Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

E&P has a summary of a new D-Bank analyst report arguing that newspapers in the Yahoo employment classifieds alliance may soon hit the inflection point where the decline in traditional recruitment classifieds revenue is outweighed by the increase in online recruitment revenue.

I've been banging on and on about the need for scale in classifieds sites - specifically, in terms of listings - for a while now. In an age where talent is searching for absolutely the best job available and willing to move to get it, no one newspaper is going to succeed in the recruitment classifieds market by itself.

Instead, papers need to contribute to, and benefit from, a national (or international!) network.

Labels: classifieds, internet, newspapers, recruitment

Ecstatic reports today about the NY Times finally dropping Times Select, the paid subscription wall hiding the NY Times Op-Ed content. Paidcontent has the numbers.

And, according to Alleyinsider, Murdoch is going to go in the same direction, trading the subs revenue from 1m online readers for ad sales revenue on an audience of 10-15m.

Everyone will, of course, be writing about how this is a big victory for the Internet, openness, blah blah blah. But what about reports that CPMs are trending down, at least at AOL? What happens when the newspapers, attempting to recoup the lost subs revenue, walk right into a (potentially) declining ad market with more volume to sell?

Not sure I'd like to own NY Times Co. stock right around when earnings reports next come out.

Labels: advertising, internet, newspapers, ny times

A journalist friend, let's call him "Eben", recently asked me for career advice. Having risen quickly up the totem-pole, Eben is now a reporter for Time magazine, which is, by any standard, a pretty big accomplishment for a 27 year-old.

Eben's question was: Which part of the print journalism landscape is likely to be safe from the on-going business model disruption currently afflicting newspapers and (some) magazines? Put another way: What is the print media landscape of the future going to look like?

Any prediction for the future of print media needs to start by acknowledging the impact of the internet. Starting a website is easy. Getting people to look at your website is more difficult - but clearly not too difficult (you're reading this!). Making (some) revenue from selling ads around your website is very easy - Google will do it for you instantly.

Sites like MySpace and Facebook generate billions of page impressions at very little cost, allowing them to serve ads at ridiculously low prices to advertisers. Right now, I can get Google to show pretty much any ad I want 1,000 times for less than $1, because there is so much inventory available.

What does this mean for newspapers and magazines? It means that, with the exception of some high-prestige titles, it will be very difficult to sustain ad pricing levels at a level high enough to support expensive news gathering organizations.

I expect that we are entering a world in which (1) most news is reported by networks like the AP and syndicated across the entire web; and (2) a small group of prestigious publications charge high cover prices / online subscriptions for high-quality investigative reporting.

Not a particularly pretty picture for those of us who believe that high-quality investigative journalism widely-read is critical for the health of democracies, but you can't fight the market forever.

Labels: future, internet, magazines, media, newspapers

The NY Times is 33% better than the London Times.

Not in terms of content, which is not really measureable anyway. In terms of design.
Because the NYT incorporates a few simple elements into its front page, it has become a sort of de facto homepage for a highly desirable demographic of educated Americas.

This is where the 33% comes from: The average visitor visits the NYT site 1.6 times per day, compared to 1.1 times for the LT. That's 33% more often. (Stats from comScore, February 2007)

So what separates the NYT from the LT? Here are three quick items:
1. The NYT usually gives its most recently updated blogs a prominent position on the homepage. This means fresh content, everytime you visit. The LT hides its blogs away.

2. The NYT provides containts news feeds from Reuters or the AP. Again - new content each time you visit. The LT provides no feeds.

3. The LT homepage is highly monetised, with 4 major ad positions on the front page. The NYT, by contrast, has 1 major and many minor ad positions. Unclear whether this influences users at all.

Over the next few weeks, I'll spend some time looking at various newspaper sites and how they could be improved.

Labels: london times, newspapers, ny times

Am going to be working on a consulting project for one of the UK's most admired newspapers. Will be working with them to increase revenue from mobile / internet. It's an interesting space - one which clearly offers considerable opportunity and also considerable risk. I'm excited to get started.

Among the specific issues we'll be discussing:
- Search optimisation
- Direct relationships with online retail
- Re-purposing of content
- Incorporation of interactivity in the print editions using mobile phones

I'd be interested in hearing from others regarding their experiences with newspaper companies moving online. Thoughts?

Labels: comparison shopping, mobile, newspapers