace the cross on their Armani covered chests in the desperate hope Apple will save their collective asses.

Television – not long ago thought to be the latest conquest by geotarded web start-ups – is finding that things are better in the warm embrace of their longtime masters the cable companies. After all why anger those already paying billions of dollars per year just because some nubile start-ups is promising untold fortunes.

It is true that the future of media will be on the Web – that is inevitable – but the thought that it will be free and dominated by a new breed of whiz kids flush with money from some web start-up sale to a dinosaur is looking to be more of a fantasy.

Sure it’s a nice fantasy to have but as broadband providers implement caps and more expensive packages, not to mention the wireless carriers rubbing their hands in glee over the rise in smartphones as they charge for both data and voice, even getting to the Web is getting costly. Once there it is all about subscription this and subscription that. It’s about playing games that suck up all your data and market it to advertisers and companies.

We might like to believe the garbage hype about how everything is new on the Web but the fact is for the most part it is just a rehash of the same old stuff we’ve been doing for as long as we can remember only now – in the end – we’ll have less choice.

Our online media world is beginning to look like .. well .. our offline media world is a post from: The Inquisitr

Gawker became the kind of media news it tends to report on today, with the announcement of the acquisition of CityFile and subsequent replacement of Editor in Chief Gabriel Snyder.

Explained in two memos, posted below, the ouster seems to have come as a surprise to Snyder, who has been with Gawker Media for eighteen months. While the reaction he expressed was public and thusly tamed, is new media really doomed to partnerships as short as Snyder seems to think? He took a quick working conditions snipe at the position (eighteen hour days, seven day weeks), but is pounding the pavement (literal or virtual) every two years or so the new career standard? The resignation (emotionally, not the career kind) in Snyder’s recounting was kind of sad. It doesn’t seem Gawker suffered under his direction, and anyone who’s been strategically let go will probably bristle at this bit in Denton’s memo on the decision:

We had hoped to persuade Gabriel Snyder to stay in a management role. But he’s moving on. With help from an awesomely strong team of writers and the new Gawker.tv operation, Gabriel doubled Gawker’s audience during his tenure (http://bit.ly/c6BXk8.) To anyone out there looking to build up an online property: snap him up quickly.

Which we all know likely means “we cut his pay to just enough to cover coffee and a metrocard, rescinded all responsibilities and returning would be humiliating.” Snyder is staying on editing the site until Friday, at which time the position will be taken over by Remy Stern. The acquisition is the first for Gawker Media, although Denton denies Gawker is going on an “acquisition spree.”

So, yeah. Snyder’s goodbye to colleagues (published in a post starting out with “okay, this is weird.” Aw, sad…) and then Denton’s full memo, below:

From: Gabriel Snyder
Date: February 15, 2010 3:47:23 PM EST
Subject: Farewell

For reasons which I’m not too clear on, but I’m sure Nick Denton will explain momentarily, I am being replaced as editor-in-chief of Gawker.

Honesty is Gawker’s only virtue, so it seems inappropriate to engage in the usual corporate euphemisms of “wanting to explore new new opportunities” or “take a larger role in the company” or “spend more time with my family” (though eighteen-hour days and seven-day work weeks do take their toll on personal relationships), so I’ll put this as plainly as we’d report any other masthead ouster: I am being canned.

Building this website into what it is today — a big operation with 11 writers, a regular source of national news and a challenger to the mainstream media organizations that it once mocked — has been the best job of my career. Transitioning from print to online meant adopting an entirley new biorhythm. Transitioning from writer to editor has meant learning to bask in the reflected glory of the talented staff who contribute every day. I love Gawker and adore the crew that makes it happen.

You deserve all the credit; my role has been to push you to be yourselves: Alex Pareene’s incisive political commentary, John Cook’s dogged reporting and clear-headed analysis, Brian Moylan’s ability to enunciate conversation-starting ideas, Richard Lawson’s ability to produce dazzling copy at superhuman speeds, Ryan Tate’s cliche-free coverage of Silicon Valley, Hamilton Nolan’s workhorse ethic and humor, Doree Shafrir’s gimlet-eyed appraisals of the culture and society around her. Waking up each morning to the work of Adrian Chen, Maureen O’Connor and Ravi Somaiya is a pleasure. Watching Foster Kamer dance on the stage each weekend is a joy. You, without a doubt, make up the strongest staff Gawker’s ever had, and make the site the best it’s ever been.

Eighteen months ago, when I first sat down with Nick to discuss taking over the Gawker helm from him, I saw a huge opportunity to build a site from its roots as an intimate discussion among Manhattan’s power elite and build it into a national news brand (an aspiration that seems to come up every time there’s a masthead shakeup around here). Attaining those goals have been the biggest accomplishment of my career. As I saw it, Facebook, Twitter and smaller blogs had slowly encroached on the role Gawker once served. Among the most difficult, though most rewarding to the site, efforts was to take the site from a bankers’ hours schedule to publishing 24 hours around the clock, weekends included. I believed the site could be grown beyond its traditional audience by focusing on news from the nation’s four cultural capitals (New York, D.C., L.A. and San Francisco) — which became even more clear when I was given the task of integrating former standalone sites Defamer and Valleywag into the flagship. Oh, and then there have been the stories. It’s become common to see national newspapers and broadcasts cite Gawker on vast array of stories: the U.S. Kabul embassy security dudes behaving badly, the Hipster Grifter saga, leading the entire media for a weekend on the Balloon Boy fiasco, those pictures of Katie Couric dancing, pillorying Harold Ford through simple questions, Annie Leibovitz’s financial meltdown, the Late Night Wars, Facebook privacy, Anna Wintour … more than I can count. I was determined to compete with the biggest news sites on the internet. And today, I am glad to say it does.

But the history of Gawker Media careers shows that they tend to burn bright and fast. So it shouldn’t have come as a much of a surprise when our mercurial owner told me he’s hatched other plans for Gawker. He offered me a new, temporary position as an assistant managing editor of Gawker Media as a holding job, which I have declined. I can’t see how I’d be in a position to succeed at the role going into it with one foot literally out the door. I’ll be editing the site until Friday. After that, please stay in touch (gs@gabrielsnyder.com). And needless to say, as of now I am on the market and will be beating the media bushes for my next opportunity.

I will miss you all.

Best,
Gabriel

Denton’s memo:

From: Nick Denton
Date: February 15, 2010 3:48:03 PM EST
Subject: Gawker Media acquiring Cityfile

For the first few years of Gawker Media, the business press had one abiding preoccupation: when are you going to sell out? Today we’re giving the M&A gossips something else to talk about. The company is making its first acquisition: Cityfile, the New York news site founded by Remy Stern. The price is not being disclosed.

Cityfile will be the New York and media industry channel on Gawker, alongside Valleywag and Defamer, our tech and entertainment sub-sites. Cityfile’s 2,000-plus profiles of New York notables will be the centerpiece of our new topic and people pages. And Remy Stern, a former writer on several Gawker sites and editor at the now-legendary Radar magazine, will take over as editor-in-chief of Gawker. He starts on February 22nd.

We had hoped to persuade Gabriel Snyder to stay in a management role. But he’s moving on. With help from an awesomely strong team of writers and the new Gawker.tv operation, Gabriel doubled Gawker’s audience during his tenure (http://bit.ly/c6BXk8.) To anyone out there looking to build up an online property: snap him up quickly.

Does this mean Gawker is going on an acquisition spree?

Well, it’s a question of scale. Each of the Gawker titles does already have more than 1m US visitors a month — making them usually the largest or second largest blog title in their category. Nevertheless the threshold of advertising success does continue to rise and we’re increasingly competing online with TV and newspaper groups.
Moreover, we’ve long actively managed our portfolio of properties, selling Consumerist to Consumers Union last year, for instance — or closing down unsuccessful properties. To achieve critical mass in entertainment and tech, we have indeed looked at a few opportunities in the last few months. If online media is consolidating, we’d rather be a consolidator than consolidatee. And revenue growth of 22% in 2009 provides the resources. (Deal ideas? Contact Gaby Darbyshire.)

Don’t get too excited, however. The successful launches of Jezebel and io9 confirmed our belief that it’s usually more effective to build than buy. Lifted by the iPad launch and the late-night TV wars, our nine sites — all launched inhouse — drew a US audience of more than 14m in January. Our best editorial investment continues to be the recruitment of great writers and producers on our own sites — and the pursuit of hot stories.

Nick

Gawker makes first acquisition, ousts EIC is a post from: The Inquisitr

As a native Long Islander, I was amused when Newsday, our local paper, waded fearlessly and without irony into the ice-cold waters of charging for news on the internet.

I don’t know anyone who has ever paid for a physical copy of Newsday. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I thought they were passed out free on the Long Island Railroad until I was about eighteen. Even in high school, in a year full of stoners, everyone was totally too good for Newsday and favored the New York Times when they could afford it. Still, Newsday felt they would be able to charge for access to their poorly designed and annoying to navigating site, done in dark blue with white print- and not at a bargain rate, either.

Back in October, Newsday decided to charge $5 a week (a week!), or $260 a year for access to news about the Hamptons and Massapequa. And how many people do you think availed themselves of that fantastic offer? 10,000? 1,000? 100? Try 35. Not 35,000, 3,500 or 350. 35 people were interested in paying for access to Newsday content. That’s like, not even half of a single car on a rush hour train from Babylon to Penn Station. Fail.

In fairness to Newsday, a large portion of Long Island has access to the paper without having to pay the online fee. 75% of Long Islanders have either a subscription to Newsday itself, or subscribe to Cablevision/Optimum and are comped access to the site. But that figure of 75% has not been broken down into paper subscribers versus those who get freebies with cable, and most telling is the fact that traffic has dropped significantly since the paywall went up:

According to Nielsen Online, traffic has fallen since the paywall went up. In October, the web site had 2.2 million unique users. After the paywall went up that total fell to 1.7 million and 1.5 million in November and December, respectively.

While I like to mock the very public failure of my very local newspaper, the numbers are a cautionary tale to others who think a pay-for access model (and a ballsy one at that) is going to work any differently in this market. Newsday will continue to hemorrhage funds (the site redesign ahead of the paywall cost $4m) until they realize no one on the internet is going to pay for content they can get for free elsewhere. Unless you’ve got something very unique with a completely dedicated base of readers, it will fail. Spectacularly.

[Observer via Gawker]

So, Newsday, how’s that paywall working out for you? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The New York Times has announced that their services will go behind a paywall, however their “pay to read” model won’t go into effect until 2011. They’ve also announced that the system will include a “metered model” which will allow users to read a certain number of articles each month before any charges will be required.

New York Times Chairmen Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. voices his confidence in the companies new approach, stating:

“Our new business model is designed to provide additional support for The New York Times’ extraordinary, professional journalism. Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”

Given the reputation of the New York Times they may just be able to pull off the multiple level model by providing users with access to various stories and then hooking them into a pay based model, although only time can tell if this oft-failed attempt can actually succeed.

The Times have also reported that exact details about the plans payment structure will be revealed over the next few months, which leads me to believe that specifics are still being worked out.

While the move may help the New York Times gain money from paid subscriptions, it will also more than likely kill their web authority among bloggers and other forms of new media. As Mashable’s Stan Schroeder points out, no website will want to link to an article only to get complaints from readers that their link doesn’t work, which could occur if that reader has read too many NYT articles in any given month.

With other companies, including Hollywood insider Variety going live with their own pay based models, at least the folks at the NYT will have time to determine what works and what doesn’t. If history repeats itself however, it could be a long and bumpy road for their new model.

New York Times Will Implement “Metered” Paywall In 2011 is a post from: The Inquisitr

The FTC has hinted in an interview with Daily Finance that the rules about fairly disclosing comps in blog posts doesn’t apply to people who happen to be awash in a sea of free goodies.

Yes, you, poor mommy blogger, must disclose a sample of baby wipes you didn’t pay for, but people who are important and better than you like Gwyneth Paltrow deserve nice things and thusly don’t have to abide by FTC disclosure rules. While celebrity endorsement has way more pull than your average blogging nobody, details like that don’t matter much to the FTC- Rich Cleland, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s ad division, explains the spotty logic behind the favoritism:

The average consumer, Cleland said, might well be aware that celebrities of Paltrow’s stature often receive free clothing, trips and other swag. “It is one of the issues where celebrity endorsements are a little different than person-on-the-street endorsements,” he said. “Would consumers understand that celebrities are always getting free stuff? It’s a factual question.”

Back in October when the new rules became a blogging issue, Steve suggested celebrities might be in trouble considering the new guidelines, but we can all rest easy. People like Gwyneth Paltrow can continue trading their heavily weighted words for “ridiculously lavish” vacations. Sadly, it seems the regulations do only exist to marginalize independent bloggers. Because unfair advantages cannot be allowed to stand.

[via Gawker]

FTC admits celebrities can blog for freebies, no disclosure needed is a post from: The Inquisitr

Old media websites took a beating in November as traffic to new media sites grew, according to new figures from Nielsen Online.

In the top five news sites online, CNN saw a drop in traffic vs the same month of last year of 12%, MSNBC 16% and the New York Times 20%. Yahoo, which remains the most popular online news site saw no change from November 09, while AOL News grew 9%.

In the next five, Tribune Newspapers dropped 14%, Fox 14%, ABCNews Digital 3% and Gannett Newspapers 15%. Google News grew 10%.

In the full top 30 list, other notable drops included CBS News at 17%, McClatchy Newspapers 19%, USAToday 20%, and the BBC with a drop of 27%.

New media sites in the Top 30 picked up at least some of the traffic, with The Huffington Post growing 27%, and Examiner.com growing a staggering 228%.

It wasn’t all bad news for old media, with some outlets growing: The NY Daily News grew 21%, NBC Local Media 148%, The Guardian 33% and The New York Post up 10%. In new media, the only decline in the Top 30 came from news aggregator Topix, which dropped 37%.

While the composition of the Top 30 sites remains mostly unchanged over recent times, the reduction in numbers may demonstrate that the audience is fracturing, with some turning to smaller new media plays in place of traditional heritage media outlets.

(Figures via Editor and Publisher)

Old Media Takes A Beating As New Media Sites Grow In November is a post from: The Inquisitr

Much has been written online over the last two days following News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch’s chit-chat with Sky News Australia (see our coverage here and here.)

There’s a ton a different points that can be dissected and debated in the interview, but there was one thing Murdoch said that has been bugging me since I heard him say it: “no web sites anywhere in the world make serious money.”

I don’t dispute that the statement is wrong, but it lacks context and a broader understanding of the space. The obvious point is the definition of “serious money,” which to Murdoch means the hundreds of millions that News Corp makes. He’s entitled to define serious that way, but in reflecting on that we need only to take a look at the rise of News Corp to see that the “serious” money he talks about was a short term aberration over the much longer period of media as a whole.

The News Corp story is one of those Australian fairytale stories that many in Australia know something about. But the best history I’ve read recently came from an American, in the form of Michael Wolff’s biography “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.”

The biography charts the rise of Murdoch from his inheritance of a single Adelaide newspaper through to the takeover by News Corp of the Wall Street Journal. The book places in context the newspaper (and broader media) industry as it was, and how Murdoch came to change the scene as part of the rise of the media barons in the late 70s and 1980s.

It details succinctly how newspapers were previously often small or family run affairs, often without huge profits or managed to their full potential. Couple to this was the stratospheric rise in newspaper advertising throughout the 1980′s, and the media consolidation as smaller outlets closed or sold out.

Indeed you could say that before the likes of Rupert Murdoch, no one was making serious money from newspapers. Where have we heard that line before?

Unlike newspapers, many with histories going back hundreds of years, the current crop of new media startups are often only years old. This is a time of immense competition online where new models are being experimented on, with the successful models being used as a basis to grow and expand (see AOL for one classic example.) Some are making money, others aren’t, but of course none are making “serious” money yet, just like newspapers once weren’t either.

Perhaps in old age, and combined with a self professed obsession with print, Murdoch can’t see the parallels starring him in the face?

Bronwen Clune told the Media140 conference in Sydney last week that she doesn’t like the label of new media because what we label new media really is just a part of the broader media landscape. Not only was she right, I’d extend that further, because although the online nature may make it new of sorts, the progression of the industry really isn’t anything of the sort, because what we’ve seen in the past with heritage media is now being reflected online, be it at a much faster pace.

Online media may not be making “serious” money yet, but what’s to stop a 21st century Murdoch buying up online outlets to create an entity that does make serious money, or for an existing conglomerate to grow and compete with the media of old? History can and does repeat itself, rich with the knowledge of those that have succeeded and failed before.

(Image: Department of the Internets)

What’s Old is New: Why Murdoch Doesn’t Get New Media is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Mainstream Media’s Death – Pending is a post from: The Inquisitr