September 2005

Just a reminder that our $1 lifetime subscription offer ends at midnight Monday, October 3.

There is an arbitrary, but meaningful, number we need to hit before the offer expires. We’re about 20 subscriptions away from that right now, thanks in part to Tim Rogers doing us a solid yesterday.

Now it’s time for our regular readers to go the extra mile to push us o’er the top– Be sure to email your friends (especially if they are local) to let them know about this offer before the price increases twelvefold.

Dave Morgan has a nice look at the way behaviorally targeted advertising makes run-of-site look a lot sexier.

Christopher Schroeder breaks the media world’s tipping point into four immutable truths:

• The first, over-arching and undeniable truth, from which all else follows, is that the individual matters most.
• A second truth, which compounds the first, is that there are still 24 hours in the day.
• A third truth is that the Internet is
  playing out fundamentally as a communication and transaction medium,
  and less of a narrative one.
• The fourth truth is that broadband (whether wired or eventually wireless) and expansive memory compounds the other three.

Yeah. Sounds like a good argument for The Daily You.

And a runner-up: Brian Lambert on the general state of turmoil.

An oft-cited Nielsen study this week shows that newspapers are the dominant online local players.

That’s one way of looking at it.

Another is that no one has really cracked the local code yet and newspapers simply have the most recognizable brands.

…but, as Dan Gillmor points out, industry layoffs abound.

Today we got a subscription from a daily newspaper employee who hoped that the introduction of new online competitors would cause The Dailies to damn Wall Street’s torpedoes and up the ante on their local coverage.

Y’know. I secretly hope the same thing.

But it ain’t bloody likely.

I’d been keeping my mouth shut thinking that I was just exceedingly cheap, but others are questioning the high price tag of next week’s We Media conference.

We’re at a stage where I can’t afford not to go; plus, I’ve got some other business in the Big Apple. But this was a big enough expense for a startup, that it took a long partners’ discussion before I finally bit the bullet and registered.

But I’d feel a lot better about it if The Media Center would transparently explain why a one-day conference with (mostly?) free speakers held at the offices of the Associated Press costs $695.

Our partnership opportunities aren’t limited to media organizations, by the way. If you represent a school, church or charity — virtually any 501(c)3 — we can (and will) set up a mechanism by which a portion of your supporters’ purchases at our advertisers all over town will go straight back to your organization. Consider it an advertannuity.

The process is simple, and only requires a few minutes of your time to set up. However, the more involved you get, the more you make for your group.

If you’re interested, let’s talk.

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Salute to the Black Press Symposium at Paul Quinn College, hosted by The Dallas Examiner. It was an enlightening — and, for me — an inspirational experience, as it further validated one of the ways that I think our news distribution concept will help many voices be heard — and paid.

It occurs to me (and had even before the event) that in all the talk (and action) regarding "citizen journalism" today, the alternative, ethnic and niche press have been left out of the conversation. Everyone thinks about what the web is doing to mainstream dailies; and about what bloggers are doing to the media landscape. It strikes me that Web 2.0 is as dangerous to smaller publishers as it is to large ones; but that it presents them a far greater opportunity. But I’ll get to that presently.

There was a lot of language in the presentations from members of the Black press that put me in mind of the wedia movement. For instance, Freedom’s Journal, the first Black newspaper in America launched with the tagline:

We plead our own case. Too long have others spoken for us.

And KKDA host Willis Johnson:

Nobody’s going to cover our community like us.

But at the same time, there was much of the business-related gloom that you hear from the mainstream media today: In 1920 there were 1200 Black newspapers in the US, with the larger players having paid circulations north of 300,000.

(Having grown tired of the term "mainstream media," as I seem to utter it thrice daily, I was intrigued to hear George Curry’s opening salvo: "Don’t call it the ‘mainstream media.’ Call it what it is: The white-owned media.")

Today there are a couple hundred Black papers — many free. The Examiner, for instance is paid and has a circulation of around 10,000. And with multiple papers in Dallas fragmenting the market, and a perception that big media outlets like the dailies will make moves towards reaching the African-American market the same way they have with the Hispanic market.

For me, the most stirring speaker was Charles O’Neal, VP Economic Development for the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce, and former Editor of The Examiner. He spoke preached on the economics of Black newspapers.

(He had me from the start when he qualified his resume, saying that he hated being called a journalist. Too limiting: He was a newspaperman. Anyone who’s worked at a small paper knows the distinction. Charles has a standing invitation to be a columnist for Pegasus News.)

Charles spoke of a "three-way dance" between the publisher, the readers and the advertisers, taking the Black community to task for shopping at the Nordstroms of the world while simultaneously taking Nordstroms to task for not advertising in Black newspapers, urging the audience to "Tell Mr. Nordstrom to put his ad in The Dallas Examiner!"

That was a revelation point for me: You see, as a jaded newspaperman, I don’t believe that Nordstrom is ever going to advertise regularly in The Dallas Examiner. It’s not because they don’t want to reach Black people — it’s because they’re not going to advertise in any niche newspaper with a relatively small circulation.

So how can a Black, or Asian, or Baptist or Jewish or neighborhood newspaper get Nordstrom in front of their audience and get paid for it, without losing control of their content?

Collabortition. (Collaboration + Competition) We’re not going to detail the whole deal here, mainly because it’s not a one-size-fits all proposition. But, in general, if you’re a publisher, a student publication, a TV station (or program) or a radio station (or program), we can greatly increase your online exposure among folks who are most interested in what you do. In fact, we’ll push it to them.

We’ll share the ad revenue accrued by the views of your material. And, because our advertising is primarily behavioral, as opposed to contextual, you’ll likely see dollars from advertisers who usually don’t return your call. If we get Nordstrom; and The Dallas Examiner is our partner; and a reader who is a Nordstrom shopper reads their content on our site, they’ll get money from Nordstrom without Mr. Nordstrom ever deciding to run with them.

By the same token, the most highfallutin’ fashion or lifestyle magazine could see ad dollars from a corner burger shop or dry cleaner, via the same mechanism.

And we don’t care if you’re a competitor to another of our partners, or to us. Because our model works better with more content and more targeting — It is as they say, "all good."

And maybe, just maybe, when Nordstrom sees what their customers are reading on our site (as we will be absolutely transparent about the demographics and reading habits of our readers in aggregate), they’ll realize that they might want to throw some advertising towards a Black newspaper, or a sports-related radio show, or a neighborhood newspaper.

Interested? Drop us a line.

UPDATE 11/26/05: An employee of La Vida, a black paper based in Arlington informs me that they actually do get advertising from Mr. Nordstrom. So the example is shaky, but the premise is still strong: If you have a local media outlet that runs behavioral advertising and revenue shares with content partners, those partners may see revenue from unexpected bedfellows.

Going analog for a couple of days, so no posting. Also, trackbacks and comments won’t get approved until Sunday. I’ll have intermittent access to email.

Here’s a corker of a read from Bob Cauthorn to tide you over.

Over the past year, I’ve found myself reading the newspaper in print less and less. Other than watching it for changes in coverage patterns, the main thing that brings me in every day is the comics.

See, comics online are tough– because you have to go to many different sites to get your favorite strips.

Or you did, until last week’s release of this Konfabulator widget.

Pretty sweet, eh? And note the user comments about cancelling newspaper subscriptions.

Could a simple change in comic consumption mechanisms put a hurt on newspapers? Maybe. After all, it was the nail in the coffin of the Dallas Times-Herald.