Magazines May Not be Rescued by the iPad
April 13, 2010
If you are a magazine, don’t expect the iPad to be your knight in shining armor.
While there is a lot of hubbub in the print industry about the many possibilities of the iPad to rejuvenate dying magazine sales, things don’t look so rosy upon closer inspection. TBI Research recently posted an interesting story, “Here is Why the iPad Won’t Save the Magazine Industry” listing the many ways this new technology will let down the magazine business.
For starters, magazines are planning on charging higher prices for digital issues than print, in some cases $15 a month. But an even bigger hurdle for this industry is the massive amount of free, searchable information available. For any topic imaginable, iPad users will be able to seek out low cost and free resources and directly skip costly magazine subscriptions. Doesn’t sound much like a savior to us.
Patrick Roland, April 13, 2010
A freebie.
If Books Become Apps, What about Regular Reading?
April 13, 2010
My view is that the era of text is drawing to a close. Words won’t go away, but the future is video and interactivity. Even InDesign CS5 allows moving stuff to be inserted into text. Text is becoming a sidebar. The real action is jiggly wiggly content. You can get a glimpse of the future in “The Amazing Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds.” The article is based on a study funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation and you can view the PowerPoint highlights on the Business Insider Web site. For me, the most interesting item in the Kaiser study is summarized in the screenshot below:
If books become multimedia, then book consumption may go up. The reason is that books will be more like games or TV, two popular pastimes for the sub 18 year old set. The problem facing any traditional publisher is shown in the slide below:
Looks like the sub 18 crowd is moving beyond text. Apple may be better positioned that either Amazon or Google in this sector. Which horse will win the rich media derby? A favorite or a contender off the radar at the moment?
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2010
Google to Newspaper Industry, Experiment
April 13, 2010
I found the article “Google CEO: ‘Journalism Will Triumph’” darned interesting. I am sitting in the Rome airport and reflecting on the suggestion to newspapers to experiment. I found the following passage particularly fascinating:
Speaking to the American Society of News Editors’ annual convention at the J.W. Marriott in downtown Washington, Schmidt showered praise on the industry, calling journalism an “art.” Schmidt said he reads three newspapers, and called their work indispensible. And he blasted blogs, saying that any questions about the value of newspaper editors can be answered: “Look at the blog world.” “High quality journalism will triumph,” he said.
According to the article, the Google speaker was not “adversarial”.
Three thoughts:
- Experiments are underway with the iPad and all manner of innovations to generate revenue. In fact, the experiments have been underway for decades. How much time and money remain?
- Google offers a solution. I call this “surf on Google.” Problem is that newspapers may not be adept surfers.
- Google is building bridges, but is it too late? The focus seems to be shifting away from text, where Google dominates, to the Facebook approach to content.
Read the article. Decide for yourself.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
No one paid me to write this.
Does a Google Manager Have AOL News at Sea?
April 12, 2010
If AOL is going to be the 21st century media giant it wants to be, someone better tell the management.
The media behemoth has been suffering an identity crisis that doesn’t seem to be getting better. A recent Business Insider story, “AOL’s Content Strategy is Still a Mess,” showcases a company with its heart in the right place, but its execution failing at every opportunity. One of its main objectives is to create high quality online content by hiring seasoned journalists and editors. The logic being, if everyone has a voice in the new web, those with proper writing and editorial skills will speak loudest. This sounds great, but swallows great gobs of time and money. Meanwhile, the company is also bum rushing search engines with a glut of SEO-friendly content from practically anyone off the street. The result is a two headed monster going nowhere fast.
Patrick Roland, April 12, 2010
No one paid us to write about AOL.
MarkLogic and the American Institute of Physics
April 9, 2010
MarkLogic, fresh from nailing the University of Virginia account, reported that “American Institute of Physics Utilizes Mark Logic to Launch Publishing Platform.” MarkLogic Server is a software system that can give information-centric organizations a versatile tool for accessing, processing, and repurposing content. According to the write up:
the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a non-profit scholarly publisher, used MarkLogic Server to build its next-generation platform for hosting online publications, Scitation C3. AIP has moved its 12 archival journals to the MarkLogic-based Scitation C3 platform, which hosts 2,000,000 articles from more than 200 science-related publications.
The article continued:
… Scitation C3 features include full-article HTML rendering, improved visual presentation of inline math, and in-context links to references, figures, and tables. AIP now offers “Smart ToCs” that allow users to further customize listings with abstract previews and the ability to hide non-relevant content. AIP has also added more search options and controls to explore content based on article type, topic, author, keyword, PACS, journal, and publication year. In addition, researchers can find information faster by highlighting a term within an article to produce a list of related content.
For more information about Mark Logic, navigate to www.marklogic.com. I will be one of the participants in the upcoming Mark Logic User Conference. Information about that event is available at http://www.marklogic.com/UserConference2010/.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2010
A freebie publicizing my participation in a user conference.
Murdoch and Google: Temperature Rising
April 8, 2010
I read “Rupert Murdoch defiant: ‘I’ll Stop Google Taking Our News for Nothing’” and realized that Google may find the business temperature rising. The period between 2006 and 2008 was a period of relative calm. Since 2009, Google finds itself in the same situation that was going to plague Gulliver. Folks who seemed “small” to Gulliver found ways to tie down Swift’s big boy.
The write up reported that the news industry has to charge for content. For me the most interesting comment in the article was:
“We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognize it,” Murdoch told a packed audience of students, journalists and other media professionals. He said search engines had tapped into a “river of gold” by aggregating content but that the days of free news had to come to an end. “They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model,” he said.
Interesting to see if this is the shot that escalates the tension among the Googley and non Googley by an order of magnitude.
I thought that newspapers sold advertising. The news was an important part of the mix, but ads carried the freight. Google moved into advertising and now the newspapers have to find something to sell. Content seems to be it. In my experience, the value of content in an online environment is devilishly hard to make pay at the levels associated with the traditional newspaper method in a pre digital era. I worked at a pretty good newspaper, and I have to say that the newspaper’s ability to create original content has deteriorated over the years. Now with the costs of innovating in software added to existing costs, the executives like Mr. Murdoch have their work cut out for them.
Google is a target, but I don’t think Google is the problem. Google is at a tipping point itself. Innovation won’t do the job. Complicated factors are now operating, and I think the next surprise may be an emergent one. Tough to predict too.
Fascinating.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2010
A freebie.
iPad: Wall Street Journal Looks for Silver Lining
April 8, 2010
I don’t want to make big deal of the news story “Ipad Sales Fall Short of Estimates.” For me, the key point is captured is this statement:
…today [April 6, 2010[ the Wall Street Journal published a statement from Apple which said that more than 300,000 Ipads were sold on day one. This would be considered great, but if you take into account the fact the figure included all the pre-sales and the hype that said a million would be flogged on Day One that number is dismal. According to the WSJ, Wall Street took a deep breath when analysts heard the figures.
Those iPads have to sell to generate the money from the publishers’ for fee content. Without lots of iPads, we won’t know if iPad users become big buyers of for fee content. The Wall Street Journal and some other “real” journalistic operations have great expectations for the iPad and its hoped for ability to convert rich media consuming folks into magazine, book, and newspaper readers.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2010
A freebie.
iPad, the Contrarian View
April 4, 2010
Short honk: This is a quote to note and a recommendation to read the full write up from the tech industry’s premier contrarian. The article, “Publishing’s Last Hope”, points out that some “real” journalists may not be presenting balanced reviews of the Apple iPad. I agree. Since Apple has a lousy search system for iTunes, I don’t have much to say about a device I don’t have in my possession from a company with a search system that gives me nosebleeds. Read the full write up.
For me, the article has a quote to note.
So if you drink the Kool-Aid, you’ll be reading Newsweek and Time and all the dying print magazines and newspapers on the iPad. No matter that you are not reading these journals now.
This is an important point. Information acquisition and consumption for certain segments of the population are very different from those my cohort uses. An expensive magazine, whether digital or in print, is not the ringing the chimes of some of the younger readers whom I know. We will know if the contrarian is right or if the companies with expensive content is right in a few months. Exciting stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2010
Nah, unpaid post.
Print Is Alive
March 30, 2010
I quite enjoyed “Opinion: Print Is Dying … Really?” The author is a learned individual named Graydon Carter. His premise is, as the title of the article makes clear, that print is not dying. Like me, Mr. Carter trots out an obligatory reference to Gutenberg, who is probably spinning in his grave at his recent celebrity status. There is also a reference to monks, a trope that I confess to riding to exhaustion when I get the chance. I don’t do much in the new media space because I like to read stuff in print. I am just finishing The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future and a lightweight discussion of the wild and crazy Caravaggio, both on paper.
Mr. Carter said:
Americans have taken to inhaling their news in catch-as-catch-can fashion from whatever screens they happen to have at hand: televisions, computers, cell phones, even those little TV sets in elevators. But in this age of constant information availability, it’s important to take a step back every now and then — once a month sounds about right — to immerse ourselves in the stories that define our times. At Vanity Fair, our writers continue to do what they’ve always done, ferreting out everything there is to know about a given subject and then pulling it all together in a gripping, satisfying narrative. A good Vanity Fair story should have at least a couple of the following elements: access, narrative arc, friction and disclosure. A great one has at least three and a truly great one has all four. Additionally, our stable of world-class photographers continue to find creative, visually arresting ways to reveal truths about our subjects in images that will stand up to any thousand words you throw at them. The fact is that people still want great, well-told tales. We see it on vanityfair.com, where our longer articles routinely top the Most Popular list. We see it in the fact that our print circulation (both newsstand and subscriptions) is emphatically up at a time when everyone tells us it is supposed to be down. [emphasis added]
This is indeed encouraging. I have had the good fortune to be interviewed by a reporter working on a Condé Nast publication’s story. I am not sure that calling me is going to advance the cause of “everything there is to know.” In fact, I thought the reporter whom I shall not name seemed particularly clueless about the subject of the article.
I am also not sure about the following items and their impact on the finances of Condé Nast:
- Staff cutbacks at some of the properties and selling off some properties so that content volume has been affected
- The costs of printing, mailing, distributing, and picking up unsold copies of magazines
- The costs of maintaining various electronic properties and improving the functions of some of those properties before they become technology laggards, not technology leaders
- Packaging print and online in such a way that advertisers get their messages to their targeted demographics
- Making investments in digital content pay off in a manner that allows the company to grow and generate margins that meet the needs of stakeholders.
In short, I don’t think print is dead. Those with money to buy a $30 hard copy book or pay upwards of $6.00 for a magazine are going to be around for a while. The problem is that the information consumption patterns and methods are changing. Print is a bit like writing cursive. Schools are dumping the teaching of handwriting. I suppose cursive is irrelevant just as print may be irrelevant to information consumers who are decades younger than I.
Stephen E Arnold, March 29, 2010
No pay for this write up. I will report this injustice to the Kentucky Division of Forestry. Save those trees. Buy a computing device with lead and mercury infused components.
The UK Guardian Does Software
March 29, 2010
Short honk: I found the factoid that “100,000 Buy Guardian App” interesting. According to the news story in The Post, “Introduced in mid-December, the £2.39 app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.” This works out to about $5.00 US for a revenue flow of $500,000. For me the most interesting comment was:
Moore [Guardian executive] admitted that the Guardian was relatively late to market with its app, but said he felt its delay had been rewarded by its popularity. He said it had taken time to design an app that would, in his words ‘‘delight’’ the audience. Before the iPhone, he noted, it was virtually impossible for any media company to deliver a compelling experience through mobile phones.
Ah, “late to market” and “delight”. Yes.
Now the question racing through my addled goose brain is, “How much did it cost to develop the applications?” Once I have this information, I want to know, “What is the cost going forward to enhance the application?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 29, 2010
No pay for this one. I will report this sad state of affairs to the Bureau of Labor. I could go for the child labor angle but I am going to be 66 years old. Sigh.
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